NASA’s Mars Phoenix Lander began sending photos of the planet’s at first glance on the first day of its three-month mission "to taste and sniff the northern polar site’s tarnish and ice," the space agency said.
The in the first place pictures, which the lander began taking testily after touching down within easy reach Mars’ north pole — the end of a 422 million-mile trek — showed a pattern of brown polygons as far as the camera could see.
"It’s surprisingly close to what we expected and that’s what surprises me most," said Peter Smith, the mission’s principal investigator. "I expected a bigger surprise."
The Sunday landing on the Red Planet’s arctic plains — which ended a 296-day journey — was right on target, a feat NASA’s Ed Weiler compared to landing a hole-in-one with a golf ball from 10,000 miles.
The landing — dubbed the "seven minutes of terror" — was a nerve-wracking savvy for calling managers, who have witnessed the failure of similar missions.
In mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, they celebrated the lander’s note.
"It was better than we could have imagined," Barry Goldstein, project manager for the Phoenix mission, said.
From: rss.cnn.com
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