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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)."
The ESA site appears to be getting quite slow. A mirror of the large image of Valles Marineris is here.
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Every space mission gets a conspiracy theory. What's this one going to be?
Is it good or is it not so good?
That's 'whack', not 'not so good', YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I just don't take pictures or issue press releases. Probably best that way.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
How much time does it take it to grind a rock compared to the amount of time it takes to move one meter?
OMG... that rock is like, a pyramid! I wonder what secrets it holds?!
The pictures would be more detailed if they would let Mars Express fly a little lower. And they would have a decent chance to find Beagle 2, too.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
...featuring famous landmarks on the surface of Mars 'as seen through European eyes'...
I thank those noble European eyes that were sacrificed in order to make this European mission Euro-possible.
It's ironic. By so blatantly highlighting the Euro-ticity of this mission, they sound very American.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
What gives? That's remarkably annoying -- why not just show us the picture as taken instead of this cutesy mockup?
Check out Lunokhod, two Russian moon rovers from the early 1970s that drove around for months.
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. Also look at the Russian Venera probes that managed to return images from the surface of Venus, at temperatures hot enough to melt lead and pressures of 90 bar.
Ydco co
Since when did NASA scientists stop calling rocks after cartoon characters. The last visit to Mars we had Scoobydoo, Popeye and Barnicle Bill. Those names were really scientific sounding too...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
How sweet!
I was bored....
JoeLinux
I am lazy(don't want to google), but I also thought it would be interesting for other people to know. But what is the envirnoment like on Mars? Oxygen? Gravity? High/Low temps? etc..
Here is the last two lines of your post entered in google, except with `environment' spelled right, you lazy bastard.
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
temp is between 5-15 degree's celsius. here's a fact sheet, i tried to post it here but it said there as too many "JUNK" characters... fact sheet here
Try Here for more info. It's got info on all the planets.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
1) It is less complex to insert a craft from earth near the equator than at the poles.
2) There is more solar energy available at the equator.
3) They are more interested in the geology of a lake bed [IE, history of liquid water than they are looking at ice.
4) Not much is known about the surface of Mars. The two landing sites are good candidates for exploration.
Looks something like a repeat.
"[...] ready to grind the rock Adirondack"
Is this a rock that they've given a name to? Or is it an American colloquialism that I'm not familiar with? Or is it something else? Aren't the Adirondacks a mountain chain in NE N. America?
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.
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My childhood suspicions are confirmed;.. Mars is one friggin' big toffee pie!
see for yourself... this is Mars, and this is what it's made of
No. Mars Express was always the main mission.
Beagle 2 was a last-minute afterthought, built in a hurry, on a shoestring. It also had a very limited mass-budget, so that it could piggy-back on the same launcher.
and now Beagle 1 is eating up our computers!
--tUrBzY
temp is between 5-15 degree's celsius.
From that fact sheet you linked to:
Average temperature: ~210 K (-63 C)
Diurnal temperature range: 184 K to 242 K (-89 to -31 C) (Viking 1 Lander site)
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
...the most expensive computer wallpaper generating space mission ever.
. . . of "Adirondack Al," the wise-cracking otter from the Allegheny Animation Studio's show _The Runciple Potts Hour_?
You know, ran on the Muntz TV Network?
Had the guy who played Commodore Langly on _Space: Mission Upwards_ as Runciple Potts, the friendly lumber deliveryman who introduced the cartoons?
Jeeze, kids these days don't have appreciation of culture.
Stefan
The top part of the picture is the actual image. The part along the bottom is a 3D rendering of what it would look like to a low-flying plane.
You can see both images seperately on this page.
if the purpose of these landers is to discover water or traces, why didnt they land at the poles where some people are convinced there is water instead of landing in the middle of a desert
They are there to solve a mystery, not just find water. The crater area of the landing site LOOKS likes like it used to be a lake because it is filled in like a dry lake and because it has (now-dry) river-like channels flowing into it. What made the channels? If Mars used to contain large lakes near the equator, that is an important find. It could mean that Mars was once more Earthlike.
Table-ized A.I.
I hope they have audio gear on that expensive digital camera just in case that rock says "Owww! Stop grinding me!"
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
>stupid mars probe. Also, hooray for communism!
Lets see,
links for the history of missions to the red planet
US Mars Missions
16 Launches containing 21 different probes (4 fly by, 8 orbiter, 4 landers, 3 rovers, 2 penetrators) of which only 7 where lost (1 fly by, 3 orbiters, 1 lander, and both penetrators).
Communist missions
19 Launches containing 25 different probes (6 flyby, 12 orbiter, 7 landers, 0 rovers, 0 penetrators) of which all where lost or failed.
Hurray for ?
And for those keeping score the European orbiter and lander went up on a russia rocket (1 orbiter, one lost lander).
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
ok... since some people still seem convinced that beagle 2 was the main point of the misson, check this news release from ESA dating back to 1998 where they endorse the initial mars express payload:
News release
No mention of beagle 2. "Possibility left open of a small lander"...
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
Didn't this rover land near the old Viking probe sent down in the 70's? How about sending the rover off on it's last mission to get a picture of the Viking Probe? NASA could see how the probe has held up all these years. NASA would also get mad props too. :)
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
It's not that the tops were sliced off. The whole area was probably a pretty flat plain before whatever (zillions of gallons of water, most likely) carved out the canyon. The flat areas are what's left of the original surface.
You'll see the same thing in canyon areas on Earth. As the valleys widen you get less and less of the original surface left, until the whole terrain is rugged.
-- Alastair
Hey, it's Europe's turn to try out cultural imperialism (again), don't knock it. In no time we'll have you Americans eating French fries and pizzas, using European languages (e.g. English, words from French like derriere, cafe), trying to learn the Metric system, setting your time system based on a location in England, madly trying to trace your roots back to Ireland, coming over here to see our old castles and achievements predating the founding of the US, yearning for Mercedes Benz and BMWs...
Remember, Europe is the best. The whole world should accept our values, try to imitate us, buy all that we have to sell, use our currency... Eire go deo, Vive la France, God save the Queen, etc., etc. 15-25 times.
Kind of sickening isn't it. I guess being proud is not something to be proud of.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
The images will never be perfect. The page you reference on the space.com article was not the exact image stored on the rover. When the images are transmitted from the Rover back to JPL, there is a transmission loss in the retro-bias diagonal frequency bass carrier that causes the image to be distorted. The fuzzy look we receive is then dithered and poly-metrophased with the dark "shadows" you see. This brings the image back to what we could theoretically predict it would be if the image was proper.
Somewhat offtopic, though much software ON THE GROUND at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is written in Java, but not software on the spacecraft. This doesn't have any problem, but due to Java's slow execution rate on the Rover's computer we actualy lose tetra-physical carbonic exposure rate because the camera simply can't be operated as quickly in Java as if the comman protocol were operated through a more iffecient lower-level language such as C.
Needless to say, I wrote some of the software used for the mission in Java, and it worked very well for our purposes, namely due to platform independence and quick development time. We had a heck of a time with some of the GUI code, however.
The rover runs VxWorks from Wind River. Very solid. Cheers,
Jim Cobgrobbler
Science Activation Planning Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers