"The Coolest Picture Ever"

Balloons were in the news over the holiday.

First, the big news. Mars Phoenix, a device intended to dig into the Martian surface and analyze ice and soil, touched down safely near Mars' north pole Sunday evening. This was a major accomplishment -- the craft was slowed from 25,000 miles per hour to 5 mph in seven minutes -- especially since the United States hadn’t landed a craft on Mars using rockets since the Viking landers in the 1970s. The Mars Polar Lander lost contact before it landed in 1999 and never worked. The more recent Mars rovers were encased in big balloons that were dropped on Mars and bounced to their eventual locations.

But as amazing as the feat was, even more remarkable is that, during Phoenix’s descent, its picture was taken by the HIRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the first time a photo has been taken of a spacecraft landing on another planet. Phil Plait, an astronomer, writer and skeptic who runs the Bad Astronomy Blog, calls the photo “The Coolest Picture Ever.” and got so excited trying to write a blog post that he made a video instead so he could use facial expressions to help make his points. And you have to admit, there is something very cool about seeing a photo that one of man’s robots took of another of our robots more than 280 million miles from Earth.

And as I am writing this, Plait reports that the HIRISE cameras have again found Phoenix, this time on the surface of Mars. You can see the blue lander, the backshell and what's left of the parachute. Amazing!

Another weekend balloon story didn’t have such a happy ending. Michel Fournier, a French skydiver, had planned Monday to jump out of a balloon 25 miles up and descend from there to the ground. That’s more than four times higher than commercial jets fly. He had tried in 2002 and 2003, and on the latter attempt, destroyed the balloon.

High ground winds postponed Monday’s launch to today. This morning, while it was filling, the helium balloon drifted off without Fournier attached to it, ending another bid for infamy.

NASA didn’t give up when the Mars Polar Lander was lost in 1999, and nine years later was successful with Phoenix. And I’m guessing that Fournier will be back again -- once he comes up with the money to buy another helium balloon.