Phoenix Mars Mission Blogs Feed

PSIP has left the building...

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today was our last day in the Science Operation Center--and also the last day of Phoenix Student Interns at the SOC! We started our day with a group breakfast, then headed off to the Tucson Art Gallery, which we loved! The photography was amazing.

We came in to the SOC around 4:00 pm, in time for kickoff. We spent the majority of our day working on our end presentation, an ordeal that began yesterday. After many hours of debating which pictures should be included, what info ...

The Talk of the SOC

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today's adventure found us at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) headquarters. Graduate students working in Tucson presented their summer's work, which was followed by a tour of the facility where we met more astronomers and graduate students, as well as seeing the incredible machines involved with astronomy. It's amazing how many connections you can make by being part of program such as PSIP! At NOAO, we met people who were very helpful informing us of all the opportunities ...

Field work

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today was an exciting day for research and NASA activities--with an early start! At 8:00 a.m., we met up with Professor Kounaves, Trish, Rachel, and Shannon to head up to Sabino Canyon. Our mission was to collect soil samples at different elevations. A trolley took us up pretty high and we got off to go on our own hike. The trolley ride was incredible, filled with many photo-ops and breathtaking scenery, but our trip got even better when we got to hike up some of the canyon. After a hot hike ...

What a ride! A year since launch

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by Patrick Woida
Well it's been a year since launch and here we are running full speed on Mars a year later. What a ride it's been. The thrill of launch, the training and readiness tests, a true operations for months on the Martian surface. Some days it feels like that last year has been longer than the previous 3! It feels good to be able to have kept the promises of the last year to you all. If there's one word to describe this mission, it would be "SUCCESS "

So to wrap up ...

Lab Time

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today we started at the SOC on a later schedule, but that didn't stop us from working! We got to work in the MECA labs, figuring out the pH of different concentrations of NaCO3 (Sodium Bicarbonate). We found that the measured pHs of different molarities of NaCO3 were between 11.0 to 12.0, which is what we predicted. We worked with our scientist mentors' graduate and undergraduate students from Tufts University and also watched the NOVA special about the Phoenix lander, which featured the ...

Happy Anniversary, Phoenix!

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today marks 1 year since Phoenix launched on its way to Mars. It also marks the first day of the last two PSIP groups working on the mission: Medford, MA, and Belmont, NH. We're both working with Dr. Sam Kounaves, Dr. Suzanne Young, and a number of graduate and undergraduate students.

Arriving midday, the cool air of the complex was much appreciated coming from the 90 degree heat of Arizona summer. The halls at first seemed to us labyrinthine as we were led to our "base ...

Another Trip Around the Clock

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by Patrick Woida
Those of us living on Mars Time have two fewer days on Mars than have passed on Earth. This week we had expected to sync up and stay on Earth Time. All part of a plan as things would wind down and people would distribute. As is obvious, we're doing anything but winding down. The hard evidence of water ice, continued successful operations, a new Happily Ever After Pan, more ovens and wet chem cells to fill, all with an awesome team that keeps cranking out Sol after Sol of great activities. Victim ...

Practice makes perfect?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today was our last day and we had a wonderful late start. We did not have to be at the SOC until 11 a.m. and we have to say that the few extra hours of sleep were great! While at the SOC today the Cleveland, TX, team prepped for our presentation of our project for an excruciating five hours. During the end-of-sol science meeting at 3:00, we presented our briefing to the science team with much trembling of voice and knee. But overall things went very well and we had a great reception from ...

Press briefing on Mars

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Well, the mission press briefing was today and there was definitely a lot of excitement in the air because, though we had already heard the announcements about TEGA and the large panorama, the information had not yet been made public. The information that was new to us was that the mission got funding to extend to the end of the fiscal year. Everyone was very excited about that! It was amazing to be sitting in the room watching these scientists ...

Historic day on Mars...

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Sol 64 was an extremely exciting day for the Cleveland, TX, team! What we expected to be only a slightly more than average day turned into a historic day. While we continued with our set task of converting data sets into graphs and compiling them into a database, exciting things began to happen around us. As the data began to come down, we were excited to learn that soil had successfully been delivered to TEGA and the dirt sample that had been delivered to TEGA actually contained water ice! ...

Exploration and discovery

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

The shift started at 8 in the morning for the Pomona, Calif., PSIP team today -- a little earlier than the other teams because our scientist, Dr. Leslie Tamppari, wanted to work with us on the task of creating sequences for the spacecraft. We set up the spreadsheet that has the specific times for the spacecraft "wake" and "sleep" on it. We also worked on planning some coordinated observations for sol 66. Sol 66 will be planned formally on Thursday and we've got our fingers crossed that the ...

Getting Down to Work

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Our second sol began with a bang for most of the team, but not for the Mountain View team... our alarms didn't go off! Luckily, Caitlin woke up at 6 a.m., the time we were supposed to meet up to drive to the SOC. It was a good thing we had packed our lunches the night before, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten there in time for the kickoff meeting.

Right after the kickoff, all the teams got down to work. The Pomona, Calif., team continued on the sol-by-sol presentation and then ...

New PSIPers on Mars

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Wow! Today was our first day and it was completely overwhelming but awesome! This morning all the PSIP teams for this week met up at the parking lot at 7:30 a.m. (grateful that our shift didn't start at four in the morning!). We had all gotten to know each other last night as we got set up in our PSIP apartments and got ready for our week. We arrived at the Science Operations Center (SOC) and soon realized it was important to pay attention to where we were going because the SOC looked like ...

Dodo-Goldilocks

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today we went for our last day at the SOC. The Anthem team was excited because the image of the "Dodo Goldilocks" trench we had planned had been acquired and came in through the downlink. It turned out to be an amazing image! The San Diego team started to take our arm apart to ship it back to California. We will put it back together when we get back to our school and will use it when we give public presentations.

We took some final pictures with scientists and thanked them ...

Preparations

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 MST

by PSIP

Today, we woke up at 4:30 a.m. and headed over to the SOC. The Anthem team worked on our PowerPoint, and mapping of HiRISE images. Coffee was our best friend! We realized we needed some additional images, so we met up with Kelly Kolb, a graduate student at the U of A, who is an expert on these images. She gave us more detailed pictures to work from, which made it a lot easier to identify certain features of the Martian surface. Our final analysis provides a preliminary map, on an orbital ...