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Spirit Rover Lands Successfully

Posted by michael on from the airbags-save-lives dept.

So, as I write this, the latest word is: the Spirit rover has landed and NASA has received a signal indicating it landed right-side up (so it shouldn't have any problems in the unfolding process) and will shortly be retracting the protective airbags which kept it from splattering all over the countryside. Y'all can fill in later news in the comments below. There's a nice site with up-to-the-minute text updates.

2 of 849 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Take that Beagle 2! by kervel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As an european, i want to congratulate america for its achievements. The beagle was not comparable by far to the polar rover (in all areas). Beagle's only merit was to be cheaper. Well, seems we've had bad luck and you had good luck, and we could even say you deserved the good luck and we deserved the bad luck.

    So there is no need to party you are number 1 now... we believe you. and luckily nasa officials also don't do that : nasa assisted the projects of its little brothers (esa could even use nasa equipment when we were in trouble, and nasa helped us out a bit in creating the mars express as you can see on nasa's site)

  2. Congrats, NASA/JPL! Boo, NASA TV. by Dan+Crash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First off, congratulations to everyone at NASA and JPL! The landing went off like clockwork. You should be proud. I know I am.

    But NASA TV... you blew it. Again.

    Here you have this tremendous opportunity to involve Americans young and old with the space program, to get them excited and emotionally invested in space exploration, and what do you do? You show us video of the control room.... with the sound off. You let us in on what the Flight Director is saying, but you don't decode it for the average viewer so they know what it means. You make landing on another freaking planet more boring than most cable access shows. Take a bow.

    You didn't even start your coverage until an hour before landing. If you had any vision, you could've made a whole day of it. You could've made it an event. Fuck Survivor, you've got the ultimate reality show! You should've had the whole nation tuned in. Instead they watched a repeat of MAD TV.

    NASA TV, wake up! You should be kicking the Sci-Fi channel's ass. Really. I expect more from you in the future.

    --
    He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.