[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Oersted_*]

Rob Manning of EDL fame wrote this in another thread, which was closed, so I couldn't reply in there. Anyway, I think that this image surely deserves a thread of its own.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. When my LMA friends, Wayne, Tim P and Tim G suggested that I seriously look into taking the Phoenix descent image, I had to push it. They were right on many levels. I am embarrassed to say that I never once looked into what we might see in the background as MRO/HiRISE scanned over the landing ellipse. We had the viewing geometry at our figure tips but we did not look. In fact we did not look at the wide shot with Heimdall in the background until late on Sol 1. I saw the image late yesterday and, like many people who see it the first time, I though it was a fake. A couple of minutes later I had it on my laptop in an email attachment from the HiRISE team. I had been so focused on whether the image would reveal sufficient parachute fault data (and earlier on whether it would result in a risk to MRO's UHF data collection during entry) that I failed to imagine the big picture. Maybe I couldn't.

Rob, it will become one of the signature images of space exploration.

Up there with
Apollo 8 Earthrise,
The Pillars of Creation, and
Pantheon, Earth and Moon.
...(just kidding about the last one, I took it of the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome )

What a wonderful story this is. Despite the meticulous planning that went into the HiRise shot, despite the effort of tracking, slewing, yawing and whatnot of the MRO, despite all of that, serendipity took you all on a crazy roller-coaster ride of discovery and threw in this awe-inspiring background by complete chance!

Part of what defines a great photo is the framing. And what do you know: ALL of Heimdal crater is included in the shot! - How perfect is that? - Had it been cropped, the image would still have been fantastic, just for the engineering effort that went into it and for capturing Phoenix. With the whole crater included it moves from engineering excellence to a Work of Art. Perfect framing, and perfect 16:9 aspect ratio for that Hi-definition viewing experience . It is an image that will make for great big-size poster art, so that it won't be marred by the close-up box in the corner, which must go away, just for the sake of beauty.

Part of what defines a great photo is timing, and as a result of that, composition. Henri Cartier-Bresson was the acknowledged master ("Man Jumping Over Puddle"). Again, you guys painstakingly did all you could to assure that HiRise would capture the right instant. But AGAIN serendipity totally took over and delivered perfect composition! - Little Phoenix could NOT have been placed better against the backdrop of the crater: with the crater's edge drawing an ellipse, the lander is almost exactly in the left-most focus point, with an uncluttered background and in perfect counterpoint to the more feature-rich right-side of the crater bowl.

In my country we have a saying that goes more or less like this: you have to strive for it, if you want to get lucky. The group behind "Phoenix over Heimdall crater" certainly got lucky, but you ONLY got lucky because you strived for this shot. You worked hard and intelligently, and for that Mother Nature rewarded you MORE than handsomely.

This picture will be there when we are all gone (my take on how to present it):



Poster-size version here

[Julius]

was checking the phoenix landing site on MOLA map by MGS and noted the relatively low altitude below the average reference ground level for Mars;I think it must be between 0 to 4km below the average;then i just checked the southern cap which lies on a considerably higher ground(between 0 to 3km above the reference point);it looks like Phoenix had an extra 4km or so of atmosphere to slow down compared to MPL which we know crashed....any ideas /suggestions on this?

[dmuller]

it looks like Phoenix had an extra 4km or so of atmosphere to slow down compared to MPL which we know crashed....any ideas /suggestions on this?

If I recall correctly, a "low" altitude that was one of the engineering constraints for the landing site selection. Wasn't it like min MOLA -2.5km or so? The extra atmosphere (length of flight and density) does add to the effectiveness of the parachute. But they knew the landing altitude for the MPL lander and the EDL there was designed accordingly - a possible cause being discussed is that the MPL 'thought' it had touched the ground when it was actually still 50m or so up, rather than the atmosphere being too thin (as was a problem for Beagle2 / Spirit / Opportunity)