Larry Sessions

If all goes well, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander will set down on the Martian surface near the planet’s North Pole at roughly 7:53 p.m. EDT on Sunday (tomorrow).

Two other missions, the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, are alive and well — far past their designed lifetimes — in widespread locations near the Martian Equator so the new lander will send back information from a completely different region of Mars. (Unlike the two rovers, the Phoenix Mars Lander is not a rover, but will stay in one location.) Several other American spacecraft, along with the European (ESA) Mars Express, are posed to assist tracking and provide communications assistance.

You can find links to live online coverage of the landing on the Jet Propulsion Lab and on the NASA TV website.

However, my experience is that these live video sites get really clobbered up during such important broadcasts, so you might have a hard time maintaining a connection. But you can still join in by taking a look at Mars yourself. No telescope on Earth or even the Hubble Space Telescope will be able to see any of the spacecraft at Mars, but the planet itself is still well placed to see from your backyard, weather permitting. Go out about an hour after sunset (about the time it gets good and dark) and face west. Look high overhead and slightly to the left and you will see two bright “stars” close together. They will be just a bit farther apart than the width of two fingers held at arm’s length. The brighter one, Saturn, is to the upper left of the star Regulus. Now, hold out your left hand, at arm’s length, in front of you with palm toward you. Spread your fingers as wide as they will go. Place your thumb on the Saturn-Regulus pair, and point your little finger to the lower right. Mars should be in the general vicinity of the tip of your little finger. I can’t be terribly precise, but Mars is somewhere around 4 o’clock relative to the Saturn-Regulus pair.

Barring any unforeseen problems, the first images likely will be released to the media and Internet by about 10:30 or 11 p.m. EDT.

Mars Phoenix Lander is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in cooperation with several other agencies. All missions currently at Mars are managed by JPL for NASA. For details on the missions, timelines and other information, please see the Jet Propulsion Laboratory homepage.

I should also mention that I am a NASA/JPL “Solar System Ambassador” (SSA’s), of which there are nearly 500 in the U.S. The SSA force consists of volunteer educators who present public programs about JPL missions to groups at museums, nature centers, libraries, parks and other venues. You can find out more about the program, and how to contact an SSA near you, at the Solar System Ambassador program homepage.

The Solar System Ambassadors Program focuses on public or group events. For information about activities intended primarily for schools, please see the JPL Education Gateway and the NASA Education homepage.

Larry S.