Mars Rover Ready for Risky Descent into Crater

Riding with Robots writes "After months of scoping out the terrain, the robotic geologist Opportunity is ready to drive down into Victoria Crater on the Meridiani Plains of Mars. Mission managers acknowledge the hardy rover may never come back out, but say they think the potential for discovery is worth it. 'The rover has operated more than 12 times longer than its originally intended 90 days. The scientific allure is the chance to examine and investigate the compositions and textures of exposed materials in the crater's depths for clues about ancient, wet environments. As the rover travels farther down the slope, it will be able to examine increasingly older rocks in the exposed walls of the crater. '"

Comments

How long would it take?

[Ub3rT3Rr0R1St]

If it's taken us this long to reach a hopefully significant leap in the exploration of Mars, how long do you guys think it would take for a man to be able to set foot on Mars to actually get some first person perspective on the planet itself?

I ask, because I've seen a lot of planning going on in terms of living on Mars, but I can't help wonder, "Why all this planning and scheming, when we haven't even had concrete, indisputable evidence that Mars can sustain life, much less had someone actually get there?"

Re:A moment of reflection...

[Kadin2048]

I'm totally with you. Although, I think the Voyager missions are even more humbling.

Voyager 2 weekly reports (from 1995 to 2007, not sure where the 1977 to 1995 ones are) available:
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/weekly-reports /

Re:It will make it!

[TrevorB]

I'm actually surprised they're that concerned about getting out again. Literally, there's nowhere else to go. We already have 2 years of survey data from the non-cratered surface.

This mission will end in Victoria crater, regardless of how long the rover lasts. The only reason to leave is to test the engineering capabilities of an aging rover to climb back out again.

Re:These missions seem pre-scripted

[ColdWetDog]

and load up sensors to test every single one of them,

The landed weight is 348 kg. It's mission is not to "explore strange new worlds and go boldly where no man has gone before..." it is:

The scientific goals of the rover missions are to gather data to help determine if life ever arose on Mars, characterize the climate of Mars, characterize the geology of Mars, and prepare for human exploration of Mars. To achieve these goals, seven science objectives are called for: 1) search for and characterize a variety of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity, 2) determine the distribution and composition of minerals, rocks, and soils surrounding the landing sites, 3) determine what geologic processes have shaped the local terrain and influenced the chemistry 4) perform "ground truth" of surface observations made by Mars orbiter instruments, 5) search for iron-bearing minerals, identify and quantify relative amounts of specific mineral types tha contain water or were formed in water, 6) characterize the mineralogy and textures of rocks and soils and determine the processes that created them, and 7) search for geological clues to the environmental conditions that existed when liquid water was present and assess whether those environments were conducive to life.

Very limited, very specific. Hopefully one of the first Mars landers, not the last. It took some five years (IIRC) to go from that paragraph to the actual spacecraft. During that time there were innumerable meetings / arguments / pointed emails about what scientific packages would fly on the landers. Some of those decisions were likely pretty prosaic - It might simply have been that they actually had some or all of the technology in a package that could be built and tested in the time frame and budget allotted.

You somehow manage to find some deep, dark defects in the soul of NASA in a pretty mundane engineering exercise.

You should get out more often.