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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)."
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