We’re down, baby, we’re down!

I’ve been a fol­low­er of NAS­A’s mars mis­sions for a few years now. The Pathfind­er Mis­sion and the cute Sojourn­er were my intro­duc­tion to robot­ic explor­a­tion of Mars.

Well, today marks anoth­er mile­stone with the suc­cess­ful con­tinu­ation of the Phoenix Mars Lander mis­sion.

NASA suc­cess­fully landed anoth­er probe on Mars, this time using a powered rocked des­cent, a ris­ki­er yet less hair-rais­ing meth­od of land­ing than the ‘con­trolled Mich­lin-man crash­ing into a plan­et’ des­cent of the Pathfind­er Mission.

First images are already avail­able, but the best part today is the tran­script of the engin­eers as the data of the land­ing was beamed back to Earth. Read the entire land­ing sequence in this excel­lent Space­flight Now art­icle, but here’s a taste:

“Stand­ing by for lander sep­ar­a­tion. Alti­tude 1,100 meters. Sig­nal may drop out dur­ing lander sep­ar­a­tion. Alti­tude 1,000 meters.

“Sep­ar­a­tion detec­ted! We have reac­quired the sig­nal, grav­ity turn detec­ted. (cheers) Alti­tude 600 meters… 500 meters…