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Mars Odyssey Begins Overtime
thhamm writes "NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter begins working overtime today after completing a prime mission that discovered vast supplies of frozen water, ran a safety check for future astronauts, and mapped surface textures and minerals all over Mars, among other feats. An extended Mission until 2006 has been approved, and I hope it will last that long, maybe doing more safety checks for astronauts :)"
Umm, isn't this the first step towards the Doom 3 premise? I mean do we really want to start exploring Mars? It'll just eventually lead up to colonization via the Union Aerospace Corporation. Please somebody think of the poor Doom space marine that will have to go through this.
It will not be eligible for overtime pay.
Mars Rovers != Mars Odyssey.
Ice on Mars
Odyssey Mission to Mars
Since they found indications of lots of frozen water near the surface in the south polar region, I wonder if there are any plans to send a probe/rover there?
They found "copius hydrogen" in the area, and "Researchers interpret the hydrogen as frozen water", but can we be sure without taking a look on the ground?
Seems like the next logical step...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
sending overtime-work to Mars is the kind of outsourcing we all love
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Like the Mars rovers for example:
If I was smart enough to be a NASA engineer I think I'd figure out that people are much happier with your performance when you exceed expectations. It's not like anyone knows what to expect from a Mars orbiter anyways. Nobody looks at the mission statement before launch and says "400 days? Gee, for 3.3 billion I expected more in the range of 550-580 days."Not anyone I know anyways. Maybe other people have more astrophysicist friends.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
The rovers' task is to find out how exactly that water influenced Mars in the past (and maybe even present). Long lasting huge oceans? Short wet periods? Or maybe only moist periods, not really wet at all? These science results will then be used to give a future mission a better chance of finding life, or proof of past life. If there ever was life on Mars, of course.
karma capped
According to the newly revised FLSA, the Mars Odyssey would be considered a professional exempt robot, as it's carrying out highly technical, professional tasks. Don't be mean and get the little robot's hopes up!
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Surely, though, the radiation that hits Mars, even at 2 or 3 times what Earth's surface gets, would be far less than what hits the moon...
This is me. Don't like it? That's unlucky.
How long does it take for Microsoft to get all patent rights for interplanetary email?
There is also a new Microsoft innovation, called MS Solar time, method for keeping track of time on different planets. It is based on the microsoft scheduler and the office assistant "Kenny the Galactic Clock".
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
The radiation on mars will not be nearly as big a deal as the trip to mars will be. It is almost certain that initially, we will have to live underground rather than on top. If we do so, it protects us from Radiation, 300 MPH winds, Easier to insulate, etc.etc.
I am in hopes that we will send a private mission to mars and not have them return. It would be far more useful to send a small mission on a one way trip, with a supply ship once a year. They could build a small base, expand our knowledge of Mars a million fold over what simple remote vehicles do today, just due to the fact that they would need all sorts of cpu power there. In addition, they would be able to control system there quickly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Odyssey was launched in 2001... here's the mission timeline for more details.
The cute little bugger looks like this.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
You really missed out on some big news then. I guess i should also inform you about the alien machine discovered on mars near one of these vast supplies of frozen water and a life form that appears to be a woman with three tits.
This message was brought to you by the death of 30 brain cells.
http://libo.ru/ind/graf1/3086.jpg
The scientist, that claimed the Viking Probes showed signs of microbial life, now has a new theory.
He seems to see signs of water on recent Rover images, squished out by the wheels and the RAT tool.
Even if there is/ever was no life, interesting find though, that liquid water exists on such a world. I think this raises the odds of finding life somewhere else quit a bit. Maybe Europa?
About time! for too long Mars has been a flat-shaded sphere.
According to Chris McKay from NASA they will be. He's a big terraforming proponent and he outlined a near future mission in which a rover will scoop up some dirt into a bell jar, and they will attempt to grow a mustard plant. He said they'll probably have to do it on the moon first for political reasons but it's on the works.
I don't have a link of anything but he gave this talk at the Mars Soceity's convention last week.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Landing on an earthlike Mars would be nice but not totally necessary for early astronauts. I'm about at pro-terraforming as it gets but even I think that landing humans on an un-terraformed Mars is best for science.
At a talk given by Chris McKay this weekend, he was asked something like "when do we give up the search for life and start terraforming?" That's kind of a sticky question because it's kind of like proving a negative. However he pointed out a region in the southern hemisphere which is older than the north, still has an earth-strength magnetosphere and is Siberian in nature. He said that once a kilometer deep core is drilled, checked for life and nothing is found that there is almost certainly no life on Mars nor was there ever.
It will take people to do that investigation. My personal hope is that nothing is found and terraforming can begin.
For a good treatment of terraforming, read Robert Zubrin's "The Case For Mars".
Blaze a trail to the New World
Both the Jupiter Gallileo and Venus Magellan projects went triple their design lifespans. However, they could have gone even longer, had NASA not canned them. Both were getting "creaky": insufficient propellant to do much, and instruments breaking down. Plus it costs a fair amount of money- up to 30% of the original mission cost per year- for a slice of the Deep Space Network and scientist to run and analyze the data.
We'll probably see this debate about the Mars Rovers if they survive into 2005. Both are already 2.5x their design lifetimes, have some instrument failures (a sick wheel motor, a dead spectrograph), and are tying up a couple hundred engineer and scientists full time.