Chance
Blog in the life of him.....
Phoenix - Mars Update **Nasa.gov ***
Phoenix successfully completed the first day of a two-day process to deploy its robotic arm.
Scientists leading NASA's Phoenix Mars mission from the University of Arizona in Tucson sent commands to unstow its robotic arm and take more images of its landing site early today.
The Phoenix lander sent back new sharp color images from Mars late yesterday. Phoenix imaging scientists made a color mosaic of images taken by the lander's Surface Stereo Imager on landing day, May 25, and the first two full "sols," or Martian days, after landing.
The panorama, now about one-third complete, shows a fish-eye perspective from the camera, a view from the lander itself all the way to the horizon. Phoenix adjusts its color vision with "Caltargets," calibrated color targets on disks mounted on the landing deck. Its color vision isn't quite like human color vision, but close.
The image on the left shows the robotic arm "elbow joint" in its stowed position as it appeared on Sol 1. The image on the right shows the same area on Sol 3 after the robotic arm completed commands to move the arm up and away from the lander deck
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I find this Mars information so fascinating, I really hope they find some kind of water substance on Mars in it's polar region, who knows maybe our great great great grand children, will be able to live on mars, lol, the thing I don't get, is if they are doing this for Mars, why don't they try this with different planet's like Mercury. it might be closer to the sun, but once the sun dies more, and human life, cannot be sustained on our planet, that means the heat on Mercury should be similar to Earth, back in the day, I dunno maybe I'm not a rocket scientist, actually I'm not lol, but I figured I would just throw that out their.
Other Interesting News........
Wed May 28, 2:30 PM ET
Astronauts aboard the NASA space shuttle Discovery will be carrying an extra piece of cargo when they launch on Saturday -- a new toilet pump.
Crew members aboard the International Space Station have been fumbling with plastic bags since their zero-gravity toilet went made "a loud noise" and stopped working properly last week.
"We will be taking some spare parts up," NASA spokesman Allard Beutel said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
The three station crew members want the toilet working properly for obvious reasons -- but on Saturday they will be sharing facilities with seven space shuttle astronauts.
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The helium balloon Michel Fournier was going to use Tuesday to soar to the stratosphere detached from the capsule he was going to use to jump from 130,000 feet.
It happened after the balloon was inflated on the ground at the airport in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. The balloon drifted away into the sky without the capsule.
A disappointed Fournier left the capsule and walked to the hanger. He was hugged by members of his supporters.
"It was like having a hammer over my head," he said later. "When it doesn't work like that you just cannot think of anything. You just say, `How come it didn't work?' "
The launch team members said static electricity may have caused a small shock which set off one of five charges designed to release the capsule from the balloon after the jump.
Fournier isn't giving up, saying he'll try again in August.
The balloon cost almost $400,000 and Fournier was said to have already exhausted his finances. But he said he'll bring two balloons next time.
Fournier, 64, had planned to make the attempt Monday, but had to postpone his plans because of weather conditions.
Attempts in 2002 and 2003 ended when wind gusts shredded his balloon before it even became airborne.