Phoenix settles successfully in Mars I

Descending occurred accurately as the planned one for the team. Espaçonave already is communicated with the Land from the ground. The signal was received with many applauses in the control room of the JPL (Laboratory of Propulsion the Spurt) of NASA, in Pasadena, California: the Phoenix sounding lead obtained to make a difficult landing next to the region to the Mars North Pole. " Everything indicates that chegamos" , it said, alliviated, to the G1 the engineer Ramon of Paula, as soon as the first transmissions had started to flow. The Brazilian is responsible for the mission in the quarter-general of the American space agency, in Washington, but was to follow the descending " to vivo" in the JPL. The landing signal was detected as the foreseen one, to 20h53 (hourly of Brasilia). The descending would have occurred about 15 minutes before, but this is the time that the radio waves lead to travel of Mars until the Land. For the data received so far, espaçonave went down in a practically plain region -- a blow of luck to facilitate the landing. The Phoenix survived to a long day of ten months in the interplanetary space, until the landing successfully. One expects that it can lead at least 90 days of comments. If the good performance of the sounding lead will be confirmed, NASA will have three devices functioning in the Martian surface. Beyond the Phoenix, the jeeps Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2003, continue in operation. Great challenge The victory gotten for the engineers of NASA cannot be subestimada. The team of the American space agency had for objective to carry through a landing form that was lead successfully in Mars for the last time in 1976 -- 32 years behind. Instead of using airbags for the final contact with the surface -- as they had made it the robotic missions Mars Pathfinder and Mars Exploration Rovers --, the Phoenix used retrofoguetes, that they had decelerated the sounding lead and they had allowed that it softly put on its three feet. The last one investigates to try to make this was the American Polar Mars Lander -- that it was crashed in the Martian soil, in 1999, and never more was seen. Curiously, the Phoenix is there for making what the Polar Lander did not obtain -- to go down more in one of the frozen Mars regions. Only that, while the Polar Lander aimed a next area to the South Pole, the Phoenix will try the luck in the North Pole. All these emotions, to a cost of almost half billion of dollar (US$ 420 million U.S.A., more US$ 37 come million of Canada, that banked the installed meteorological station on board the sounding lead). Clearly that, to risk in such a way, NASA wait you reward. Signals of life In case that the mission gives certain, it will have an only chance to study the Martian ice -- that it has, beyond carbon dioxide, also water, as its components. Than this, more sensory they will be able to look for, in way to these congealed rocks, organic substances. It would be the next step in the search for life in the red planet, later that the jeeps Spirit and Opportunity had evidenced that Mars already had great amounts of current water in its surface -- one of the signals to identify the habitability of a world, according to astrobiólogos. For however, however, everything that NASA wants it is that the Phoenix sends given scientific. It is a crucial step to keep the program of Martian exploration in the tracks, since the future does not seem particularly entertainer in the planning of the agency from the next decade.