Mars Phoenix Lander

(Photos: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

You may have heard in the news about the Phoenix lander which just landed near the North Pole of Mars this past Sunday afternoon (Pacific time on Earth). The Phoenix has sent us never-before-seen images of the surface of Mars near its North Pole.

As a warmup problem, we want to find out the following information:

1. For Bow: If the speed of light is ~3E08 m/s, how many minutes will it take radio signals from the Mars Phoenix lander to reach Earth? The lander is currently 171 million miles away from Earth.

2. For Polly: If the Mars Phoenix lander traveled 420 million miles to get to Mars from Earth, and it traveled at 45,000 miles per hour, how many days or months (as appropriate) did it take the lander to travel to Mars?

3.  For Bow:  What if the Mars Phoenix lander were able to fly straight from the Earth to Mars at 45,000 miles per hour without having to take any “slingshot” orbital paths (i.e. it only travels 171 million miles), how long would it take the lander to travel to Mars?

Post your solution as a comment to this post.

Here is a view of Mars’ North Pole from May 19th, 2008. Click on the image for an article that shows a cool animation!

(Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/MSSS )