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.
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!
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
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.