Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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Chatting with a Spacecraft

[update 2008-05-25T17:32Z: The landing itself will be at 16:38 PDT (2008-05-25T23:38Z) but because it takes a signal 15 minutes and 20 seconds to get here from Mars, we won't know if it succeeded until 16:53 (2008-05-25T23:53Z).  Thanks to the tweet just in from @MarsPhoenix.]

At 15:30 -0700 (that's 3:30pm PDT in North America or 2008-05-25T22:30Z globally) there will be "live" NASA coverage of the landing of Mars Phoenix on a North Polar plain of Mars.

This is a "hard landing" involving dramatic atmospheric entry and rocket-powered descent  to a frozen area expected to have water ice only inches below the surface.  The evidence for this, and guiding the choices, is the appearance of polygonal patterns in the surface.  The smoothness of the surface also influenced the choice.

How did I learn about this? Twitter.  It seems that @MarsPhoenix is tweeting the progress and as well as the excitement about a flaming entry and powered descent of this large lander (although I don't expect Twitter to be available at landing time, based on Twitter's overloading already at 07:30 -0700).  It is all accomplished by the lander.  The communication time lag (and, I suspect, interference during entry ionization) prevent any direct control.  It's all software and robotic machinery. 

I told Vicki I was tweeting a spacecraft and she asked if I needed my tin-foil antenna hat to do it.  This was particularly awkward when I claimed that Mars Phoenix answer my tweet, too.  (The twitter account is "manned" of course.)  It is a very interesting use of social networking, and drama, to bring attention to this exciting event.  It worked for me.  (For various reasons, including no newspapers or television in the household, NASA events are mainly below my threshold of attention, although I've followed the space program since the first tweeter, Sputnik, crossed the October skies in 1957.)

Vicki's next question, after we riffed on my being a tweeter, was who are the woofers?

posted by orcmid at 5/25/2008 07:57:00 AM