Cumbrian Sky

WELCOME TO CARNIVAL OF SPACE READERS!

We are now just 50 days or so away from the start of a new era in Mars exploration. On May 25th the Phoenix probe will touch down near the north pole of Mars, and begin to study and explore a region of Mars never studied, explored or even seen before.

Even though they've grown used to seeing new images of the surface of Mars literally every day, thanks to the wonderful "raw image" gallery webpages of the Mars rovers, scientists and "space enthusiasts" all around the world are looking forward to the the return of Phoenix's first images with almost giddy anticipation, because they will be the first views of an entirely new part of the Red Planet. All our views, all our raws, all our sweeping panoramas and richly-detailed mosaics so far have been of the mid- and equatorial latitudes. But Phoenix is landing up in the martian arctic, and when she opens her bleary eyes for the first time, and stares out over that landscape, whatever she sees will be shiny and new and - well, alien. Possibly the most alien martian landscape seen yet.

Of course, we've been here before, suffered these "What will we see?" speculations on five different occasions. Each time a probe has landed on Mars it's been the first time we've ever seen THAT particular region of Mars. Back in those golden Sagan Days of 1976, we all waited for the first images to come back from Viking 1, and when the first image appeared -

- everyone was struck by how familiar it looked! Many scientists actually remarked that it looked like the Arizona desert, with those rocks and all that dust. even today, looking at that picture it's easy to imagine being there and reaching down to pluck one of those chipped, angular stones off the ground, brush the red dust off it, and drop it into your pocket, the scene looks so familiar. Of course, when the probe's camera eyes swept from side to side, taking its first panorama, then we knew that Viking wasn't in Arizona anymore...

Viking 2's landing provided us with another "first" image - our first view of Utopia Planitia, and again, although that first picture looked naggingly familiar...

... the first panorama left everyone shaking their heads yet again with wonder...

There was a pause in Firsts then, until Pathfinder landed in Ares Valles, bumping and bouncing to a halt in the first use of airbags on Mars. Being totally honest, its first image was nothing to shout about...

...but that first panorama - which looks very crudely stitched by our modern spoiled-rotten-by-Photoshop standards! - opened our eyes to a whole new martian landscape...

A few sols later, of course, when the first "plucky little Mars rover", Sojourner, rolled off Pathfinder and started trundling across Mars, the pictures we looked at were just wonderful, and even now, a decade later, they still make me shake my head with disbelief when I tell myself that yes, that really is a robot rover not much bigger than my microwave oven driving across an alien planet, going up to rocks and trying to climb over them, as fearless as a toddler in a living room...

Then, in 2004, came the MERs, and after the heart-stopping drama of their landings - witnessed across the world by people watching live video from JPL over the internet, the first time the public had really been able to witness such a historic event "live" as it were - when the first images came in they were greeted by deafening applause, cheering and whooping, throughout JPL, across the US and around the whole world, too. If you were one of those tens (hundreds?) of thosands of people watching online as those first pictures came down you'll remember just how magical it felt when these images appeared on our screens, literally out of the blue, without warning, sooner than we'd dared to hope...

That's one of the very first views of Gusev Crater returned by Spirit. Later, more detailed images like this came down...

... and we all leaned in towards our screens, wondering "Are they hills on the horizon?" Little did we know then that Spirit would not only set off for those hills but reach them,  climb them, stare down from their lofty summits, then climb down again to continue her explorations...

Opportunity's first view though, after landing days later, was even more magical...

There, just a few metres away, was what looked like layered bedrock. No, you could see people in JPL thinking as those images flashed up on the monitors, surely not... And it did seem like a crazy idea. What were the chances that Opportunity had landed within spitting distance of an outcrop of the very rock it had come to look for? The same rock it was expected to have to drive hundreds of metres to find? But yep, there it was, right in front of it... in front of us, watching our PC monitors in the coffee-fuelled in the pre-dawn hours...

Everyone knows now how Oppy drove off its lander base, rolled over to that layered bedrock, found berries and layers and all manner of other fascinating things there and then - well, the rest, as they say, is history...

So, here we go again. Phoenix will land on Mars on May 25th, and the first pictures are expected to be on our screens - and Saved on our hard drives, and printed off to stick on our walls or locker doors - an hour or so after touchdown, maybe sooner. And we're all thinking the same thing: what will those first images show?

Well, it's tempting to trot out a cliche and say "We haven't a clue!" but that's not strictly true. Thanks to the hi-resolution HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter we have been able to take a good "sneak preview" close look at the landing zone. Here's a crop I made of one of the HiRISE images that shows a - quote - "Potential landing site for Phoenix". I've colourised the original false colour image...

... and we can see that the terrain here looks quite hummocky, with light material filling in the gaps between rises, and a few large rocks or boulders scattered here and there. (I know that's a bit blurry and fuzzy, so there's a full size image here if you want a look... it's okay, take your time, I'll wait for you...)

Another crop of another image shows this landscape...

Again, hummocky, with ridges and rocks. The words "pretty" and "featureless" spring to mind. (Full size version here) Now, that's great from a safety point of view - it means the area is "lander friendly, and Phoenix is unlikely to find herself with one leg up on (or broken by!) a large boulder after landing. But it also means that the first images - from this particular area, at least - would not be as dramatic or epic-looking as those we've seen before. No distant mountains, no beckoning craters, no huge boulders casting dark, jagged shadows... but I'm sure the Phoenix team would take Safe over Spectacular any day.

Having said that, there are other areas on the same HiRISE images that don't look quite so lander friendly. I'm sure the Phoenix team are hoping the lander doesn't comedown near, or on, one of these dangerous-looking gravel banks...

(Full size version here if you want it... be aware it's quite scary tho...)

So, after all that, what might the first Phoenix images show? Well, based on pictures like those above, we can probably expect to see a fairly flat horizon, perhaps broken here and there by some of the hummocks seen on the HiRISE pictures. There might be frost, or ice, on the ground and on any stones nearby too. A few larger boulders might be scattered around the lander. But we probably won't simply see an icy version of the Viking or Pathfinder landing sites.

But what's most fascinating to me is what the sky will look like... So close to the martian pole, the Sun will often appear very low above the horizon, and you'll know yourself that on chilly winter days here on Earth, when the Sun is low in the sky it is often surrounded by spectacular lighting effects - "sundogs", haloes, even "Sun pillars"...

...so I'm optimistically wondering if we'll see the same effects on Mars when Phoenix sends its pictures back. Will we see a shrunken Sun ringed by bright haloes of light? Will we see "martian sundogs" flanking the Sun? Will a tall pillar of light shine up from the Sun as it hovers just above the horizon? Oh, I can't wait to find out!

Perhaps, just perhaps, Phoenix will send back an image looking something like this... it's a piece of space art I found on the net a long time ago. I apologise to the artist for not remembering or writing down their name, or their website, and I'll happily give them full credit if they see this and let me know it's theirs. But just imagine what it would be like if Phoenix sent back something like this...

All we can do is wait and see!

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What do YOU think Mars will look like through Phoenix's eyes? If you have an idea, and can draw or paint or create it in some way, then there's a competition you can enter via the spacEurope website, which is working with the Phoenix team on a contest for budding artists with crystal balls who want to predict what the probe will see. You can find details of the competition here.

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