Sun, Jul 05, 2009
 Tucson residents Melanie Miller and Scott Burris watch as contrails from a Delta II rocket carrying the Phoenix Mars Lander fill the sky after its successful launch from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Aug. 4, 2007. The couple are friends with the UA's Carla Bitter, education and public outreach manager for the Phoenix Mars Mission. Greg Bryan/Arizona Daily Star
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Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.04.2007
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The chorus of University of Arizona scientists, their friends and family on the dark-as-a-closet, pre-dawn Florida beach are counting down from 10 in ragged unison.
They get to “one,” there is a pause — and the sky lights up noon bright and they turn into a chorus of yowling coyotes.
They’re here to watch the launch of the Phoenix Mars Mission; the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab team leads the mission science, and even built some of the instruments.
The Delta II rocket, which just seconds before looked like a big candle bathed in searchlights on launch pad 17A about two miles north of the UA delegation's beach hotel, arches out over the Atlantic as it climbs.
The power of this thing is shocking. Some people gasp, stunned at the brilliant light and the roar that follows by several seconds. Some cry.
A minute into the flight, six of the Delta II’s strap-on booster rockets burn out and are dumped. It looks like a massive version of the glowing debris that falls after a fireworks finale.
The rocket’s main motor still burns and the remaining three boosters are lit. Another minute and those three burn out and are jettisoned. By this time the rocket and payload are 28.5 nautical miles above Earth, far over the Atlantic.
Just a few minutes more and a tracking station in Africa picks up the rocket and the beach party continues.
The UA team's work has just begun, says Pat Woida, a Lunar and Planetary Lab engineer who worked on Phoenix imagers. Late in May they'll be more drama as they wait for electronic word from Phoenix about landing on Mars and what its instruments found.
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