The lander is down, so all is calm again in Green Bank. But it was definitely a tense ride. The control room was filled with people from 7pm on, all watching a spectrum analyzer on a projector, waiting for the signal from phoenix. From the time they announced that the lander had separated from the cruise module everyone was watching that screen, even though we knew it would take fifteen minutes for the signal to travel from the lander to Earth. So we just watched this one constant bit of interference that had been there the whole time, and waited. The JPL people saw the signal first. Here’s the screen we were all watching:
The light blue line on the left of the screen is from the lander. This picture was taken just after the lander separated and began its decent, so it’s still moving fast. In the few minutes afterwards the line swept over to the right side of the screen as the parachute deployed and slowed down Phoenix. There were a few more slight manuvres, the JPL people called out that the lander was on the surface, and then the radio shut off just as planned. Everything went flawlessly as far as anyone could tell here in Green Bank.
We then had about two hours to wait until pictures would start arriving. In the mean time we could watch a few other transmissions take place. We watched one of the orbiters relay data down to Phoenix, and could follow the doppler shift on that as the orbiter crossed the surface. After that we just waited around with the NRAO and JPL people, watching NASA TV to see the first pictures when they arrived. They were definitely worth waiting for, and I’m sure most people have already seen them by now (they’re on the JPL site if you haven’t). Once we saw the first images there was definitely champagne opened in the control room.
—cts