Some context for the "Sol 0" images

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla

2008/05/26 10:42 CDT

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A brief housekeeping note: if you check this site using an RSS feed, you may have missed some of my posts from yesterday, as it looks like the RSS feed updates didn't happen quite right yesterday. Try coming to the blog homepage and going through the archive to see them all.

This is a really cool image, put together by Doug Ellison, giving some context for the photos that the lander took of itself yesterday.

NASA / JPL / U. Arizona / Texas A & M / Doug Ellison

Phoenix 'Sol 0' images in context

In this mosaic, Doug Ellison has combined the images returned by Phoenix immediately after its landing (outlined in red) with a lander self-portrait taken by Phoenix during its pre-launch testing.

The photos were taken to document the deployments of the solar panels, the bio-barrier around the robotic arm, the meteorological mast, and other stuff; if things hadn't gone well last night, the photos would not have matched the base image. But the match is perfect! The base image was taken from the Texas A & M website that has much more information about the Phoenix camera system.

I'm getting a slow start to the morning, but will be up at JPL for the press briefing currently scheduled for 11 am my time (18:00 UTC). I will probably show up in the Ustream channel off and on this morning as well. Stay tuned!