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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.
The great thing about this is that it proves that innovation and thought still has some place in government. These vehicles where built with the tax dollars that you and I give away every year. It's a shame that our money is not spent in ways like this rather than (for example) the "war on terrorism" and the "war on drugs".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Why? All I'm saying is that it's interesting that with the "success" rate of landing craft on Mars, our (US) last two attempts seem to so far have worked. Looks like we finally may have gotten it right. Now of course we can start to build off this and make a landing craft for manned exploration.
I think the EU just needs more practice. We lost one back in 1997, now look at us. Hopefuly the EU will finally get a robot on the surface successfully. I think this news article just goes to show that, I think, our hard work is paying off.
... after all, he invented Space travel!
"You mean that microsoft apologists might actually admit that their products are more difficult to secure and remotely administer by design?"
Apologist? Heh okay. Actually I was talking about the borderline fiction that flies around about Microsoft on Slashdot. "RTFA they all cried!"
As for 'admitting that their products are difficult to secure', to be honest, I don't remember anybody denying that. Blown out of proportion? Sure. Whatever.
"Or are you just tired of people pointing out that your chosen platform is far from perfect, or even good in many cases?"
Compared to... Linux? Heh. Please. Nobody gets modded down for saying that Windows is a pain in the ass, but when you criticize Linux, man you better be as diplomatic as possible.
"In bed, arms around a cute sexy guy, snuggling, because I can administer a Linux-running server on practically any internet-connected device which can take an input, and deliver an output."
Yawn. You deal with servers, I deal with desktops. Actually even when I did deal with Microsoft servers, I found myself with a lot of time to play around on Slashdot. Pity not that many people have had that pleasant of experience. Oh well. Guess you gotta use the right tool for the right job, don'tcha? Glad you're happy. Pity you're so bitter that you feel the need to attack me over things I didn't say.
Man, where do these dumbfuck zealots come from? "Don't attack my Linux or I'll prove how happy I am with it by banging my fist on the desk!!!!"
"Derp de derp."