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Spirit Rover Reaches Safety
dylanduck writes "Good news for rover fans - Spirit is safe for the winter. It had been heading for a north-tilting spot to make sure its solar panels got enough sunlight during the imminent winter to survive, when a sand trap appeared. But, despite its busted wheel, it scooted round and is now sitting pretty. From the article: 'We've got a safe rover,' says principal investigator Steve Squyres. 'That's huge news for us.'"
The science team has had to make some tough decisions about which observations to make and which to cut short as the rover hustled across the plains towards a northerly tilting slope. Squyres says Spirit had to leave the circular target dubbed Home Plate earlier than the science team would have liked. But he now says the outcrop at Low Ridge Haven "might be made of the same stuff".
Yes, its made of rock.
Now wheres the damn aliens we were promised.
I know, I know - its really a good thing.
If it lasts the winter and moves on, dragging a broken wheel around may end up being a blessing in disguise, you never know what it might uncover.
liqbase
I really can not believe that the rovers are still running at all.
NASA did a bang up job on these. Build more and recover the economies of scale!
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Another good example of NASA's success in the unmanned exploration program, which contrasts nicely with the current issues with the Space Shuttle program and its potential successors. Wonder if any of the administrators in charge of the space probe programs can help implement changes in the manned space program.
Once again we see the advantages of an unmanned space program over our manned one.
I'm sorry but I don't see it. Care to elaborate on this point?
While I do think the rovers are a great success I can't help but think that if we would make the proper moves to getting people to the moon we could make space exploration cheaper. Also consider that it's taken the rovers over a year to do what a manned exploration could have completed in a week.
Aside from the durability of the crafts there is little to be amazed by here.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Not really, space is not your local highway and a dozen dead astronauts over twice as many years is not that high of a price. They're aware of the risks involved (as any pilot is), the NASA is aware of them too, only the public ever cries bloody murder, but that's because the public is idiotic.
Many more lives will be lost during the conquest of space, it's part of the game, and the number of lives taken by the whole space conquest is still lower than the daily death toll of car accidents across the US.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
"and the number of lives taken by the whole space conquest is still lower than the daily death toll of car accidents across the US."
No doubt.
Another point about manned and unmanned. The unmanned is great for simple things like this. It can go on and on doing very simple tasks and won't get tired of doing it. The manned flights are for sophisticated situations, but there's another less obvious point. PUshing to get people out there, will develop new technologies in life support that can be used for many other industries both in space, and here at home. Even if we develop great technologies to live in a colony on the moon, or on Mars, we can use those same technologies to extend our stay here on this planet. Since we're doing a good job of burning this one up that cannot support the numbers of people we have.
I know you are not protesting the manned space flight. I just wanted to comment that there are many great reasons for manned space flight that are less obvious than the per mission benefits of the manned flight itself. It would be very unwise to try to send a man to another galaxy on the first shot, if we never figured out how to do it locally first.
Cheers,
Scott
Slashdot.. where people join together in deliberate ignorance.
We've already had plenty of "lame" tags on the stupid articles. It's time we started tagging stuff "awesome". If anything, the rovers most definitely deserve it for their progress.