Slashdot Mirror
Mars Rover Opportunity Lands Safely
JoeRobe writes "All indications are that the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has safely landed on Mars. After 10 minutes of bouncing and rolling, it has come to a rest and transmitted its signal. There are no fault tones, indicating that there were no errors during landing and rolling. The rover has landed in the Meridiani Planum, where there are large deposits of hematite, indicating the presence of past water. The lander has landed on one of its side petals, so the next step is to make itself upright and deflate its airbags." And loconet writes "Reuters and abc.net.au, among others, are of the first news sources to confirm that Opportunity has successfully landed on Mars. The probe had successfully made contact with controllers on Earth after landing at 0505 GMT on Sunday in an area of the planet known as the Meridiani Planum. The landing procedures achieved a best-case scenario on which all systems performed as expected. At first, engineers thought the lander had been rolling for a long time, but it turns out the antenna used to communicate with Earth was pointing towards the ground, which made the signal bounce off Mars and as the Earth moves, made it seem as if it had been bouncing for over 5 minutes. The lander is currently side petal down, and will take a while before it straightens itself out. California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ex Vice-president Al Gore were in attendance at the event in the JPL facilities." Many readers also wrote to point out the coverage at spaceflightnow.
The next band I form is going to be called Meridiani Planum and the Opportunities.
The Human Cow - bringing you scrumtrelescence since 1995
At first they thought it was rolling slowly for a very long time. Maybe the Martians were kicking it around & poking it with a stick. ;)
I was watching the whole thing on the webcast. I was personally disgusted when cnn & the others cut it off to run some interview with Nicole Kidman while it was still rolling across the surface.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
NASA should set Opportunity on a course to make the 6600 mile trek and kick Spirit's ass for acting up. A little sibling rivalry can't be too bad.
Reminds me of the old botwar games where you program your bots (rotate, move, or shoot) and watch them go at it.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Hurry and go press control-alt-delete on Spirit!
How long before the two rovers drag race each other?
Some junior officer of the Martian Interplanetary Defense Force just got evaporated via Phaser Death Squad for failing to down the extraterrestial invasion craft.
I was watching the NASA TV live and there was an unexpected discovery on Mars. A few minutes went by and they showed a video with the Rover, and then an animation made presented a birthday cake for Sean O'Keefe. THIS REALLY SCRARED THE HECK OUT ME. I thought it was small little green men roaming around Mars. This scared everyone and especially almost gave Sean a heart-attack.
I'm assuming he was present because they used his Schwartz to power the rover, correct?
True story.
While overseeing the landing of Oppurtunity, Al Gore quipped to the NASA engineers that he actually invented the propulsion engine.
Replica of Mars Rover Opportunity made of Lego Modified to Contain a 2004 PC in a 1984 Mac Stops Responding, Debugging Dumps Indicate Possible Flaw in Linux InstantOn Boot Loader and/or Flash Controller.
Its nice to have someone who has actually been to Mars congratulate the team at JPL. I'm sure he has lots of stories to share.
"The landing procedures achieved a best-case scenario" and the worst case.... landing directly onto Spirit
I kep thinking about those "airbags". Are they filled with "air", and if so, perhaps we can send a lot more probes to Mars, and sooner or later we'll have sent enough "air" there to start breathing!
I still think they should have sent some kudzu to Mars. Then, by the time that Man actually gets there, he won't need a helmet.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
NASA have employed a very cunning plan - send Spirit as a decoy, wait until they're sure the Martian army are screwing around with it, then land Opportunity on the opposite side of the planet.
Now what does a hermaphrodite have to do with finding water? Oh ... wait, never mind.
As Gov. Schwarzenegger watched the landing from JPL, he commanded the scientists: "GET YOUR ASS TO MARS!"
A reporter reminded Gov. Schwarzenegger that "You blabbed Quaid! You blabbed about Mars!" Schwarzenegger ignored the remark, responding "I've never even been to Mars! What the fuck did I do wrong?"
Later that evening, Schwarzenegger pleaded with Cohaagen to increase the oxygen ration on Mars, by saying: "Giff des people eair!!"
Finally, he shot his wife, Sharon Stone, through the head, closing the press conference by saying "Consider dat a divorce!!!"
Good on ya', Justin, but isn't it a bit premature to be calling this a success? I mean, look at Spirit, sitting a few feet from its pad
;)
I guess that depends on what part of the software he wrote, the roving software or the reentry routines...
lots of free music downloads, plus games, recipes, and more
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets
As soon as we finish drilling in your rock garden we'll roam off. Keep the heat shield and air bag with our compliments.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I find all this Mars coverage to be a pleasant distraction from the redundant SCO nonsense. I hope NASA starts testing their warp drive soon.
"Derp de derp."
It's about time they got a Mars rover to land right. I was starting to think NASA was playing Gunbound with those things.
--- 11 meters/second, or 24 miles per hour - the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow. Really.
In other news, Jenni from the online voyeur site, JenniCam has folded operations in California and moved her equipment to Mars. She will provide 24.6597 hour coverage of the rovers as they sleep, pick up rocks and even shower themselves off.
As the two rovers are the only known inhabitants, unlike Jenni they will not hook up with a fat goateed white boy.
Air? Wonderful. Now all you need is some way of kick starting Mars' core, to produce a stronger (and complete) magnetic field. ;)
Otherwise you'd have to keep shipping air to Mars as it gets blown away by solar wind. Might get kinda expensive. Maybe you can work something out with UPS though, I hear they have good deals for long-term customers.
They gave one of these as a birthday present to Sean O'Keefe during the 1:30am EST news briefing. There were jokes about keeping him away from the real hardware.
But then again, I could be wrong.
you can see an alien in one
... ...
picture. i can't give you the link
but it's in one pictures with the
tile like stone formation.
the alien is kindda like a sea-shell
typ animal. it's coiled up at
the base of the tile rock formation
great job jpl.nasa!
Naturally he was there, he did after all, invent spaceflight.
After 10 minutes of bouncing and rolling, it has come to a rest and transmitted its signal. There are no fault tones, indicating that there were no errors during landing and rolling .
Just replace the bold words with: "Genetic Information," and "you know what."
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
Whoever gets there first. If you can get to it, you can have it.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
before anyone gets excited because of "Justin Wick"'s signature, realize he is not really a NASA scientist but a little intern guy.
I would say Justin is an intern who has been doing some pretty damned impressive work that he should rightly be quite proud of. I don't see anything particularly self-agrandizing in his many informative posts here.
So what is it you do at McDonalds, Mr. Anonymous Coward? Sweep the parking lot and clean the restrooms?And just an hour ago, I got a call that my programming job has already been offatmosphered to Martian programmers willing to work for trinkets and shiny beads...
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
stupid commie bastards, why the hell would you name your 13th mission 'mars 5'.