Phoenix makes picture-perfect Mars landing

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander survived a risky plunge through the Red Planet's atmosphere and touched down in Mars' northern polar region on Sunday, sending back pictures of a bleak-looking, oddly patterned plain.

Over the next 90 days, the probe is due to dig into the permafrost to look for evidence of the building blocks of life.

Cheers swept through Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the touchdown signal from the Phoenix Mars Lander was detected after a nail-biting descent. "Phoenix has landed! Phoenix has landed! Welcome to the northern plains of Mars," deputy systems engineer Richard Kornfeld announced.

The first data from the probe indicated that it was sitting almost exactly level on its landing site in Mars' Vastitas Borealis region.

“In my dreams it couldn’t have gone as perfectly as it went,” NASA project manager Barry Goldstein said. “It went right down the middle.”

Among Phoenix’s first tasks were to check its power supply and the health of its science instruments, and unfurl its solar panels after the dust settled. Then the first pictures were taken and transmitted to Earth. The pictures showed the fully deployed solar panels, the soil under one of Phoenix's landing pads and long-range looks toward the horizon of the northern plains.

The plains appeared to broken up by polygon-shaped fractures — as expected, based on orbital imagery. Scientists say such patterns arise in the polar regions of Earth as well as Mars, due to wind action or repeated cycles of freezing and thawing.

"Underneath this surface, I guarantee, is ice," said Peter Smith, the Phoenix mission's principal investigator from the University of Arizona at Tucson.

Dan McCleese, a chief scientist at JPL, said the polygonal terrain was "absolutely beautiful."

"It looks like a good place to start digging," he said.

Seven minutes of terror
Phoenix plunged into the Martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph (19,200 kilometers per hour) after a 10-month, 422 million-mile (675 million-kilometer) voyage through space. It performed a choreographed dance that included unfurling its parachute, shedding its heat shield and backshell, and firing thrusters to slow to a 5 mph (8 kph) touchdown.

The automated descent was dubbed "the seven minutes of terror" for good reason. More than half of all nations’ attempts to land on Mars have ended in failures.

Smith said the room was thick with tension during those seven minutes. "I couldn't let go of the chair," he said. "I had a grip on it."

Sunday's touchdown was the first successful soft landing on Mars since the twin Viking landers touched down in 1976. NASA’s twin rovers, which successfully landed on Mars four years ago, used a combination of parachutes and cushioned air bags to bounce to the surface.

Phoenix’s landing was a relief for NASA, since Mars has a reputation for swallowing spacecraft. More than half of all nations’ attempts to land on Mars have failed.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin marveled at the precision of the Phoenix team members' aim, saying they achieved better than "one part in 10 million of accuracy." Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the science missions directorate, said that was the equivalent of hitting a golf ball in Washington — to make a hole-in-one on a golf course in Australia.

"And you have to remember, that hole is moving," JPL Director Charles Elachi quipped.

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