Phoenix mission managers Sunday night recounted a successful landing and took comfort in the apparent good health of their lander. The dais at the JPL press conference was full of contented faces — with the exception of NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, who, as usual, looked a bit grumpy. But inside, you knew Griffin was beaming. He complimented the mission team, saying that “experts make it look easy.”

The first images that Phoenix retrieved were primarily of itself. The main camera, the weather mast, and the biological sheath that enclosed the robotic arm all deployed safely. The solar arrays also unfolded correctly, and were gathering power, with little to no dust visible on them.

Project Manager Barry Goldstein said that Phoenix landed southeast of where it was supposed to land, perhaps because the parachute was several seconds late in detaching from the lander. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter would begin looking for Phoenix’s precise location in the next day.

But the drift didn’t really matter. Mission PI Peter Smith said the only thing surprising about the landing site was how unsurprising it is. The first low-resolution pictures of the landscape show the expected polygonal patterns – signs that the freeze-thaw cycles of ice have operated just beneath the soil – stretching all the way to the horizon. Smith hopes that the robotic arm will be able to reach the dark colored troughs. “We don’t need wheels on this lander,” he said. “The [polygon] we’re sitting on is just as good as the one on the horizon.”

Phoenix scientists will spend the next few days doing diagnostics on the instruments, getting good estimates of the solar power at their disposal, and calibrating the robotic arm for the motions it will be making. Digging for samples would not begin for about a week, Smith said.

At the right is one of the first (approximate) color images released.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona