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."

Comments

oops

[Anonymous Coward]

frist pOST!

water

[Anonymous Coward]

water first

Damn

[Orgazmus]

They got that far allready? Damn!
Well, then its time for me to push the button.
Cant have them snooping around my "lasers" you know.

Re:Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up you unfunny piece of shit

Re:Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

someone is in a good mood today?
does PMS sound familiar, honey?

Better Panorama

[inio]

A much better (and much larger) version of the panorama has been available at the NASA site for days.

Re:Better Panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

it the lower right corner doom3 base?

Re:Better Panorama

[turnstyle]

The big one is really big (26.7 MB!) -- it's a composite of 258 individual images.

I suggest right-clicking the link and saving-as (to your local drive) if you want to give it a look.

And it is amazing, but my computer goes into deep churn for a long while before it finally opens.

Re:Better Panorama

[danamania]

A much better (and much larger) version of the panorama has been available at the NASA site for days.

That's a pretty huge image. Take the full version and zoom around - there's proof martians have advanced technology

Re:Better Panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the production quality went downhill compared to that of apollo 60's era soundstage

Re:Better Panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

u can tell if u look closely that pic is a fake

Re:Better Panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

No sh.t Sherlock. Or do you really think there's a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why the word LINUX appears on the martian surface? How else does it appear fake? You think the person that posted the image only touched up the colour of the sky or what?

Re:Better Panorama

[Anonymous Coward]

u can tell if u look closely that pic is a fake

Whoa. fuck. thanks captain obvious. I was really getting freaked there. I mean. god. phew. prior art written on the walls of martian cliffs. SCO could have had a field day, but you've saved us.

Once again, YAAAAAY CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! YAAAAAAY!

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it run lunix?

Martian Landfill Site

[Anonymous Coward]

Woohoo!

For those of you not aware

[Anonymous Coward]

a summary of the Mars Rover mission can be found here

Re:For those of you not aware

[Demogoblin]

challenging survey around the rim ...or in technical terms, a rimjob.

hash table collision

[Anonymous Coward]

In the spirit of clarity, is there an opportunity to give better names to the spirit and opportunity rovers?

Is it just me....

[Anonymous Coward]

or does the endurance crater look a lot like goatse?

Big disappointment

[110010001000]

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. We all knew it had water on the surface - just look at the formations in a telescope survey or data from earlier space missions. What we really know is if this water caused life to exist on the planet at some time.

Another thing I always wanted them to add is a microphone which would send back audio of the surroundings. They did add this to an earlier mission (one of the EU or British ones I believe) as an afterthought, but the mission failed. It would be fascinating, and would be great PR values as well.

I don't need no instructions on how to rock!!!

Re:Big disappointment

[110010001000]

Just to clarify, if there are any JPL or other people who were involved in the mission reading my parent post: it was a very well executed incredible mission and I am sure that it will produce a lot of data for scientists to pore over for decades. I am just impatient to know the question we all want to know: did life exist there?

Re:Big disappointment

[Laivincolmo]

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.

Re:Big disappointment

[Grand]

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.

Re:Big disappointment

[110010001000]

True, but didn't we know that there was history of water on Mars? Just look at any detailed picture of the surface. The markings of liquid are unmistakable. The ice caps are water.

Re:Big disappointment

[WhiteBandit]

Well we didn't have conclusive evidence that formations on Mars were sculpted by H20. In fact, a competing theory is that many geologic features you see (including seasonal channels on crater walls) could have been carved by CO2 flows.

I'm about to go to work, but you can definitely dig around google for evidence, I found a few sites by just typing in CO2 flows.

The overarching goal of the Mars Exploration Rovers was not to determine if there was life on Mars. The goal was to determine if water existed in liquid form in the past. Hematite and cross bedding visible at the Opportunity landing site finally gave us the conclusive answer we needed.

Now that we know water did exist on the surface of the Red Planet, we can try to tackle new questions such as; Did life ever exist? What happened to the water?

Re:Big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

A microphone? I would chance to say that all you would hear -- besides silence -- is the occasional sound of the wind slamming into the Rover. Or maybe the microphone could be sensitive enough to pick up the martians?

Re:Big disappointment

[cascino]

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.

Re:Big disappointment

[09za]

I guess dried up river beds was refutable.
Finding out that there was once water on Mars...hardly something worth all the effort cosidering THE DRIED UP RIVER BEDS.
Hey did they finr anymore TRICKS OF LIGHT.
check out this picture at MSSS:http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e01_e06/full_ jpg_ctx_map/E05/E0502144.jpg
WTF is that...wind erosion?

Re:Big disappointment

[Mysticalfruit]

What we need is to establish permanent Mars and Moon colonies.

As long as we are a species that exists on one planet only, we are a species that is one errant asteroid or comet away from extinction.

I know this sounds ass backwards, but we need to get colonies setup first, the science can come during and afterwards.

Re:Big disappointment

[Anonymous Coward]

The mission exceeded all it's objectives. I don't understand how that can be considered a disappointment. .... All for a fraction of what the war in Iraq is costing...

Indeed, they have. Both rovers are navigating down the path of extended missions with limited team support. NASA is being tasked to do more with less money, in less time. On the other hand, the executive office is taking more money and more of our kids to throw into the ever less productive war in the middle east, watching as oil prices (and gas prices) climb through the roof. So I agree with your response.

To the disappointed:

There are plenty of positive outcomes from funding robotic exploration of space / solar system. For a relatively small investiment the rovers have changed models of planetary evolution (at least for Mars). If, in learning about other planets, we understand more about our own, we end up benefitting from the missions in ways not calculable by the bean-counting conspiracy theorists.

If you understood the stated and imlied mission goals, you'd understand that we've done more than what the Rovers were sent out to do, and every day brings more bonus knowledge back to Earth.

-AC

Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[BTWR]

Quick! You have until 5pm to get the free shrimp at Long John Silver's!

They promised that if NASA found evidence of water on Mars that they would give free Shrimp to the whole country. They followed through! (Now if only Mir had hit that Taco Bell sign...)

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow man, one entire piece of shrimp, and all I have to do is show up between 2pm and 5pm when all the normal people who have jobs are at work. Hell why not make it between 2:00 am and 2:05 am and make it easy?

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[simcop2387]

i wonder what Taco Bell will give us when the ISS hits something? maybe it'll be McDonalds this time

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[afish40]

There's no real hurry. The offer is May 10th, so we have from 2-5pm tomorrow. Too bad there's no Long John Silver's around here...

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[otomo_1001]

Yay for me living in a big city. I emailed my cohorts at work and we will be hitting the Bloomington location tomorrow. (Unless the fools decide to go somewhere else, I have a very indecisive bunch of co-workers)

Thank you for reminding me, I totally forgot about this.

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[dpilot]

There is no Long John Silver's in Vermont. For me, the closest one is in Plattsburgh, NY. So I can spend $14.00 on the ferry plus gasoline plus a few hours driving time to get there and get some shrimp. Or I could put the same into a local restaurant and just buy some shrimp.

But they wouldn't be Martian Brine Shrimp.

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[Anonymous Coward]

BTWR wrote:

Quick! You have until 5pm to get the free shrimp at Long John Silver's!

They promised that if NASA found evidence of water on Mars that they would give free Shrimp to the whole country. They followed through! (Now if only Mir had hit that Taco Bell sign...)

Hey, thanks for the info! Your post reminds me why I like to visit Slashdot -- to get the little golden nuggets like this. I know what my lunch is going to be May 10...

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[NineteenSixtyNine]

Uh, the offer is ONE jumbo shrimp per customer. LJS's shrimp ain't that good.

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[dpilot]

Even less worth going. I thought it was 'all you can eat'.

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[NineteenSixtyNine]

It is as long as 'all you can eat' is one shrimp. I kinda think they made the offer initially (they didn't say how many shrimp they would give away to begin with) because they didn't really think the rovers would find evidence. Then they kinda realized their president may have f.u.

Re:Mars Rover gets us free Shrimp!

[dpilot]

We have two pretty decent places in town, Perry's Fish House and Shanty By the Shore. For about the price of the ferry ride to Plattsburth to go to LJS, I could go to either of these fine establishments. My wife and I went to see Eric Idle last fall when he came to town, and sometime later she was checking his blog, and he raved about Shanty By the Shore.

Beautiful pictures of the martian surface

[Anonymous Coward]

mirrored in very high resolution here, check it out before the inevitable slashdotting

DO NOT FOLLOW LINK Poo pr0n

[WordODD]

n/t

Hmm

[RabidChicken]

This makes me wonder just how long exactly the rover will last. Another month? Year? Just how much battery power is there to last it? Will it last simply until a martian storm hits it? I personally think this is a great mission and every nugget of data is opening new doors. I would like to see it last for quite a while, even if there is no press coverage. P.S. The earlier comment about adding a mic to record the sounds on mars may seem trivial, but I say it'd be a great idea and inspire wonder (and a neato MP3 ;)

Re:Hmm

[josh3736]

Just how much battery power is there to last it?

Theoretically unlimited -- ah the joys of solar power! :)

Re:Hmm

[Lispy]

To be picky, even the source of solar energy is limited. But this shouldn't worry us I guess! ;-)

Re:Hmm

[josh3736]

This is true, however I was speaking in the context of length -- how long the thing will run before the power is gone (whis is unlimited so long as the sun is still in the sky), not how many amps are availible to the rover (which is very limited).

Re:Hmm

[TheTimoo]

No, from what I've read, the Mars Rover has no way of cleaning it's solar panels, which means dust will settle on it and eventually render them useless for producing power.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I thot they were about to general lee it into a crater... Think it's gonna live long enough to collect opaque amounts of dust?

Two words - Sharper image ionic breeze quadra.
Problem solved, under budget.. (barely)

Re:Hmm

[zpok]

"The earlier comment about adding a mic to record the sounds on mars may seem trivial, but I say it'd be a great idea and inspire wonder"

- Keep that noise down will you?
- Not me! Another one of them bloody Rovers! ...
Intergalactic war, why, you ask?

Re:Hmm

[cheekyboy]

I am sure theres not much dust being gathered at the moment, if they took a photo now, or looked at the energy stats, it would be clean for years, unless theres a big dust storm.

The thing that kills it first, is the batteries, constantly charging from -150c to 20c will limit it chemically.

The "DUST" theory is so minor its not an issue unless we get batteries lasting 2+years on mars.

Though the rover should still work even with really crap batteries or if they are dead, as long as it gets power from solar panels constantly. So they will run this baby until it no longer responds, though being nasa a govt org, they might in their wisdom pull the plug coz of lack of funding even though they are working 100% in 6months time.

Re:Hmm

[dude127]

NASA really has everyone believing the "dust on the panels" routine. I'm sure it could be a problem under certain circumstances, but if you ask me, they are hyping this problem so that they can set expectations artificially low.

By setting low expecations, they make themselves look like heroes if they are able to exceed their original mission parameters, and they cover their butts if things turn sour.

I think this is pretty common among technical types, since technology (especially cutting edge tech 100 million miles away on an unexplored world) is so unpredictable.

Is it just me...

[Lawrence_Bird]

or does that panorama look very much like something done
on a hollywood special effects set?

Re:Is it just me...

[Jott42]

With todays technology, what wouldn't?

Re:Is it just me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa! You mean that Clinton did have sex with that woman?

Re:Is it just me...

[ixplodestuff8]

I know the parent is marked as a troll but if you look at this image (WARNING: 26.7mb image) parts of the rocks and sand (notice the wavy ones near the middle) look a bit rendered and not natural, though it's porbably due to some software enhancing to make the image look better (it's already passed through a filter to give it color, it might as well be touched up even more) or maybe my eyes playing tricks on me.

Re:Is it just me...

[Lawrence_Bird]

and I hardly meant it as a troll either.. I've always been
a big space supporter since growing up as a kid with the
moon missions. But I took a look at that picture (blown up
I might add) and it just.. well.. perhaps its the lens they
use just makes the scale not look right, and it does rendered
in spots as you have said.

Grappling hook or a winch

[Anonymous Coward]

should have been included on the rovers to lower themselves down steep slopes.

The plane

[roalt]

According to the article, the following plan will opportunity follow:

1. Make a round on the edge of the Endurance Crater to make measurements and see how steep the crater is.
2. If (with little risk) opportunity can drive in it and back out, it will do so before doing the following points, otherwise, do the following points first before moving into Endurance.
3. Examine the area around the heatshield, to check both the heatshield useful for future missions and to look in the deep hole the heatshield made into mars.
4. Examine some other place it passed before (but then did not have enough time) to check the composition of a rock that is different than others.

Re:The plane

[Dracoirs]

The plane! The plane! *points to sky*

interesting formations

[BigGerman]

.. at the bottom of the crater. ( seen here, 2M file). Is it created by wind? Or maybe water? Something like that can be seen at the bottom of a shallow round body of water on Earth.

Re:interesting formations

[ImTwoSlick]

Is it created by wind? Or maybe water?

Most definately wind. Those are essentially small sand dunes. A small body of water doesn't have enough surface area to get wave formations like that.

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

I found these to be striking images of the martian surface at dawn, one of them is my wallpaper as we speak.
I can't believe you slashbots allow yourself to be manipulated by a single "n/t" troll reply =(

Fake

[Anonymous Coward]

That incredible view is just fake
Look carefully to the shadows of the stones at the left side and at the right side... They are different!

Re:Fake

[09za]

It's funny
on slahdot you can be branded troll for pointing out something. I once saw a picture on the MSSS site that looked like an entire area was replaced with "dunes". First, the dunes all looked alike including the size, shape and even the same little erosion lines running from the peak... all of them, some thirty or so were right next to one another so it was hard not to notice how similar they were...they were pasted copies of the same "dune". What was being hidden? we will never know but I have seen what NASA will do to hide anything that might not fit their paradigm.
If NASA finds life, wouldn't that be the end of the search for life? Hmmm... I wonder why they discredit any signs of life.
If I got paid to look for something... you better believe I'd never find it.

Re:Fake

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think that if they found life, that would be the end? Whouldnt that encurage to further exploration? To find other lifeforms and possible intelligent life.
Think about the effects such a discovery would have. What would the people demand?
1) Now that weve found bacteria were all happy. Lets scrap all this space-thingy.
2) WE WANT MORE!

Take your pick. Id vote for 2.

Re:Fake

[fredmosby]

It's a composite of many images taken at various angles, so the sun is coming in at different angles in different sections of the photograph. It also wasn't taken all at the same time. Conspiracy theorists always just point out some kind of perceived inconsistency and say "obviously that means the picture is fake". If the picture were fake it would have probably been done in a 3D renderer and there would be no inconstancies in the shadows.

You lied about your weight...

[The Raven]

Yeah... too bad Batman had to use his belt the day they were launching the rover. His bathook would have been really useful.

On a more serious note, the logistics of firing and using a grappling hook are far outside the realm of 'faster, better, cheaper' methods. Simple is where it's at, and Rube Goldberg devices to pull the rover out of pits are not on the menu.

I do hope they choose to go down... I wanna see what that ripply stuff at the bottom of the crater is made out of.

Re:You lied about your weight...

[pomakis]

I do hope they choose to go down... I wanna see what that ripply stuff at the bottom of the crater is made out of.

I suspect that it's just wind-blown sand/dust. I also suspect that the guys at NASA suspect that, and are aren't particularly interested in it. I also suspect that they'll specifically avoid going that far down into the crater because that stuff looks real easy to get stuck in.

Re:You lied about your weight...

[meringuoid]

Simple is where it's at, and Rube Goldberg devices to pull the rover out of pits are not on the menu.

Certainly not. Heath Robinson already owns the patents on such devices.

If the crater is the size of a stadium...

[ThomasFlip]

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.

Re:If the crater is the size of a stadium...

[Lispy]

You may be right but there are a lot of things that the rover wants to inspect beforehand, the heatshield for example that touched down just a few hundred meters away. They will go down eventually even if the rover might get stuck but not before they visited some targets ontop of the crater.

Re:If the crater is the size of a stadium...

[Ricin]

... a Wall Mart should fit in :)

Audio Recording?

[DoorFrame]

Why would you be interested in an audio recording of another planet? It's not like you're going to hear someone whispering, or a jet flying by overhead. I'd venture to guess you'd hear very little with the exception of some occasional wind. Maybe if a storm broke out, which I imagine would be something of a catastrophe for the mission in general, you might get some other noises. Otherwise, nothing happens on Mars. There really isn't anything to hear, and adding a microphone seems like a waste of space and resources. I'd rather they add more cameras... maybe video cameras.

You can just see the huge letters already

[Ricin]

BUNNYWOOD

Re:You can just see the huge letters already

[Ricin]

Bwech 32 bit braincells at work? Hate to talk about karma etc but heck...

Well, if I get to deal out mod points I prefer to hand out + points, apart from the rare "overrated" if someone's really gotten too much mod on for example an extremely biased/shaky (think near-troll) view on the subject.

Read this: I was clearly making a JOKE. With so few comments it does make one wonder how 'Redundant' that is. Perhaps I insulted a right wing baggy with patches on it (yes a patch literally means a band-aid talk about revelations) or something at some point. Perhaps the expresion was used many times long ago (although I don't avidly follow Mars stories I'd be pressed hard to have missed a common joke but who knows, any URLs?)

But then again got too much karma anyway so what the heck. Rejoice. Live up to your projected mentality. Hehe I've already won that's kinda nice.

Beep Beep. Playing my part.

Don't follow that link - reason below:

[Anonymous Coward]

lol - you're tryin REAL hard to get people to follow that dumb link aren't you ;-) Well, just so ya'all know, i followed it so ya'all don't have to. It opens up to a page that (using javascript) grabs the contents of your clipboard (if it can) and sends it off peoplesprimary.com or some such place. Afterwards, it forwards you to peoplesprimary.com where a picture of a half naked lady appears with what appears to be fesces on her face and an embedded audio loop that says something to the effect of you looking at gay pr0n -very- loudly. Note: it also seems to lock up mozilla - haven't tried with explorer yet...

Ya know, considering the marssurface.zapto.org 'appears' to be a user's home computer, why not "slashdot" it ? ;-) Might as well get peoplesprimary.com as well (most likely the same person anyway)...

Re:Don't follow that link - reason below:

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail it!
marssurface.zapto.org is just a redirect, but not to the LM mirror on my home connection, that is for special circumstances.
(P.S feel free to mod this down, I already karmawhored a +5 in this article)
-Zeikfried

Expected Mars Rover sequence

[Gordon Bennett]

MR: *blip* SCANNING AREA
Houston: Receiving data.
MR: *beep* FOUND SCATTERED ARTIFACTS
Houston: (operators go quiet) Zoom in on the artifacts, Mars Rover.
MR: *bzt* REGULAR GEOMETRIC FORMS FOUND. SIZE NO LARGER THAN 5" RESEMBLING FRAGMENTS OF METALS
Houston: Ah, that's the Beagle, Mars Rover, continue.
MR: *bip*

One thing I want to know,

[slycer9]

Where are the Popplers??!!
I want some Popplers!!!

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Thanks...

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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!

Had it been Oil...

[advocate_one]

They'd be off in a flash... Expect Mars to be bypassed if Titan is covered in liquid hydrocarbons... :)

Looks like it could be a job for the "Boys from the Dwarf" and the Jupiter Mining Corporation...

Any cunning linguists out there ?

[ballpoint]

Who can decode the ancient Greek message ?
Or is it Russian ?