Sol 150+, Time marches on... Options

[jamescanvin]

Phoenix Lazarus mode worked and she was contacted successfully on Thursday evening, according to this article linked from the Phoenix twitter feed.

[ustrax]

Stupid I know but I'm avoiding this thread...like if it would bring bad luck to our brave, beautiful bird...

Hang in there Phoenix!

[tedstryk]

I am really hoping that there some thicker frost deposits (a la Viking 2) that show up while SSI is still active. Might happen, might not.

[bcory]

Latest image of "Holy Cow" taken Oct. 18 (Sol 142)

Some filling in by the sand storm perhaps?

[vikingmars]

"...a la Viking 2"

This is THE image showing the MAXIMUM 100% frost coverage seen by VL2 in 1979 (real colors).
This frost was able to stay during daylight hours, only because of extreme low temperatures encountered at her landing site :
- early morning at 06:00 : -122°C
- early afternoon at 15:00 : -92°C
I doubt (but still hope also) that the Phoenix lander will be able to live long enough and withstand such conditions to see such frost coverage...

[PaulM]

...Many questions about next Martian summer and will I wake up? It is beyond expectations. But if it happens you'll be among the 1st to know...

Even in my most optomistic moments I can not believe that Lazarus mode will suceed in rebooting Phoenix next Spring. Broken tracks and components will make this impossible.

However I do believe that if contact is lost with Spirit next winter due to lack of power that Spirit will phone home again in the following Spring. The great advantage that Spirit has over Phoenix is that Spirit has a well insulated warm electronics box with 8 little radioactive heaters to keep it warm.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/spacecr...rover_body.html

So far as MSL is concerned I think that MSL's RTG will ensure that MSL will continue working on Mars for decades after broken wheels have turned it into a fixed lander.

[laurele]

"The great advantage that Spirit has over Phoenix is that Spirit has a well insulated warm electronics box with 8 little radioactive heaters to keep it warm."

Why wasn't this feature put on Phoenix?

[Stu]

I've written another - probably my last, for obvious reasons - poem about Phoenix, which some of you might be interested in. It's rather long (gasps of shock from everyone... I don't think! ) so I'm not posting it here, and it's probably a bit too much for some people anyway, so here's a link to it on my poetry blog.

"Preparing To Sleep"

Not intended to be an obituary, as such, more of a celebration of a short life well lived.

Hope some of you like it.

[BrianL]

Why wasn't this feature put on Phoenix?

Because Death by Winter was the accepted fate for this mission. Waste of space, time and money to add such heaters for a few extra sols.

[nprev]

Stu, I thought your poem was excellent! A bit sad, but simultaneously evoking the history of terrestrial arctic exploration. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[Greg Hullender]

Hope some of you like it.

Actually, I did like this one. (Nitpick: shouldn't "arboreal" just be "boreal" in stanza 1? I see no trees here. :-)

Stanzas 1 and 2 are very strong, I think; although "in fear" jarred me in #2, I thought that "I don't think I can stay awake much longer" was VERY powerful.

Stanza 3 almost worked for me, but, again, things like "have I make you proud" were jarring. (Maybe I just want a more fatalistic rover -- "That which we are, we are" and all that. Or maybe just a stoic one.) But from "I reached out" down I loved it -- minus "TEGA".

Below that, I thought a comparison with Scott would have been much more powerful than with Shackleton, but I loved the general idea. Of course, a Scott quote like "God this is an awful place" would have been a bummer. ;-)

In fact, the poem reaches such power with Shackleton's quote that (for my money) it needs to end there. The last stanza felt like a let-down to me. Some nice images there -- "Glorious days, when a Phoenix flew to Mars!" -- but the shade of a Hero is a tough act to follow.

--Greg (Okay, now I'll go back to preparing for my "Random Processes" midterm) :-)

[hortonheardawho]

Very nice poem, Stuart.

I think the role of a poet is to connect the dots and create a "true" metaview of being. There are a lot of very good dot creators here, but not many dot connectors. You, sir, are a very good dot connector.

Stuart, this will not be your last Phoenix poem.

The "true" meaning of life comes after death.

Perhaps a poem about bright eyed children staring at Phoenix in the Prehisory wing of a Martian museum?

One of my knee weakening epiphonies occurred holding a Cambrian worm cast in my hand while fossil hunting with my children and realizing this that very trail could have been made by one of my direct ancestors -- and that my own trail in the mud leading to an unimaginable future was now made.

Think about that for a moment.

[Stu]

Thanks for the feedback guys, much appreciated. I'm tidying up the poem cos after reading it back at work during a break I spotted a few improvements I could make, too, and I think it,s now much better.

Very profound thought, Hort...

[vikingmars]

A lot of frost seen on sol 151.
=> Dedicated to Stu's nice poem.
Not the imaging epitaph I hope. Enjoy !

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

So is Phoenix still "alive" then?