Good (if short) interview with Buzz Aldrin at Popular Mechanics wherein he talks about the current state of NASA manned spaceflight and the potential of a significant Mars mission.

His main point with regards to a manned Mars mission is if we don't go to stay then we shouldn't go at all.

It shouldn't be one-two-three missions, the way we did with Apollo. I think the reason to go to Mars is to establish a permanent colony.

This lines up to Rich's recent posts regarding Mars.

Here is a roundup of links regarding the successful landing on Mars of the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander.

First of all there are several pictures taken of the lander taken from Mars orbit by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) [now THAT is a mouthfull].

Here is one of the Lander with its solar panels extended on the surface.

And this one is remarkable, the HiRISE satellite captured the Lander during decent!

This is remarkable.  Stop and think for a moment.  We have four eight probes looking at Mars at one time.  Scientists are experiencing a golden age of Martian exploration right now.

Links:

• Phoenix Mars Mission Home: [U. of Arizona, Phoenix Mars Mission]
• Team blogs
• Mission charter and structure: [linky]
• Mission Goals
• Landing method: Entry, Descent, and Landing
• NASA Phoenix Mars Lander Home Page - [linky]
• The main components of the spacecraft: [Spacecraft and Instruments]
• Wikipedia entry
• Yay capitalism! [buy shwagg]

Go over to the Astronomy Picture of the Day website and view the Mars fly over.  Most excellent.

[linky]

I don't see the benefits in this plan: Space leaders work to replace lunar base with manned asteroid missions

Well let me re-phrase that, I see the benefits, but I don't think they're compelling enough to make a political argument.  Which is the battle the space program needs to always fight.  And in general they suck at it.  They're engineers, not politicians.

What they need to realize is the the whole man-in-space thing is a tough sell to congress.  And the only things that spark the political will when it comes to the whole man-in-space thing is big mountaintops to summit.

Asteroids are small and pointless.  Small foothills in the landscape of space.

The MOON!

MARS!

Those are marketing messages a politician can sell.

So my space program engineer side says, "duh, the moon doesn't help us get to Mars much."  But my congressional lobbyist side says, "Gimme something I can sell to joe sixpack, 'cause the asteroid belt ain't it."

If it was MY space program I'd be spending way more money than 15 Billion, but it isn't mine, and that is the budget and you can't do everything you want and you HAVE to sell the program.

Sell the moon, sell Mars!

Don't try and sell small rocks with names like numbers...it won't work.

2007 WD5 Mars Collision Effectively Ruled Out - Impact Odds now 1 in 10,000

Looks like it will miss by at least 4000 kilometers and most likely by somewhere more in the neighborhood of 26,000 kilometers.

Oh well.

What do we hope to learn?

Well for starters scientists have never had the opportunity to view an asteroid impact as it is happening.  They were able to watch the Shoemaker-Levy comet strike Jupiter, but that is a different type of observation entirely.

Here we are talking about a planet strike.  There it was an impact into the atmosphere.  For the potential Mars impact we have two ground based rovers and an orbiting satellite.  For the Jupiter impact...none of that.

This is historic.

According to the latest data the likelihood of an actual strike keeps going up.  From 1-in-75 down to now a 1-in-25 chance, or approximately a 4% chance.

LA-Times Story

I've been wanting to see this for awhile.  Here is the map that lays out the whole course that the Mars Rover Opportunity has taken in its mission so far.

cool