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Second Opportunity For Mars Rover
An anonymous reader writes "The Mars Opportunity rover faces a challenging survey around the rim of the stadium-sized Endurance Crater. In addition to what was previously described as the critical choice to go into the steep crater at the risk of not being able to get back out, this "most spectacular view we've seen of the Martian surface" may aid in answering how deep an ancient sea or lake might have been and how long it lasted. Endurance Crater appears much older and thus may pre-date arrival of significant standing water."
Life as we know it requires water to develop. Finding history of water on Mars is the first step in the seach for life. Hopefully this mission can influence our leaders to spend money on a project to search for life, which would be beneath the surface, which would be much more expensive. I think the missions were a great success as they found evidence of water and rallied the interest of the general population to push for more funding.
There was more than one goal. It would have been nice to find existance of life, but this is a stepping stone for bigger things. Sending robots to mars and successfully landing them gets you good information for future missions. Especially if you want humans to get there. I would rather have some robots be the first to try landings on a different planet.
With todays technology, what wouldn't?
then wouldn't there be enough science there to study until the end of the rover's life? They spent what seemed like a very long time just on that one small crater where the rover landed in. Granted, a lot of the initial time was used for calibration, systems tests, etc, but they spent a lot of time there. If this crater is the size of a stadium, I think it is safe to say that it will last them until the end of the rovers lifespan.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
I am going out on a limb here and say that this entire mission has really been a big disappointment to me. Although it did enhance our knowledge of the planet considerably, it did not even attempt to verify if there was/is life on the planet, which is the end goal.
The mission exceeded all it's objectives. I don't understand how that can be considered a disappointment. Detecting life, as discovered by the Viking missions, is not always an easy task. Instead, these two rovers have transformed our understanding of Martian geology, for the first time given unrefutable evidence of water's presence, traversed the greatest distance on any body's surface by an unmanned vehicle, and sent back some damn cool pictures. All for a fraction of what the war in Iraq is costing us as taxpayers.
Finding life may be the "end goal" for public relations, etc., but I'm sure there are plenty of planetary geologists that have found these missions to be among the most important endeavours in the history of unmanned missions.
> NASA really has everyone believing the "dust on the panels" routine.....but if you ask me...
Thanks, but we'll ask actual _rocket scientists_ about rocket science, rather that Joe Ignorant on the internet. But we appreciate the offer!