Phoenix Landing

Ok this is one of the coolest images you’ll ever see, even if you don’t fully realize it.

What you are looking at is this device:

hanging from a parachute like so:

while it is entering Mars’ atmosphere.

Now I know, you might be saying “Yea? So?” but let me put this into perspective for you. The top image is a “live action” picture of a probe entering the atmosphere after a 10 month flight, during a landing procedure that lasted less than 7 minutes, with the lander moving at thousands of miles per hour,  landing onto the surface of a planet that is 170 million miles away, and taken by a satellite that has been in Martian orbit for 2 years, and was 640 miles away from the lander at the time. This image is absolutely mind boggling!

And for a little more perspective, here’s the full size image, showing the size of what this satellite was trying to capture: