Read narrative by Barb Stevenson. Turn on woofers or use headphones for better sound.
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Launch of the Phoenix Mars Polar Mission
(August 4 2007) (by Barbara Stevenson)
The Phoenix mission to Mars was sent off in style today (Saturday, 4 August), and David and I (along with multitudes!) watched it go. It was one day behind schedule, as lightning storms in the area of Cape Canaveral on the Tuesday had delayed the fuelling process. Rocket fuel, being volatile, is best left alone in such weather! On completion of the fuelling the next day, everything was back on schedule for this morning.
At 0500 hours, we were standing beside the pier railing in Jetty Park, Port Canaveral, looking at the launch pad about a mile away across a small bay. In the dark of pre-dawn, you couldn't see much other than the searchlights illuminating the pad, other lights scattered around and about, and patrol boats plying the water back and forth. At 5:27 precisely, light blossomed on the ground in silence, and then a piercingly bright white cylinder of light emerged from billowing clouds and began to move upwards. After a couple of seconds we could hear the boom and the roar and we actually felt the vibration in our chests. We saw the 9 solid-fuel boosters jettison from around the base and descend. They looked like orange shooting stars. We saw the flash that marked the separation of the first stage (nearly ¾ of the Delta rocket's length). We saw the second-stage burn, but it was hard to know if we were seeing the separation -- it was pretty high by then. Phoenix described a beautiful arc across the heavens, through the shoulder of Orion and right beside Betelgeuse, looking very like that star's twin. The constellation was just rising and still low in the sky. As Phoenix headed toward the horizon, it flew into a bank of light cloud and dimmed. We figure we watched its progress for about 4 minutes from ignition to horizon. After days of haze and lightning strikes and torrential downpours alternating with fair weather, the sky at launch-time was ideal: clear and starry with a bright last-quarter moon.
As Phoenix faded from view, we left Jetty Park and drove to the beach at one of the "launch" hotels where about 100 people were partying, drinking champagne (at 6:00 in the morning!), congratulating one another, taking pictures, and talking to the Discovery Channel, which was conducting interviews. Hanging in the sky was the rocket plume illuminated by the sun, which was still below the horizon but casting light upwards. The plume was being blown in all directions by winds aloft and it went through a slow evolution from one fantastic shape to another. Early on, we thought it looked like the map of Canada, which slowly morphed into the image of a bird -- the phoenix! Later it became a strange wizened head with an outstretched hand that, yes, was pointing in the direction of Mars.
We were invited to breakfast with the MECA group who had designed one of the major instruments on Phoenix. Their leader, Mike Hecht, had rented a house on the beach for his family. When we arrived, the NASA channel was on television with live feed from launch headquarters. At first, they were communicating quite well with the spacecraft and knew that third-stage separation had occurred successfully and that spinning had pointed the vehicle squarely in the direction of Mars. The next manoeuvre took a little longer to confirm, though, and there was a bit of nervous tension in the room until it was announced that transition to cruise mode had been achieved. More champagne, more toasts, more thank-yous and more pictures. The sun rose spectacularly with a rainbow of blue, green, gold and pink rays from behind a purple castle of cloud. And all this before 8:30 in the morning! Quite a start to the day, to the rest of one's life, and to Phoenix's long, dark journey to the Red Planet. Godspeed little Phoenix!
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Find some aliens!! Or something cool for once .
JBhab30 2 years ago
It made it!!! One thing america is good for! And thats definately what NASA is achieving!
heyuchimps 3 years ago
nice vid! crazy, it flashes up the whole whole friggin place
cyrthomas 3 years ago
fills me with a sence of mystery and magic!
kinkyjaws 4 years ago