It seems that about 2000 of you visited MarsLive during the Phoenix descent coverage. A few of you commented on seeing someone’s nose, and that someone wasn’t one of the four people you see above. From left to right, that’s Sir Patrick Moore, Chris Lintott, Pete Grindrod and me. BUT - behind the scenes we had a frankly exceptional effort from Chris (another one!) and Will - our IT elves of the night 
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outreach
I love Ustrax, I really do. I used to call him UMSF’s ’special cookie’, until I realised that could be interpreted as, how can I put this, the ‘electric flapjack‘ in America. He’s got more passion and enthusiasm about spaceflight, and particularly Europe’s chunk of the spaceflight adventure than just about anyone I know. His SpacEurope blog is the result of a LOT of hard work, because getting information out of European scientists is a act of pure alchemy. His Q’n'As that have been building up to the Phoenix landing have been frankly brilliant. He’s had some top names in helping fill in a few of the blanks for the enthusiastic amateurs among us.
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animation
Probably about 8 years ago, Prof. Colin Pillinger went on the old Channel 4 breakfast show ‘The Big Breakfast‘ to pimp the concept of Beagle 2. He had a rough a ready model of a lander - which presenter Johnny Vaughn noticed was made of cardboard. ”When we get the budget, we’ll make it out of something more substantial” remarked Colin. In the spirit of cardboard models, I thought I’d put together a prop for Sunday night’s Mars Live coverage. There are no models of Phoenix that I can find, but there was a card cut-out-and-glue model of the Mars Polar Lander cruise stage. I had a bit of a go, the end result is fairly crap to be honest, but hey - when we get the budget, I’ll build it out of something more substantial
Look for it on our uStream coverage at Marslive.co.uk
Unmannedspaceflight.com
