Human Flight to Mars - 20 years behind schedule

I stumbled across this 1969 news article stating that President Nixon wanted achieve a manned Mars landing as early as the 1980s.

Of course, back they all believed that in 2010 we'd have flying cars and unlimited energy. I guess dreams just became too expensive. They probably got sucked up by government social programs.

Phoenix Lander: RIP

The Mars Phoenix Lander ended its brief but phenomenal life of exploration and investigation as it plunged deep into the frigid onslaught of the Martian winter. The sturdy lander outlasted its intended mission life by months.

The lander also embodied NASA's triumphant return to interplanetary "soft landings" enabled by jet thrusters rather than parachutes and balloons. Such touchdowns since the 1970s Viking missions have been failures.

What's next on the Martian horizon? Another rover--bigger and better than the recent Spirit and Opportunity, due to launch next year.

Learn all about the Phoenix Lander.

Mars Phoenix Lander - Next Mission: Produce Dried Grass

I love it when people misuse the word, literally. It's particularly funny when it results in a patently preposterous statement. Such as this NASA scientist, on the continuing mission of the Mars Phoenix Lander:

"We are literally trying to make hay as the sun shines," Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, told reporters.

Yeah, good luck with that. Let me know how it goes.

Phoenix Has Landed

I love reading new stories about science and technology accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Earlier this year it was shooting down a falling satellite. Today it's the Mars Phoenix Lander touching down in the northern reaches of Mars. From the story,

Landing on Mars is a notoriously tricky business. There has been about a 50% failure rate on all Mars missions since Russia launched the first one in 1960.

Phoenix is an apt name for the current mission, as it rose from the ashes of two previous failures.

In September 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft crashed into the Red Planet following a navigation error caused when technicians mixed up "English" (imperial) and metric units.

A few months later, another Nasa spacecraft, the Mars Polar Lander (MPL), was lost near the planet's South Pole.

The last time a Mars probe landed using its thrusters ("soft landing") was in 1976.

There's little that's more exciting than finding out new information about the final frontier.