Phoenix Lands On Mars: Animation of Landing and Deployment

I'm not sure who did this animation of the lander but I thought it was pretty cool. One question though, near the end of the clip it looks as if a laser is deployed. What is the purpose of that?


Landing and Deployment Animation

That was pretty cool.I was wondering if the landing would be successful.Interesting thread.

Originally posted by SystemiK
One question though, near the end of the clip it looks as if a laser is deployed. What is the purpose of that?

From... www.ctv.ca...

The device includes a pressure sensor, three temperature sensors and a "lidar" -- also written as LIDAR, an acronym for Light Detection and Ranging.

"It points up into the sky with pulses of laser light and looks at the reflected light coming off of the pulses that go up into the sky," said Berenstain.

"That reflected light has a lot of information in it. Basically, whatever that laser beam hits along the way will reflect back down."

The laser could hit dust particles or water crystals, including clouds, which could be in the atmosphere.

The data will be important to help understand both the atmosphere and water on Mars.

That was pretty cool to watch. Thanx for putting that up SystemiK. Much appreciated.

Silver

If you missed PBS's docu on the Pheonix lander tonight you missed out bigtime. I'm sure they will show it again. Was very very good.

Yup, I missed it. Sure wish I would have known about it. Thanks for mentioning it though, with any luck it will be availble online at some point.

I think there is another one on tonight but I think it is Discovery Science channel @ 7 EST

That was a kewl animation.

I have NASA TV on right now and it's not saying a darn thing about how the actual landing went. (Or is going.)

I wish the heck they would start broadcasting something. I want to know!

[edit on 25-5-2008 by mrwupy]

mr wupy theres another 2 hours 30 minutes until it lands. Coverage starts in 1 hour 15min on nasa tv

Sorry System. Should have gave a heads up but just found it prior to it coming on est. Go to pbs.org. Tye phoenix lander in search. Go to fourth listing. Phoenix lander. Ashes to ice. There you can view whole show. Was excellent.

Will do. I was wondering what I should watch before I hit the bed tonight. This will do nicely. Thanks for the link.