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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
Press conference here at 9:30pm PST, so in about 25 min.
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
Although the roughly 10 minutes was longer than anyone expected the signal to be gone, it wasn't all that unusual. When NASA's DSN locked back onto the signal, it was strong. It is then that NASA learned the lander landed right-side-up and the airbags were still inflated (which is very good news). Airbag deflation, petel opening, and the first survey of the landing site is up next. We might even have our first pictures within the next 12 hours or so.
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."
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.
This will not help dispel the "Macs are more expensive" myth...
64 bytes from spirit.mars.solarsystem: icmp_seq=0 ttl=239 time=960000 ms
--- spirit.mars.solarsystem ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 960000 ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 960000/960000/960000/960000 ms, pipe 2
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
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?
that song it uses as a beacon composed by the British band Blur
Maybe they didn't pick up Beagle's signal because it was indistinguishable from background noise?
Like many non-US citizens I get sick of Americans thinking that their country is the best and that other countries are less important.
Andy, man, you have issues. One of a very small number of man-made probes has managed to actually land on another planet, a rare event in history, and you find yourself wrapped up in this "America is best" nonsense. None of this American NASA vs. The Rest of the World BS even occurred to me until I saw your post. The last thing I would have done is lord over the Beagle failure with this landing. If you are actually experiencing such poor behavior you need to consider the quality of the people to which you have exposed yourself. In the meantime, chill out. You may rest assured that the bulk of Americans are a humble, respectful lot that wish you and yours the best.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
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.