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Opportunity Rover Encounters Its Own Heat Shield
blamanj writes "Mars Rover Opportunity, a few meters shy of the 2km mark on its odometer, has come across the remains of the heat shield from its landing. This map traces the path of the rover for the past 11 months. It's been averaging about 6 meters/sol.
Spirit, which had to stop to dislodge a rock, is still climbing the "Columbia Hills". It's tough going, and Spirit experiences slippage of up to 80% as it climbs the hills."
Since I assume that they would not know the precise location of the shield, it must have been quite a moment when the thing first slewed into view. It's a bitch getting that Mountain Dew out of the keyboard, isn't it?
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
The crushed-body of an evidently indigenous species was found sprawled in the impact zone of the heat shield....
That stuff is gonna be worth a lot of money some day, when a kid digs it up in their back yard. On Mars. You know, after we all move there.
"It's tough going, and Spirit experiences slippage of up to 80% as it climbs the hills."
Sounds a bit like trying to get out of Gehennom with the amulet.
From the article;
"A potato-sized rock got caught in Spirits's right rear wheel on sol 339"
Come *on* NASA. Potatos vary so wildly in size that comparisons like this are totally useless!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
NASA discovered microbes in the immediate area...
They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera that let them know exactly how far away it was. There's actually been several pictures. I forget how long ago they knew, but they've known for some time where it was.
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long, so it's only now that they get around to looking at it.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Straight line? You act as if the goal of the mission is to actually have the rover cover distance. When I look at that map, I see the rover going from one interesting object to the next. It's cool that they've covered two kilometers, but it's the stopping and looking, not the moving, that is the point.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
After the heat shield, what will Opportunity look at? There's really not a whole lot--not even very many rocks--on that plain.
Are there scientific targets identified, or are they maybe going to try to "sprint" Opportunity and see how far it can get in the shortest amount of time? Maybe there's other potential sites of interest some distance away.
--
$tar -xvf
Not at all.
The rovers are astonishing in what they can do, but a human would dramatically outpace them. What it might take a rover an entire day to do, a human could do in a 30-45 seconds.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
It's not often that we get a chance to examine the integrity of the remaining heat shield in these missions. Let it take a look and see what JPL guys can learn from it for future missions, eh?
It will be interesting to see how much sand has been blown over the shield in almost a year. Might give more insights into Martian weather.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Yeah, I had 80% slippage my first time, too. But you get better after that and it's not as embarassing.
I'd assume the value in looking at the heat shield is to determine how well it performed. I'd guess that's one thing you can never adequately test and maybe getting pictures of the shield can determine if it performed better, worse,or as expected. Obviously this could make future missions more reliable, cheaper, etc.
AccountKiller
Lutefisk is a disgusting Norwegian dish, think of it as fish jell-o. You take some perfectly good pieces of dried fish (yuck) and soak them in lye (yes, really!) for 24 hours. Then you soak the fish in fresh water for 48 hours, before putting it in a pan and letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. Finally you wrap the fish in aluminium foil and bake in the oven at 200C for 30-40 minutes.
The result is a quivering mass of translucent, inedible fish that is served with potatoes, bacon, mashed peas and melted butter (or melted pork fat).
Now, what I want to know is, how did that disgusting dish of spoiled fish end up as the (informal) name of a rock on Mars?
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
After the heat shield, what will Opportunity look at?... Are there scientific targets identified, or are they maybe going to try to "sprint" Opportunity and see how far it can get in the shortest amount of time?
I have the NASA rover plans right here, and the schedule is as follows:
1. explore Endurance crater (complete)
2. examine discarded heat shield (complete)
3. run rover for endurance trials
4. sprint rover (you called it)
5. race rover
6. jump rover
7. make rover do acrobatic tricks
8. crash rover
9. profit
- 1 Opportunity
- P Pancam
- 155450047 Number of seconds since Jan 1, 2004 at 11:58::55.816. (works out to Sol 307)
- Data product full frame EDR
That sort of stuff. I lost interest at that point.And no, I've not heard any comments on this picture yet. There are other pictures with frost, but water would be puzzling on the Martian surface at that pressure and temperature.
I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned a leak in the Opportunity's radiator.
.... .. .... ..
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
It's quite far away. Keeping in mind that the entire distance the rover has traveled is about 2km, if the beagle probe was only 10km away (really, really, really close in planetary terms), it would still most likely be "out of reach". And even if we could get to it, what would we do? Poke at it with the rock abrasion tool?
When (yes when) humans colonize Mars and non-engineer/scientific humans are living there I wonder what they will do with the man made stuff from long ago that will be sitting there inert.
I have a couple of theories as to what the human race will do with this stuff:
a) Cordon off the area around the rovers and heat shields etc. as a "heritage park" for people to visit and think about the events of the past
b) Take the stuff and stick it in a museum on earth
c) As above but create the museum on Mars
d) Melt it down and recycle it
e) Revive the electronics and re-purpose the robots etc.
f) Dump it in the nearest canyon as landfill
Any other suggestions?
"And then I visited Wikipedia
Parent forgot to post where the pictures are, go to:
C:\My Documents\My Pictures\Mars Rover Mission
You'll find them there.
Its a bit subtle, but consider when you drive your RC car around and it hits a rock, flops over, and you walk over and flip it over.
On Mars, theres nobody there to flip the Rover over, or even dislodge stuff from it's tires. They spend all day preparing for a slight bit of movement just so they don't make a mistake worth millions of taxpayer dollars.
In this picture taken by Spirit early in the mission, you can see "Husband Hill" labeled as "E", about 3km away. It's on this hill right now. Opportunity has spent more time carefully looking around a dangerous crater instead of going for distance.
Sojourner only moved about 100 meters and was a huge success. Its most popular accomplishment was taking this picture before it even left the lander.
The "90 days" was certainly something they expected - maybe even double that. But they also knew that the Martian winter was coming up and that Mars would go behind the Sun, causing Earth to lose contact with the rovers for a number of days.
I think they were really surprised both rovers made it through the Martian winter. That Opportunity is actually back up to the normal output for the solar panels is a welcome surprise.
Spirit doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well. There's problem with the lubrication of the wheels, the brakes may not be releasing - or the circuit that detects them releasing has gone bad, and the dust accumulation on the solar panels has taken it's toll.
There might be more wrong with the Spirit rover, but even I've been skipping some of the updates on the web site.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long
I was at a presentation by one of the members of the rover science teams six weeks ago.
If there are no surprises, he was talking about the rovers possibly lasting till June or July. By that time, he was suggesting that the rover's batteries would no longer be able to hold enough charge to keep the things operating.
For a while they had been expecting that the solar panels would fail first, but apparently the rate of dust accumulation is less than they expected. (Plus "martian carwash" events seem to have cleared off some of the dust. He felt such events were probably caused by dust devils that happened to cross over the rover.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
You have to remember the goal of this mission isn't to move the furthest distance from the landing zone as possible. It's to explore the surface of Mars, something you find every few centimeters :).
Much of this "exploration" involves stopping every few metres to sit around for a day or so and test rock and soil samples.
And even when it is on the roll, each rover doesn't move terribly fast, and often needs to navigate around terrain. Nevermind the fact that if you did want to move a long distance, you'd only be able to move a few metres, take a snapshot of your surrroundings, send them back to Earth, and await the next set of movement instructions. Both sending the snapshot and retreiving the next set of instructions takes several hours due to the distances involved, resulting in quite a bit of time spent not going anywhere.
Yaz.
The sun is named Sol. A "sol" is what we calls days except a sol is longer. Mars doesn't rotate as quickly as Earth thus making the days longer. Apparently the guys at JPL felt funny about making the "day" longer than the traditional 24 hours we experience here on Earth. They even began sleeping according to Martian sols.
What is your penile percentile?
I know it isn't going to happen due to the distances involved, but I'd love it if one of these rovers (or one of the rovers to follow...) were to come across Viking I and/or II. It would be interesting to see how they have withstood the test of time in the last 28 years since their landing. I imagine there is quite a bit of useful science that could be conducted, as both are known variables from nearly 30 years ago, and we have a lot of data from them about their surroundings.
At the same time, Viking I and Viking II are two of the extraterrestrial missions I have early memories of. I was three when they landed, and continued transmitting data until I was nine. So these are old friends I wouldn't mind revisiting.
The current missions aren't close enough to either one to make it, but maybe a future mission will give up a glimpse of these past heroes. One can hope :).
Yaz.
And even if we could get to it, what would we do? Poke at it with the rock abrasion tool?
If they could get both rovers over there they could take a picture of one rover pointing at the biggest chunk from the debris field and NASA engineers could photoshop in a 'EuroSpaceTrash' sign. You know, like the kind you used to hang on passed out drunks in the frat house, or like Lyndie England might do.
The Freedom Fries Congress ought to vote NASA a budget increase after that.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This has been pointed out before:
The cameras used on the rovers have wide sensitivity to the whole visible light spectrum + more than just a bit on each side. Greyscale cameras are more useful when doing science. You plunk a variety of filters over it (I think they have 9?) and you can 'see' from UV down to infra-red.
"Simple" Red+Green+Blue cameras are a poor equivalent in comparison. For example, different minerals are clearly visible at certain wavelengths. Your "standard" colour camera will have a hard time picking out a mineral if it reflects light somewhere between red and green, where a specific filter on the greyscale camera can highlight it without trouble. To drastically simplify a whole heap-o-science, imagine a colour camera with Red+Green+Blue PLUS IR+Yellow+UV+Orange+Purple+Pink sensors. That's what's on the rovers.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Close.
:p
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\My Pictures\Mars Rover Mission
Cuz all those NASA geeks just *have* to be Admin, you know
They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera
IIRC, the first images of the shield came from the rover's "decent" cameras when it was a few miles high. The images were used by the lander system to correct for vertical motion, which would have otherwise caused the air-bag-encased rover to bounce and roll too much. The system simply kept the adjustment images for later use and they were sent back to Earth soon after landing.
Table-ized A.I.
They would last years (assuming the dust doesn't screw up the wheels), be able to travel much farther, and opperate at night.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.