Slashdot Mirror
Spirit Rover Lands Successfully
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.
Yahoo! We beat the Martian Defense Grid. Up yours Mars!
I have been waiting all week to say that!
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
BBC News Mars Rover Report.
Press conference here at 9:30pm PST, so in about 25 min.
Hopefully we'll have as good luck in a few weeks.
Beagle 2 still has a chance when it starts ping flooding on the 5th.
If we get good enough at these, I'd love to have a rover to drive all over just to find all the missing missions.
Windows has detected a new device, "Planet Mars". Please insert the disk marked "Windows CD-ROM" and press OK to continue.
Check out the live mission updates on Spaceflight Now:
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status.html
I watched it on NASA TV, too. It was quite an exciting ride through entry and landing. We have the second rover landing to look forward to on January 24.
this is my sig
here
I want BOTH to work, dammit!
I can't figure out how the euros were unable to get there rover to work. its not rocket science.
Looks like michael achieved the very difficult simultaneous posted/rejected duo.
Here's the rejected post which amounts to a mixed report on the success of the mission, courtesy of Reuters, Space.com and the BBC:
Reuters and the BBC report that the first U.S. Mars Rover - the Spirit - has landed and radioed a confirmation signal, but has since gone silent. NASA/JPL are waiting to learn if it survived. Space.com reports that the Spirit has indeed landed safely.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
I'm thrilled they got it there safe....this was the first landing that I watched live on the NASA channel. It had the feel of a local public access program. No one knew how to talk to or look at the camera. I also liked how the "reporter" was pulling people aside for short interviews....like they don't have anything better to do while the Spirit plumits through Mars' atmosphere. It was pretty cool to see all the different reactions in real time though. Good job guys!
-Steve
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
The Martian Information Minister reports that there was no successful landing and that Martian air defenses have engaged and shot down their second UFO in just 10 days.
He went on to say that their Defense Minister "Marvin" is working on a uber weapon known as the Illudium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator that will vanquish the infadels in a single Earth shattering KABOOM!
-PizaZ
This would've been first post if it wasn't for the eight minute delay between Mars and Earth.
Check my site soon for hot, live and free cam shows and exclusive pics.
Love,
Spirit
Maybe we should call beagle in for reinforcements?
The USA did great - nobody can hold a candle to it in this kind of thing. America should be justifiably proud of the job done by the first-rate people at JPL/NASA.
All the same there's only one thing worse than a sore loser and that's an ungracious winner. There's really no need to go strutting and preening and engaging in dominance poses about it. It shows quite a bit more class to just win and then be decent about it.
I've been waiting all day to hear this in real-time. I wish the guys on CNN would have shut the f**k up. They didn't know what the hell they were talking about. It would have been much better just to hear the NASA people.
What an idiot. "15 watts worth of information" What the hell does that mean?
He actually then said "they could only transmit tones, because it was only 15 watts."
15 watts is enough to transmit from outside our solar system and has nothing to do with the data rate.
Anyway, it worked! Hurray for NASA and the Taxpayers!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/details.htm
I put my name and those of my family on a DVD which was attached by metallic LEGO blocks to one side of the lander module.
It's nice to know that a tiny part of me just achieved a small measure of immortality on another planet in our solar system.
I wonder if in my lifetime I'll get to take a trip there and visit it in person?
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
Cue America and European bashings...
First off, for the record, I'm American, supported the war (and voted for Gore in 2000), support Israel and I'm often pissed off at how much Anti-Americanism (oftern, but not always, different than anti-bushism) that I have seen lately.
That being said, I find these stupid NASA/ESA bashings to be so awful. Since 1999, everytime there has been a NASA story on slashdot there have been annoying and STUPID "hey, duh, maybe NASA couldn't tell the difference between metric and English units!" comments. Similarly, after Beagle 2's loss there were equally immature "Ha! Take that Europe!" comments from immature Americans.
The point is, political stuff aside, these missions benefit EVERYONE, not just the country involved. I mean, don't you WISH the russian lander made it to mars in 1996, or that the nasa polar lander landed successfully, or that Beagle 2 didn't die?
I mean, thanks to those failures, we are now maybe 150 years (arbitrary number) away from our first pictures of the surface of the ice caps, or the landscapes that Mars 96 or Beagle would have landed in. Now I doubt we'll know what the chemical basis of the polar ice is for another half-century (who knows... maybe they coulda found it to be a pretty high concentration of a substance that would help human missions for fuel, water, etc). I mean, Mars Climate Orbiter's failure lost us daily weather patterns for a foreign celestial body, but at least it gave trolls good ammunition for Anti-American comments.
So in the end, root for (your side) to win the olympics, be the one whose economy does better or for your countryperson to win the nobel peace prize. That will benefit your country and those are things that you should take pride in. But every scientist in the world has basically equally benefitted from Viking, Venera and Voyager (and especially Spirit/Opportunity - a lot of their data comes straight to the world wide web). Those missions might bring temporary clout and prestige to that country's scientists, but a year later and it's EVERYONE who benefits. That's all I gotta say...
Cool. The rover is powered by a PowerPC chip:
"The computer in each Mars Exploration Rover runs with a 32-bit Rad 6000 microprocessor, a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC chip used in some models of Macintosh computers, operating at a speed of 20 million instructions per second. Onboard memory includes 128 megabytes of random access memory, augmented by 256 megabytes of flash memory and smaller amounts of other non-volatile memory, which allows the system to retain data even without power."
Like many non-US citizens I get sick of Americans thinking that their country is the best and that other countries are less important. But look at what has happened yet again: Where another country failed, the US has succeeded.
When I hear that the US has successfully landed a craft on Mars, I don't feel particularly surprised. I'd have been more surprised if the mission had failed. But when the Beagle mission (apparently) failed, my reaction was neutral, almost as if I had *expected* it to fail, and a large part of that was due to it being a non-US mission.
I guess my point is this: If you're one of the people, like me, who is sick of Americans thinking that their country is "all that", then this success should be another reminder that as far as the advancement of science and discovery is concerned, their pride may be less patriotic arrogance and more a statement of fact.
Oh and I'm not ass-kissing Americans, I'm just feeling a little angry that another country has thrown away another opportunity of doing something important, only for the US to step in and show us how it's done.
If you want to be the best then actually being the best might be a good place to start. This fundamentally competitive attitude is something that Americans seem to inherently understand and embrace, whereas in other countries it is often frowned upon as distasteful.
The hard part is the landing. If MER-B also survies, it would be nice if L-Mart can start a production line of this vehicle to be loaded with different instruments for different countries. While the price was 400 Million for each of these rovers, in a production line, I would expect the price to drop to 100 Million or less for the base model. Let UK, EU, India, Brasil, and Japan send up working systems with their instruments and their launchers (or with l-marts).
Personally, I am interested in seeing a bunch of these crawl all over mars with all sorts of different science packages.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Considering the huge Anti-US sentiment on this site, I thought this would be a good occasion to tweak that crowd a little.
Apparently by the moderation, they can dish it, but can't take it.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Nuclear power (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) is expensive. The fuel, pu238, makes platinum look cheap. Why spend the money, and give the lunatic fringe of the environmental movement something to protest about, if it isn't really necessary?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Well, having been in building 264 at JPL (the MER mission operations building) I must say it was an exciting experience... Everyone was waiting really tense, jumping once or twice at some of the annoucements that sounded bad at first... six minutes from landing to signal confirmation, the longest 6 in my life!
When we got the signal, it was truely spectacular, everyone so excited, clapping, standing and hugging each other with vigorous congradulations. I was fortunate enough to be able to congradulate some of the higher ups (PI Steve Squyres, whom I work for, and Science Manager John Callas).
On behalf of all of us on MER, I'd like to thank everyone that's supported this mission, especially those slashdotters that have vigorously defended the purpose and existance of mars. What we are doing is hard, but not impossible, and we will continue to try until we prevail.
Today we had what I hope was the first of many victories on mars. We should be getting the first image back in a few minutes from the next odyssey pass.
BTW, I'm not sure what the press releases said, but we were very fortunate that the lander landed base petal down, which should speed up deployment significantly as there is no need for the actuators to push against the weight of the rover.
As I said earlier tonight, tonight went so well that it was as if we won the lottery, and by that I mean not just us at JPL but everyone on earth that will benefit from the knowlege we acquire. Congradulations all!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers
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.
I believe there was also another microchip on another of the mars probes, where your name got on it if you were a member of the Planetary Society but I can't seem to find the link at the moment. I just vaguely remember printing out a certificate a few years ago.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
This will not help dispel the "Macs are more expensive" myth...
I am elated that nasa has landed sucessfully. At the same time, i am still quite sad over the apparent failure of Beagle 2. While I am an American, I dont see this as a "I win, you lose" situation. I dont care who lands a probe on mars, be it us, ESA, China, Russia, etc. Anyone who lands a probe there and gets useful data scores a victory for ALL of us. I also hope the ESA doesnt give up on doing these kinds of missions in the future.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Here is the breakdown of failures and sucesses.
1964 U.S. launches Mariner 3, which fails after liftoff.
1964 U.S. launches Mariner 4. First successful Mars fly-by in July 1965. The craft returns the first pictures of the Martian surface.
1964 Soviets launch Zond 2. Mars fly-by. Contact lost in May 1965.
1969 U.S. launches Mariner 6 and 7. The two spacecraft fly by Mars in July and August 1969 and send back images and data.
1971 Soviets launch Mars 2. Orbiter and lander reach Mars in November 1971. Lander crashes but orbiter sends back images and data.
1971 U.S. launches Mariner 8, which fails during liftoff.
1971 U.S. launches Mariner 9. Orbiter reaches Mars in November 1971, provides global mapping of Martian surface and studies atmosphere.
1973 Soviets launch Mars 5. Orbiter reaches Mars in February 1974 and collects data.
1975 U.S. launches Viking 1 and Viking 2. The two orbiter/lander sets reach Mars in 1976. Orbiters image Martian surface. Landers send back images and take surface samples.
1992 U.S. launches Mars Observer. Contact lost with orbiter in August 1993, three days before scheduled insertion into Martian orbit.
1996 U.S. launches Mars Global Surveyor. Orbiter reaches Mars in September 1997 and maps the planet. Still in operation.
1996 Soviets launch Mars 96, which fails after launch and falls back into Earth's atmosphere.
1996 U.S. launches Mars Pathfinder. Lander and rover arrive on Mars in July 1997, in the most-watched space event ever. Lander sends back thousands of images, and Sojourner rover roams the surface, sending back 550 images.
1998 Japan launches Nozomi. Orbiter suffers glitch in December 1998, forcing circuitous course correction. Mission fails in 2003.
1998 U.S. launches Mars Climate Orbiter. Spacecraft destroyed while entering Martian orbit in September 1999.
1999 U.S. launches Mars Polar Lander. Contact lost with lander during descent in December 1999. Two microprobes "hitchhiking" on lander also fail.
2001 U.S. launches Mars Odyssey. Orbiter reaches Mars in October 2001 to detect water and shallow buried ice and study the environment. It can also act as a communications relay for future Mars landers.
2003 European Space Agency launches Mars Express. Orbiter and lander to arrive at Mars in December 2003.
2003 U.S. launches Mars Expedition Rovers. Spirit and Opportunity rovers due to land on Mars in January 2004.
Note: I ripped this info from MSNBC.
Life is not for the lazy.
There is an interesting and informative entry on the NASA site regarding how much data can be transmitted back and forth between Earth and the rover:
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/comm_data.html
If we assume best case scenario for the transmission potential stated there and assume the direct-to-Earth rate averages the midpoint between the stated 12000bps and 3500bps, the total daily data for a single Martian day, direct-to-Earth and orbiter relay potential combined, is on the order of 17MB. The total data for the entire mission is on the order of 1,550MB.
Of course, this has to include protocol overhead, error, and operating instructions, but it provides one quantitative, if not qualitative, answer to how much data can be retrieved by the mission. In this case, a bit more than 2 CDs worth.
All the same there's only one thing worse than a sore loser and that's an ungracious winner. There's really no need to go strutting and preening and engaging in dominance poses about it. It shows quite a bit more class to just win and then be decent about it. To me, this wasn't a victory for the United States, this is a victory for all of mankind! We would be foolish not to aknowlege that much of the technology used on this mission came from other countries (and the ideas for them). We may not always see eye to eye, and we may fight ourselves constantly but we are all in this together folks. I will tell you that no one I"ve met here was anything but sympathetic towards the Beagle guys, and we really hope they re-establish contact (though it seems unlikely). Thanks to everyone around that world that contributed to this tremendous success!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers
Yes, NASA TV could have done better, but I admit that I enjoyed the campy, amateur-hour flavor.
I thought the commentators did a great job, but I found myself wanting more of a raw feed with a lot less explanation. When someone on the flight control loop reports that they've aquired a signal, I don't need someone to repeat that they've aquired a signal. I don't think that Joe Armchair needs it either.
I also found myself wishing they'd be quiet when something was happening. There was incredible drama in the room; some of the commentary got in the way of the story. When someone in the loop says something, the explainer should hush up so we can hear.
Still, great program. I sent the cats flying for cover with my hooting when I heard that they had a safe landing.
The density of the atmosphere of mars is only one percent as dense as our atmosphere on earth. Due to the thin atmosphere a parachute alone is not enough to slow the craft sufficiently for a safe landing. Spirit used a parachute then retro rockets fire just above the surface to practically stop the craft. The airbags inflate and take up the small drop that is left.
Got Code?
I'm not sure which is worse: getting your info from Michael Moore or getting it from Noam Chomsky. I find both of those prospects frightening.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I can't believe I am responding to an AC, but here goes...
:)
I am arrogant? How exactly? By paraphrasing what ESA officials gleefully were saying after NASA failures. I am still rooting for Beagle 2.
As Americans we are used to being called every name in the book, it is part of the burden of being the parents of the world. Like children, no one blames others for criticizing the parents (USA) only when the parent fouls up do we get outbursts from everyone.
Just out of curiosity, how do you know it was the communication technology that failed? How do you know it didn't smash into the surface?
We may know something soon on the Beagle 2 front and hopefully it is good news
--Joey
I was curious about the base petal down stop - was there any kind of design (like weighting) to "encourage" it to stop that way, or was it basically like rolling a die and seeing where it landed?
Disclaimer: I work at JPL, but not on the Mars Exploration Rovers.
From what I understand, it's basically like rolling a die - there may be a slightly higher probability of landing on some of the sides due to weight distribution, but not enough that anyone was counting on it landing base petal down.
With any of the other three orientations, it wouldn't have been a problem - by deflating the airbags in just the right order and using other devices to reorient it, it's designed to end up right-side-up eventually. All of the possible scenarios were simulated and tested extensively at JPL. Remember that this was the same trick used successfully by the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997. Some improvements have been made, but it's the same idea.
The fact that it happened to land right-side-up just means that it will take less time, and probably use less power, to unwrap everything, and also that the overall chance of success is slightly higher just because there's one less thing to worry about going wrong.
I put my name and those of my family on a DVD which was attached to....one side of the lander module.
That was brilliant. Now you will get spam from Martians, such as: "Increase all of your penises by 300%! And make them greener too!"
Table-ized A.I.
Available only as BitTorrent:
Download torrent here.
As immortal as a DVD in a martian sand storm?
NASA exists because the American governmant makes it so. They fund and organize it. You are clearly wrong when you say you are "against the american government." You may oppose some decisions of the american government, or some politicians, but you are not 'against the american government' as you say. That is a rather juvenile view. NASA is part of the american government. So is our unmatched foreign aid program. Grow.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
This is ridiculously low-quality, but here's a screenshot of RealPlayer's stream of NASA TV from a few minutes ago. I'll post more pictures if I get anything good, but probably the real, high-quality images will be online within the hour. The first image here is of one of the mission control computer screens showing the images downloaded, including one image of the rover itself.
Since I can't find it on TV anywhere, here's the video streams I've been watching.
NASA TV 1
NASA TV 2 - (looks better quality to me)
AC
In the Beagle-Spirit comparison, I think it is important to point out several things:
- Spirit (~$400 mil) has over six times the budget of the Beagle (~$60 mil)
- Spirit is built on the success of Pathfinder.
- This is the European Space Agency's *first* time out to mars, and they attempted a *landing*
- Our first two times out failed (Mariner 3 & 4), and our third was just a flyby for 71 photos. Of course, that was 1969.
- Pathfinder is more recent, cost ~$200 mil... but of course Beagle is not a rover.
- ESA never had a strong national space program similar to the US or USSR for budget reasons, as well as many other factors (natural resources, age and background of the nations it comprises, WW I & II)
Bottom line, a simple comparison is impossible. Even so, here is an attempt: US space program performs better due to being the greatest world power (at the cost of being one of the worlds most hated nations). Money and power are very good for making Martian rovers (and microchips, and wireless networks, and stealth bombers), but they are also good at building inflated self images.
My point? If you succeed, don't gloat, help others.. If you fail, try again.
We like the moon!
karma karma karma karma karma chameleon, you come and go, you come and go.