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Homing In On Opportunity From Orbit
An anonymous reader writes "Finding its lander inside a 20-meter crater, NASA has further homed in its latest lander's location and a major science target for the Opportunity rover using high resolution orbital cameras from 400 km overhead. The lander's parachute even casted a shadow nearby this target [another 150 meter crater] during descent. Earlier, each bounce of the Spirit rover could be imaged, along with its backshell, heatshield and parachute debris. Even with dust and weathering, this method could find Pathfinder and Viking [barely], and a technical discussion with pictures is at Malin Space Systems, which designed the Mars Orbital Camera. Because of uncertainties in location, however, it would take 60 years to find the lost Mars Polar Lander, but they may look for Beagle if conditions aren't too dusty."
It's like as soon as GWB came into office, the folks at NASA have really come into their own as space farers.
Yeah, it's all thanks to the great GW Bush! Maybe we'll even find WMDs on the Moon!
Why, even Slashdot submitters are learning to talk like our Smirker-In-Chief:
The lander's parachute even casted a shadow nearby this target....
Or as Dubya might say, "Is our children learning?"
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
btw, I like this excerpt, about the 'Spirit' lander:
>Encouraging developments continued for Opportunity's twin, Spirit, too. Engineers have determined that Spirit's flash memory
>hardware is functional,strengthening a theory that Spirit's main problem is in software that controls file management of the memory.
>"I think we've got a patient that's well on the way to recovery," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Pete Theisinger at NASA's
>Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
and if it where buggy, they'd at least have a patch within a couple of hours
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
"It's like as soon as GWB came into office, the folks at NASA have really come into their own as space farers."
I was thinking virtually the same thing. Only, I had correlated it with the filming of The Simple Life.
"Derp de derp."
successful mission upon successful mission
No.
Let's face it, most of the info that anyone who tries to leave this atmoshpre gives us
is so 'sugar coated' that after a while it starts to taste awefull in our mounths. And on
top of things, they only share 'limited info', keeping all the good stuff inside own
closed doors (even if NASA says they are forth comming, there is much much we never
will see...).
And no, I don't mean, build things, more a 'Think Tank' group, who tries to focus on
solving troubles/things, elaborating on ideas, finding solutions... etc; and at the end of they
day, everything is Open to everyone, to comment on & contribute.
*I know, I would like to contribute, if I where able to*... anyone, else?
ps. if yes, you know where you can find me ;-)
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
Every scrap of data from NASA science missions get released through the Planetary Data System, eventually. It's just the science teams that actually propose and run the missions get first crack at the data.
If you think this isn't fair, stop for a moment and think about the years of blood, sweat and tears that go into these missions. Do you think it is fair then that the scientist with the best internet connection gets to analyze the data first, just because he has a great internet connection? I guarantee you that would end space research because there's no payback for the teams who actually design the missions.
And if you think they did a crappy job with the analysis, well, eventually all the raw data is released and everybody gets a crack at it.
The cool thing about space exploration at the moment is a lot of that stuff you mention is being done now or about to be done.
It's a bit easier to land on Venus than Mars as the atmosphere is so thick - apparently the landers didn't use the parachutes that much to slow down. On the flipside - existing in -25 degrees is easier than +500 degrees.
The Messenger spacecraft will be on its way to Mercury via Venus soon.
The Galileo Atmospheric entry probe hit the atmosphere of Jupiter in '95. In the future we may see the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter and possibly a Europa lander and submarine - depending on whether the sub surface ocean exists.
The Huyghens probe attached to the Cassini (Saturn orbiter) will analyse the atmosphere of Titan for about 2.5 hours and may work on the surface for 5 minutes or so (arriving July 2004).
Cheers
I thought we never landed on Venus
Depends on your concept of "we". The Russians had an extensive Venus orbiter/lander program - absolutely thrilling stuff considering the difficulties Venus presents. These guys were pioneers, the first to land a probe on another planet. The moon as well.
I guess its time to look forward to either landing people on Mars, or pushing spacecraft further to Mercury.
Why adopt Dubya's limited vision? The really juicy planetary science targets are Jupiter's icy moons, and Saturn's Titan. As has been pointed out, all of these, along with Mercury, are underway.
Alas, it looks like Dubya's "mars or bust" program will drain the funding from many of the most exciting future space science missions, just as the "look mom, I'm (barely) in space" ISS did before, and the space shuttle (the Swiss army knife of spaceflight: does everything, but nothing well) before that. I'm so glad for those missions whose probes have been launched already - harder (though not unheard of) to axe those.
to try and land/splash on Jupiter
Been done.
Jupiter is just a (humungous) ball of gas, there is no land to land on, nor sea to splash in.
There are certainly going to be phase transitions to liquid and solid (aka "sea" and "land") somewhere in that humongous ball of gas. Operative question is how to design a probe to withstand the enormous pressure at the depth at which these phase transitions occur.
Best,
- nic
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard