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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.
For the first time in my life I'm feeling completely amazed at the things we are finding out today. The space program is so exciting, finally we're pressing on to something we really don't know about. The re-envigorated space program, along with exciting news in robotics, make me feel like we're finally moving into the future.
There's no point here, I just felt the need to gush
Look it's a joke about my sig IN MY SIG! LOL!
But you know, the whole time lag thing kept sticking in my mind... When you hear them say "We have landed on Mars," that event actually happened 10 minutes earlier that the telemetry indicates it did.
What's the best way for humans to deal with the inescapable fact of the speed of light here? Should we report things (for the history books and all) as happening 10 minutes earlier than they appear to?
Aw, heck, what do I know? I'm still weirded out by the 7 second delay on radio. :) Go NASA!
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
Good on ya', Justin, but isn't it a bit premature to be calling this a success?
Though there are challenges on mars each new day, every inch of ground we take, every meter of atmosphere we penetrate, every bit of data sent back is indeed a success of modern science, engineering, and planning. There can be no doubt about this. Many critics of the space program (not that I suggest that you are one of them) do not realize the tremendous number of things that must go precisely right for a mission to go well.
We have landed a working vehicle on mars, and have received communications from it. That alone is, without a doubt, worth celebrating.
Yes there are many more things that must still be done, and perhaps we will fail at one or more of those. But tonight we have succeeded, and that cannot be taken away from us.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Google told me about this Powerpoint, from the horse's mouth. Apparently, the conceivable mechanisms for hematite formation are:
I) Chemical precipitation - extensive near-surface water
1) Precipitation from ambient, Fe-rich water (oxide iron formations)
2) Precipitation from hydrothermal fluids
3) Low-temperature dissolution and precipitation through mobile groundwater leaching
4) Surface weathering and coatings
II) Thermal oxidation of magnetite-rich lava
I guess it's just that many of the possible mechanisms for hematite formation involve the presence of water. Though I guess thermal oxidation of magnetite in lava doesn't necessarily. Presumably they want to either rule that possibility out or identify whether the hematite in fact indicates recent or distant past presence of liquid water in the area.
I hope you aren't trying to imply that this is somehow faked, like how people foolishly think the moon landing was faked, in which case I would give you a lecture of how "rediculously ignorant that is" and how "we would be better if people didn't act as if everthing is a conspiracty."
So, assuming that is NOT what you meant, I will give you a good answer:
The Deep Space Network is a world-wide network of radio dishes that NASA uses for sending and receiving communications from (you guessed it) craft in deep space. Some of these dishes are 70 meters in diameter! NASA said that "all eyes are on Mars," refering to this network, so all the resources of this network were focused on Opportunity. Also, the Opportunity rover had been transmitting just a simple signal, not a complex TV signal. Therefore, using some pretty well-written signal processing software, the Opportunity rover's signal was recognized, yes, all the way from Mars. It's not an easy thing, as you seem to understand, but JPL and NASA and the folks from the DSN are quite capable and have years of experience with such things.
Your resoning is flawed:
:), and rocketry as a whole were all results of NASA innovations (not to mention within-the-next-decade cancer drugs and other crystaline drugs they are experimenting with in zero G on the ISS eventually). And no, we didn't decide to send men to the moon to create pocket-phones, but low and behold it's an offshoot. Who can possibly tell what else we have to find out there?
1. Let's say, for argument's sake, there was no 9/11 and no subsequent wars. We'd have (at least) $87 billion more in the budget. So in that parallel universe you believe that homeless people are all living in co-ops?
2. I do believe there were quite a few impoverished people before the founding of NASA. The creation of NASA did not take a sandwich out of a homeless guy's hand.
3. Velcro, GPS, Cellular Telephones, discovery of the ozone hole which arguably launched the widespread efforts to fix our planet, Tang
4. And... does everything in your mind have to deal with profit? So, if we find unlimited diamonds and platinum on Mars/Asteroids/etc, then it's worth it? If it's "just a few microbes thus PROVING we are not the only inhabited planet in the universe" then it's no big deal?
5. Lastly (I could be wrong on this one - if this is the one I mess up then fine), I believe GWB wants to lower taxes (not that I agree with lowering them either, but I'm just correcting you on that...)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There's also a function of time. NASA didn't abandon the pieces of Columbia spread around the country ... they were actively seeking them.
... at least by the current laws I think it's theirs.
If we leave a lander on Mars for decades and eventually someone gets there and finds it
Of course the laws will probably change by then - once people start going into space governments will make laws concerning space. And I can see one of the first ones saying that 'all early spacecraft belong to the people who sent them' - and it might not be unreasonable given that retrieving them is impossible now so we have no choice but to abandon them.
David
I think a better idea is to leave all those old probes exactly where they lay. Being the optimist that I am about space exploration, I really believe we'll eventually colonize the planet. If this is the case, I'd like the old landing sites to be preserved just as they are. Perhaps build space history museums around them, or some of them can become part of the town square or something of a community.
Naturally this assumes that Mars is not too harsh on these old probes and there will be something left to look at, since it will likely take a long while before colonization of the planet becomes technologically and economically feasible.
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Let me get this straight. Suppose I won the dot-com lottery and built my own frickin' rocket with my own frickin' money, flew it to Mars, set up my own habitat, and enjoyed the sights.
Now, my launch may have broken any number of FAA regulations, and my government's free to fine me for it (or they can come the fuck over here to Mars and arrest me! :)
But you're tellin' me that this treaty says my government also owns my Martian base, even though I built it with my own money?
This treaty needs to be abolished immediately, if not sooner. 100% taxation of extraterrestrial assets is not how you pave the way for commercial development of space.
It won't "get a little weird as things start picking up", because with a treaty like that, there's no way in hell anyone will ever start a private space venture. There'll be no space Hilton, because Hilton already gives enough cash to the government in the form of taxes every year.