I can’t believe it’s been two years since the last conjunction and the start of PSP! A lot has changed since we started out with those first images. Check out some of these early blog entries to see how far we’ve come:

• Preparing for Transition Phase imaging and beyond
  

• First look at our initial images from mapping orbit.
• Opportunity! – use of one of our early images to help plan a rover drive.

The last image we’re planning on taking during PSP will be PSP_010901_2265: a new cluster of craters that we think formed very recently. For comparison, to the right is another cluster of recent craters that we imaged last winter (PSP_007431_1870). This should be a great image to finish off this phase of the mission!

Don’t worry, though, the end of PSP is far from the end of our mission. MRO has been approved to continue science operations for another two years. That time period was originally called the “relay phase” of the mission, when it was thought MRO would mainly be relaying data for Phoenix and MSL. However, now Phoenix is basically done, and MSL won’t be there for a while, so it’s not really a “relay” phase. Instead we’re calling it “ESP” for Extended Science Phase. Although we are making plans to simplify and streamline some of our operations, we expect to be doing things much the same way for the next two years – and hopefully for a long time after that!

The last image we took of the lander shows it sitting pretty, just as it has been since May 25th. We’ll take another picture this week, and probably continue to monitor the site after conjunction to study how frost covers the area. Next spring, MRO will be listening to see if Phoenix wakes up and calls home, but the odds of that are exceedingly slim, despite its epithet (see this blog entry for more about why this is most likely the real end of the mission).

I didn’t think I’d be so sad! It has been an exciting and successful mission, and I’m glad I could be involved in a small part of it. RIP, Phoenix! …or, rather, one of the better-written epitaphs submitted in Wired’s contest to eulogize the mission. There are some great ones in that list – some clever, some heartwarming, and some just funny. Personally, I like Phoenix’s last tweet best:

01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000 <3

(Unless you’re also a machine, you’ll probably need a binary converter like this one to get the message.)

As usual, other blogs are covering the meeting well (Planetary Society and the Martian Chronicles, for example). In addition, the sessions are all being web-streamed live (links to streaming video here; full program here). I think this afternoon’s special sessions are going to be really interesting, so I recommend watching them. I’m especially interested in the mission highlights from the rovers, Phoenix, MESSENGER, Cassini, and Kaguya. We’ve already seen some results from Kaguya and MESSENGER in the individual sessions – exciting stuff!

I find it interesting to see which “regular” images, out of the thousands we’ve taken, caught people’s attention – in May, for example, gullies in a crater wall and ridges in Huo Hsing Vallis (left) were popular. June saw lots of hits on this beautiful image of the north polar layered deposits (above) and this image of delicate-looking, multi-tendriled slope streaks.

In July, the “Mystery Mounds” (PSP_008778_1685 and PSP_008548_2205) were popular, presumably because they are so “mysterious” – ? (By the way, these two areas, despite their similar titles, are nowhere near each other on Mars.) Lesson learned: We should give more of our images “sexy” titles.

Emily Lakdawalla continues her excellent blog coverage in this article, which does a great job of explaining some of the reasons why this image was especially difficult to take. Along the way, she includes a tutorial on TDI (Time-Delay-Integration), written by one of the engineers that helped build the instrument. TDI is the method HiRISE uses to gather lots of light into its CCDs, and it’s one of the reasons we get such high signal-to-noise in our images. It’s a complicated concept, but it’s an important one for understanding HiRISE’s incredible imaging abilities, as well as its limitations.

From her blog post:

This is a fascinating story showing how necessary it sometimes is to have a deep understanding of an instrument in order to understand the data that comes from it. …It can be dangerous to read too much into space images until you have studied how the cameras really work.

It’s a great post – she deserves a cookie!

Kudos to everyone who helped make this happen, from the navigation team at JPL delivering updated files, to our operations people who spent many long hours over the holiday weekend busily at work. And congratulations to the Phoenix team here in Tucson, who have embarked on what promises to be an exciting summer of science operations!

MRO did a special imaging sequence to slew over to where the Phoenix spacecraft was plummeting down through the atmosphere, and it WORKED! I can’t believe what an engineering feat this was – the MRO spacecraft team’s pointing was right on, and Phoenix was exactly where they thought it would be.

When I left last night, we hadn’t gotten down the channel that included the parachute. The rest of the image is pretty low signal (and it’s a HUGE image), so we were searching through it for hours, trying to separate out cosmic ray hits and bright patches of ice. They had only given us a ~20% chance of getting it in our field of view, so I thought we had missed it. I finally went to bed feeling pretty frustrated, but woke up to find that, overnight we received additional channels of the image, and Richard Leis and some others here at HiROC had found THIS!

You can see the parachute itself, AND the lander encased in the heat shield dangling below it – AND you can see the STRINGS attaching them! This is the first time a spacecraft has ever been photographed as it descends through the atmosphere of another planet. Everyone here is incredibly excited about this image.

However, we’re too busy poring over the image we took after this one to spend too much more time on this. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to show you the lander itself, on the surface!

Go, Phoenix!

NASA press release: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080526.html

When Peter Smith gave enthusiastic shout outs to the UofA community and to Arizona, the crowd erupted in responsive applause. Congratulations to the Phoenix team and especially to those working on EDL at JPL in Pasadena and Lockheed in Denver.