Mars Probe May Have Spotted Sojourner Rover

Maggie McKee writes "NASA's eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter may have spotted the tiny, toaster oven-sized Sojourner rover just a few meters away from its companion, the Mars Pathfinder lander. It appears to have crawled there in an attempt to re-establish contact with the lander after the lander had already died. But the pictures aren't clear enough to definitively ID the rover, and it's possible Sojourner simply took off on its own. If it were miraculously still alive after 10 years, it could be 3 kilometers away from Pathfinder — and probably impossible to find, even with MRO."

Comments

I spy

[metlin]

I spy with my litle eye something that starts with S.

SOJOURNER? Yay!

Rover

[master_kaos]

Red Rover, Red Rover, Let Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Come Over

HTML version of Sojourner pic

[PeeAitchPee]

.

;-)

Dad .. Dad ????

[UberHoser]

Sorry, the image of the little one crawling to it's dad after a crash.. kinda choked me up ....

Rovers are signs of intelligent life!

[BubbaFett]

Is Mars so boring now that we're just sending things there to look at other things we've sent there?

Re:Rovers are signs of intelligent life!

[MyHair]

From TA I gather they wanted to see what Sojourner did after losing contact...how did its programming to return to base play out?

I'm guessing it's also a sanity check of several factors.

Plus it's nifty cool!

Lastly, perhaps seeing how various known objects appear on the images will help them look for crash sites like Beagle's. MPL presumably is flying through space somewhere, but if they weren't confident of that they could look for its crash site, too.

Even more lastly it's probably interesting to see how the weather affects conditions around long-sitting known objects. Do dunes build up? Do they get dusty or does the wind clean them? Etc.

wow, this is actually kind of sad....

[mdm-adph]

...in a dorky kind of way.

Callous and heartless

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

So when contact with the lander, which was designed to last one month, was lost after three months, ground controllers were not sure what became of Sojourner.

What callous monsters these NASA people are! Poor Sojourner was left to wander around with no means of communicating back home, while dying a slow and lonely death. I had to wipe the tears from my eyes as I read that story.

Re:Callous and heartless

[Tablizer]

Poor Sojourner was left to wander around with no means of communicating back home, while dying a slow and lonely death.

It will meet up with Spirit and together they will party and have children. They are the Adam and Eve of Mars. 6000 years from now billions of robots will read about them in Genesis of the Mars Bible. But the Mars evolutionists will insist Sojourner evolved from toasters and staplers instead of having a Creator (JPL).

Can anyone make out the pic details?

[192939495969798999]

My eyes and monitor are good, but I can't tell what the labels are to. Couldn't anyone draw a line to whatever the item is that they think is the rover? I'm just not seeing it at all. It's like where's Waldo in black and white but with a much, much smaller Waldo.

HOLY CRAP

[everphilski]

;-)

is that a face I see on Mars?

*Much* better pictures on NASA site

[ashitaka]

There is a collection of much higher resolution pictures on the NASA site to the point you can see the ramps on the lander.

It is difficult to see whether the sojurner rover is nearby or not. The programming was set to make it do so but I like the thought of an intrepid little robot setting off on it's own.

"It's a magical world, Hobbes old buddy. Let's go exploring"

Stop wasting this technology on other planets

[Alzheimers]

We're spending all this money so we can spot a lost robot millions of miles away, so why can't we point it back at earth and help me find my KEYS!

GAAAAH!

I Spy BIGGER picture

[iamlucky13]

The article links to a downsized picture. If you really want in on the fun, download the 6.2 MB full size image from the MRO website.

The Pathfinder lander itself is labeled MPF. It's about 2/3 of the way across the image (to the right) and perhaps 500 pixels from the top. It appears lighter than the surrounding material, roughly triangular in shape, and has a slight shadow to the right.

I'm not sure which point they think is the adorable little Sojourner (pic of mockup next to Spirit and Odyssey on earth), but I think it's the two light grey pixels with a shadow about 15-20 pixels north of Pathfinder. That may just be one of the rocks it studied, though.

The parachute and backshell are also labeled. The round object is the aerodynamic backshell that covered the top of the lander during entry. It is attached to the parachute, which is draped over the ground a few meters northeast.

The think the heatshield fragments are pretty self-explanatory, although I'm unsure why it's so scattered. It must have broken up, probably tumbling, shortly after being released.

The distribution of parts around the landscape makes some sense if you know how it landed. Pathfinder entered the Martian atmosphere at about 17,000 mph. It aerobraked using the heatshield down to about 900 mph. After two minutes, the parachute deployed and the heat shield was released. The lander was then lowered on a tether so it would be clear of the backshell. 8 seconds before touchdown, the airbags inflated and retrorockets fired. 2 seconds before touchdown, the tether was cut, with the retrorockets carrying the backshell safely away from the lander, and the Pathfinder bounced down onto its airbags.

I think the Pathfinder payed for itself just in coolness (come on...airbags! Who thinks this stuff up?). Add science and engineering lessons learned, and this mission is priceless.