One of the Phoenix team said they will see frost build up near the end of the mission, I think he was hinting sol 120 -150 or so.....

Holy cow !!

I think we are going to see plenty of frost anyway. As soon as the sun starts to set around the end of August its going to get very very cold at night.

".....ahhhhhhh....." sounds from the Station......

I think they would have thought about this before they launched it..........

-125 C I believe.

I think the safest thing to do is just use the oven as it is, as they say the door is open enough.

I am pretty sure the IMU's contolled the position, oh and Phoenix is a she not a he......

To me that sure looks like the lander blasted the soil away and exposed the ice.

It seems a surprise teleconference for reporters is being held today, I was under the impression the next briefing was Tuesday....

Mars Phoenix Lander Media Telecon Scheduled for June 2
May 30, 2008
NASA and the University of Arizona, Tucson, will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) on Monday, June 2, to report on the latest news from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission.

To my eyes the pumice looks like indeed volcanic pumice. The other pebbles are all smooth, I suspect that is due to being moved around by the co2 frost over millions of years.

The whole point of the mission is to find Water Ice, remember this is frozen water you can melt and drink, not frozen carbon dioxide. Also to test the ice to see if it has been regularly melted, but with current summer high temps of -30 C that seems unlikely. Though at one time it does seem liquid water flowed all over Mars.

The Phoenix site seems down

The project manager said it would take several months to put the edl sequence together from the data.

RA is just over 8 feet long. If the deck is about 3 feet above the surface I guess the reach will be about 4 feet.

Intriguing droplet like object.

Still another day of arm unstow yet.

That was a quick press conference. What happened ?

Then again the atmosphere is very very thin and all the objects would not be blown much by any wind.

Yes Phoenix was programmed to fly away. Mind you I am still surprised how close all the hardware landed together.

I just noticed the subheading....last flyby of the primary mission already, I can remember when she was launched

They have everything planned to the last detail, they won't be wasting anything.

He does whinge a bit doesn't he ?

Seems Phoenix sunk deep into the ground......

"TUCSON, Ariz. - A day after an orbiter's radio shutdown blocked NASA from telling its newly planted Phoenix Mars lander what to do, orders were on the way to get its robotic arm moving." By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN, Associated Press Writer

LMAO, and at the same time shaking my head slowly.....

and from the BBC.....

"It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days".

That's not totally accurate is it ?

I have a question about the Hi-rise images of all the proposed landing area's of Phoenix, many of them show lots of rocks, how big are the rocks ?
Where Phoenix landed, so far we see only fairly small rocks ( I know they chose it because of the lack of rocks ).