Posted by
michael
on from the look-both-ways-before-crossing-the-street dept.
Irishman writes "It looks like the Spirit rover has finally left the womb and is rolling free on the Martian surface. Space.com has the full story and some great pictures." NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage.
Interesting soil
by
Fr33z0r
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The dirt sticking to the wheels of Sojourner (Pathfinder) was discussed at great lengths on a board I read (bit of a crazy board full of the insane for the most part, but there are decent threads from time to time), a bunch of people yelling "it's mud, Mars is wet!" when in reality Soujourner had spun it's wheels in the dirt and essentially "dug" in the dirt... Well, that and the "dirt" is largely magnetite which is inherently magnetic.
Flash forward to today and we've got the "magic carpet", and dirt sticking to Spirit's wheels, sans digging - very interesting, and by the sounds of it also very unexpected. It will be great to find out what's making it stick, and just "how Mars works" in general.
Did I ever mention how glad I am humanity has another rover on an alien world?:)
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The dirt sticking to the wheels of Sojourner (Pathfinder) was discussed at great lengths on a board I read (bit of a crazy board full of the insane for the most part, but there are decent threads from time to time), a bunch of people yelling "it's mud, Mars is wet!" when in reality Soujourner had spun it's wheels in the dirt and essentially "dug" in the dirt... Well, that and the "dirt" is largely magnetite which is inherently magnetic.
:)
Flash forward to today and we've got the "magic carpet", and dirt sticking to Spirit's wheels, sans digging - very interesting, and by the sounds of it also very unexpected. It will be great to find out what's making it stick, and just "how Mars works" in general.
Did I ever mention how glad I am humanity has another rover on an alien world?