Slashdot Mirror
News from Mars
An anonymous reader writes "While the Beagle 2 may have been gobbled up by Mars--Eater of Spacecraft, the main part of the ESA's recent Mars mission is doing well. The Mars Express Orbiter has sent back some amazing pictures of The Grand Canyon of Mars (Valles Marineris). Yes, this is the same gigantic geological feature that was missed by Mariner 4, 6, and 7 but finally found by Mariner 9. In other news, the Spirit rover is getting ready to grind the rock Adirondack (picture)."
What gives? That's remarkably annoying -- why not just show us the picture as taken instead of this cutesy mockup?
It's ironic. By so blatantly highlighting the Euro-ticity of this mission, they sound very American.
I think you're missing the point. I think it's a dig at the UK, who hogged all the publicity with the (UK-built) Beagle lander, which then turned out to be a turkey. This is them pointing out that the rest of the mission, designed on the "continent", works just fine.
Remember that, especially in the UK, the "opposite" of european isn't american, it's british. "Fog in channel, continent cut off" and all that.
Not to bring down the Spirit guys or their great work, but their talk of pioneering 30cm moves sound a bit dull compared with Lunokhod, or the Pathfinder.
Oh come on, you can't compare a an ancient real-time controlled rover like Lunokhod to an autonomous, self-navigating rover like Spirit. Spirit could easily run around all over the place if a human were driving it, that's not the challenge. The challenge is the navigation and safety aspects, and without a human controlling it one has to be very conservative.
Also remember that sunlight is much dimmer out on Mars than it is on the moon, adn the gravity is higher, thus speeds tend to be slower.
And as for pathfinder, the rover had almost no science instrumentation, and it got stuck.
I know comparing apples and oranges is a slashdot favorite, but please don't put down an engineering triumph because you don't understand the differences in mission parameters!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
And why is sunlight a limiting factor? Because, for political reasons, we couldn't put an RTG (radioactive power source) on the rovers. That leaves us with solar only, which is what leads to the limited speed and the limited vehicle lifetime. If we could fly an RTG on Spirit, we could make it last for years. Maybe we'll be able to do that with a future mission.
As it is, I think we've done pretty well: we're going to drive a 384kg rover a kilometer (or more) and operate it for three months on just about the amount of energy it takes to power two light bulbs (~140W peak). And we're going to do it again with Opportunity, starting in just a few days.
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins
what the atmosphere is like in the deepest part of that canyon (pressure, composition, etc.)?
it's probably thicker there than anywhere else on the planet, so i reckon it'd be the best place to build a permanent base.
The sad thing about the early Russian (aka Soviet) efforts at landing on Mars is the probes probably weren't sterilized very well, if at all. Soviet-era space electronics were tube-based, not transistor based, and were prone to heat-induced failure. Even their unmanned vehicles were pressurized to air-cool the electronicsm, and some of their early failures are probably attributable to loss of pressure in the probe itself, leading to heat-induced failure. What's this got to do with Mars? The Soviets couldn't 'cook' their probes high enough temperatures, for long enough periods of time, to sterilize them properly. Several of these probes (Mars 2, 3 and 6) made it to the surface, and it's entirely possible that they carried some hardy, tough bacteria with them.