14.5.08

48 Degrees North


Eleven days until Phoenix touches down. I'm kind of hoping for a significantly different view of Mars from anything we've yet seen from the ground. Phoenix will be landing at about 68 degrees north, while Viking 2, which provided the image above, experienced the most polar conditions of any (surviving) lander so far, at a relatively balmy 48 degrees north. The white-ish parts of this image are a thin layer of water frost.

And no, it's not just you. Viking 2 landed on a rock, and as such was at a funny angle. Not something that rovers have to worry about, but a big concern among Phoenix's fretful parents, I'm sure.

2 comments:

Tinker said...

I hope they find some different topography...though interesting, so far most of the the photos I've seen look a lot like Barstow,
(the desert to the north of us in California), minus the fast food restaurants, power lines and highways full of semi-trucks, of course. Though that does make Mars, the more scenic, of the two...
:)

chiya said...

Sounds interesting.

I'm on the computer at school and I finally got to see the header images and they are pretty. I've been seeing only one, on my laptop (Time to stop using Safari and start using Mozilla Firefox :P)