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Opportunity Rover Arrives at Endurance Crater
Mean_Nishka writes "After weeks of driving, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has arrived at 'Endurance Crater.' It's a scientific treasure trove with an extensive outcrop of layered bedrock, and scientists will have to decide whether or not to send Opportunity inside for a closer inspection without getting it stuck forever - there's more information via a Monterey Herald/AP article."
I doubt it would get stuck there forever. I'm sure the Chinese will be more than happy to pull it out and bring it back to Earth so it can be kept at the Beijing Smithsonian.
NASA sent the twin rovers to Mars to prospect for geologic evidence of past water on the now dry and dusty planet. Sooo... Did they find any?! Did the article writer not know, or was it not considered interesting enough to print. :)
On a side note, I don't understand the design of these rovers. Seems like they're dangerously flippable. If that happens, they're pretty much junk, right? Do they have any way of correcting themselves if one tread climbs up onto a rock and it tips over? Why not have 5 or 6 treads around the center and have the middle gyroscopiclly right itself?
Ansi's and stupid tricks!
I mean really, wasn't that the point of going to mars in the first place?
I mean sure, its a long way to just put a multi-million dollar jeep, but damnit we came this far we might as well do a running jump into that thing!
Well, they've been sitting there since Friday and will spent the next two sols (Martian days) looking at the crater. Here's an amazing hi-res TIF. If you ask me, it looks to steep to go down. But on the other hand, this is the most exciting target in the Meridiani plains...
I am really looking forward to when Spirit reaches the Columbia Hills. If Spirit successfully reaches the top of the hill the view will be breathtaking. Not only could we see the landing site but also see the actual rim of Gusev Crater more clearly. It will be an amazing sight!
I am personally in favour of them sending it inside for a closer inspection without getting it stuck forever. Getting it stuck forever seems like it would be a bad idea...but maybe that's just short-term thinking on my part.
Not sure if this has been posted before, but I stumbled on this today, it's quite amazing:
Mars Exploration Rover
(requires Quicktime, me thinks)
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
It could very easily get stuck there. When the rover was leaving the crater that it landed in, they had a little bit of trouble because of soil slippage, and the crater wasn't all that steep.
The first point is a valid reason not send one, though I think other issues probably had more to do with it. Like what would they use it for on a water finding mission. I supose to reveal deeper layers or somthing, but really an explosive device probably isn't all that usefull on this mision, especially for trouble to get it there.
As to the second, it's not entirely true. It is possible to make all sorts of explosive device that eigther don't depend on combustion (IIRC tnt explodes not by combustion, but by 'falling apart') or contain oxidizers in the mix removing the need for atmospheric O2.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
. Non nuclear bombs require oxygen to explode
Bombs carry their own oxidizer. In the case of gunpowder, it's potassium nitrate. Other types of explosives use other things, including potassium chlorate, potassium permangenate, etc. There is not enough oxygen in the air to make something combustable explode on it's own, it will just burn.
Even the old school fuses you see in cartoons going to dynamite have their own oxygen source (usually a string doped with gunpowder). This is why they will burn underwater, or even in an atmosphere without water.
The problem with the rovers carrying explosives, is that the explosives would need to be buried for them to have an effect. Just dropping a stick of dynamite on the surface would cause very little disruption.
When I was like 16, I worked at a gas station. There used to be this guy that came in with a silver van that said Kaboom! on the side. Turns out, he ran a demolitions company. He'd always sit and chat with us about his destructive creations. It almost seemed like he liked his job a little too much. Nevertheless, he was always interesting to BS with.
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Just put up a no parking sign, a parking enforcement officer will be right along to help in five minutes or less. I wonder what the parking fine on another planet would be though.
I wonder what the expected lifetime of the Opportunity rover is now? If they are not expecting it to hold up much longer anyway, I don't see any reason not to send it down into the crater to investigate for as long as it can. Are there other interesting sites within its expected range?
The question which has to be asked is that the lifetime of the rover is finite and what else is there to look at which the rover is capable of getting to in that time. Sure they could go look at other rocks or they could risk winning 'big biccies' by going 'over-the-top'...........remember 'who dares wins' and other crap cliched sayings etc,etc
"...decide whether or not to send Opportunity inside for a closer inspection without getting it stuck forever"
Whether it is sent into the crater or remains outside and nearby, what is the likelihood that the rovers will *ever* be recovered? Won't they then be "stuck forever" anyway? Also, they just sent the rover to this place over many days. If this wasn't the best place to get stuck, why did they bother?
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
Opportunity (level 3 Rover of the Martian Plains; Strength: 20 / Agility: 8 / Endurance: 10 / Intelligence: 2) finds a crater in the ground.
The crater has no distinguishing features!
You...
[x] descend and explore the surroundings
[_] circumvent the crater and continue your previous explorations
You are basked in a strange and comforting light!
+ Strength 1
+ Endurance 30!
+ Agility 2
+ Intelligence 1
You found a new item! Unremarkable Rock of Endurance (+14)
[x] keep
[_] drop
You leave the crater and continue your explorations.
You drive over a rock askew and fall onto your back, unable to right yourself!
> Cast Roll Over (level 2)
You must roll 14 or better to cast this spell.
> 1d36
Opportunity (level 3 Rover of the Martian Plains) has rolled a 08
You continue to lie immobile on your back in the cold Martian evening. Slowly, your batteries lose power and a darkness begins to come over you. As you desperately struggly against the dying of the light, your thoughts go back to your maladjusted childhood...
I'm aware that a lot of explosives carry their own oxygen. That doesn't mean they don't require oxygen to explode.
I guess I was thinking you would ideally use a bomb that can use atmospheric oxygen, but maybe they don't really exist.
You can probably make a bigger crater by crashing the craft it came in anyway.
./~ High on a hill, stood a lonely Rover, yodel-lay-he yodel-lay-he yodel-lay-he-hoo ./~ /me ducks ands runs. :-)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/1/n/095 /1N136619354EFF2000P1985R0M1.JPG
Take a gander at the center of the crater. How many folks familiar with wind eroded ice recognise that kind of formation?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Of course, it's actually a $100,000 mic, but hey, that's pretty close to $0.25 in space dollars. :-)
``Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.'' -- Richard Dawkins
Is it just me or did the landers totally disappear from all major news sources? I haven't caught mention of them on CNN, BBC and the like in quite a while. Did the government stop spending the money on press releases when they failed to take heat off of the administration and/or capture public attention?
If you look at the driving plan thus far and at the surroundings, you see that endurance crater is pretty much the only big interesting feature in the area. Also, given the finite life of the rovers (extended design life is 180 days?) there must come an end some time. The rovers seem to operate perfectly right now, but i believe that the thermal cycling of the batteries is a definite show-stopper in a couple of months. Considering this, i think it is a fair gamble to drive into the crater with the risk of never coming out. If you do you might get some very interesting data on all the deep soil layers. By the time you would get out you are almost dead anyhow.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
Am I the only one who thinks this "crater" looks like a giant antlion trap? Especially with the loose "sand" looking stuff in the bottom center... I could totally see a gigantic martian antlion reaching out of that thing and rending poor opportunity into bits. Let's hope they didn't neglect to include phasers when designing these rovers =)
Take a dollar, divide it by 100, take two and call me in the morning.
i think the next mission should include an audio recorder. i mean, what if we run into some martians and need to hear what they sound like? :)
seriously, nasa can probably produce a 'relaxing moments: sounds of mars' cd to fund the next mission.
ok, really seriously, i think it would be fun to 'hear' mars, assuming that the atmosphere is thick enough to have sounds. even if it's nothing but howling winds.
If Opportunity exhausts the scientific possibilities at Endurance Crater, the next target, according to NASA press releases is some "etched terrain" several kilometers to the south. Presumably they would be weighing the possibility of getting to that versus the benefits of spending the rest of the mission at or inside Endurance.
include as one of the tools on the rover:
an electrical motor with a steel wire attached to the axis and an anchor bolt to attach this to the ground. Any time the rover would have to descend into a crater like that it could attach the anchor to the ground and use the wire to get out of the crater later on.
You can't handle the truth.
The problem is that at some point the panels are not generating enough energy to keep the rovers hot over night, so the internal temperature of the components cannot be maintained at their operational level, and then NASA expects that they will start having component failures.
Indeed. The swing in tempuratures is estimated to be the biggest risk. Electronic components constantly expanding and contracting due to day-to-night-cycle tempurature changes eventually works things loose and cracks stuff.
The second biggest risk is probably dust getting into everything.
Note that the rovers do have small radioactive capsules that provide some warmth, but not enough. If you put too many of those in, then you have to use more expensive launch techniques to decrease launch failure risks of spreading the radioactive stuff.
The next generation of rovers are to exclusively use nuclear cells to generate power and maintain constant tempuratures to avoid such problems. However, I expect protesters to complain.
Such issues strangely reflect the need of mammals to have a constant body tempurature. The more complex the components/functions of an animal, the more a constant body tempurature seems to facilitate that. It is less variables the complex components have to deal with. But, it requires more energy. That is why reptiles can eat less per body weight. But the flipside is that they tend to be sluggish in the cold, or at least their performance is inconsistent as different chemicals are needed at different tempuratures, sometimes leaving gaps for certain tempurature ranges.
Table-ized A.I.