Slashdot Mirror
Potential Landing Sites for EU Mars Rover Selected
kfz versicherung writes "In 2013 the European Space Agency will launch its mission to Mars - ExoMars. The multi-million-euro mission calls for a rover weighing just over 200kg
that can trundle over the martian soil in search of past and present life. Now prime landing spots have
been selected. The list includes two sites at Meridiani Planum, the flat expanse near Mars' equator where Nasa's Opportunity
found possible evidence for an ancient sea. Early in Earth's history, all the primordial biochemistry took place in phyllosilicates, some kind of mineral that is a good matrix for preserving organic matter. Scientists are guessing that a similar site is the best place to start looking for fossil life on the Red Planet."
ps. Because this is /., I have to add in that I relize they will NOT be running. Its a JOKEY POO!
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
After the raging success (not) of the last effort, they're looking for somewhere soft to land.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Why don't we just pick the site that will have the most interesting impact crater when this thing inevitably crashes in to a million expensive peices?
I vote that the Europeans attempt to crash in to an American rover. Maby then it will have an impact.
We've been sending satellites and objects to mars for a long time now (USA) some succeeded several failed. This being the EU first rover I really hope it makes it. Mars has a tendency to chew up man made objects.
...before we'll need traffic lights on Mars
This is just a way to keep their rover project in the news. It would be wise on ESA's part to have a successful lander before attempting the rover mission, but hey, its their Euro. The nuclear powered Mars Science Laboratory launches in summer 2009 and they haven't committed to a landing site. What for? NASA has an eagle eyed spacecraft in orbit in the Global Surveyor that is discovering great stuff all the time.
- First, phyllosilicates are minerals whose structure is built out of SiO4 tetrahedra polymerized into 2-D sheets at the atomic scale. Examples are clay minerals and micas (biotite and muscovite, principally).
- Second, the "life began on phyllosilicates" is merely an interesting hypothesis, and has not made it to the stage of theory. The basis for this is that phyllosilicates have those sheets stacked up in a periodic structure, and the spacing can be on the order of the spacing in RNA (disclaimer: I'm no expert on this hypothesis, and I don't have the paper in front of me now).
- Finally, there's no way that phyllosilicates, or any mineral, are going to "preserve organic matter". Organic matter preservation is simply related to the history of the material (e.g., temperature, pressure, time).
-Dave HirschAssoc. Prof. of Geology
Western WA Univ.
Given the past history of Mars probes (and european/UK ones in particular) I think they should choose a location that's featureless and well photographed, so that when the vehicle does go SPLAT! they'll at least be able to see where it's pieces are.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
...simply made a http://www.google.com/mars/ mash-up to select the landing sites.
Why does NASA have a fixation on sending single units to Mars ?
Why can't NASA work on a mission which will deposit 10's or 100's of rovers ?
Granted, there is a weight problem here, since each rover would have to be very light to carry that many of them to Mars.
However imagine the coolness factor of 20 or 30 sojourners running around the surface of mars. You could split modularized science experiments up among them, having a basic structure and each having a set of modular science experiment units.
With modularized components built in (relatively) large quantities the marginal cost of sending 30 rovers to Mars should be minimal.
Seems to me that your chances of finding something interesting go up dramatically.
Absolute statements are never true
Is that you?
I'm telling ya', when we do finally get there we are going to find Beagle 2 with no wheels, the antenna busted off (used to smash open the camera lenses), and strange graffiti that translates to "All your rover are belong to us!" in Martian.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I may be nit-picking- but the ESA and the EU are actually rather distinct entities. The EU has no space agency.
.EU addresses. The ESA however will remain under .int in the foreseeable future (it has a redirect from esa.eu to esa.int though).
Some ESA member states, such as Switzerland, are not EU members, and they usually become rather touchy if ESA and EU get too close for comfort.
EU institutions are all switching to
The pacific ocean!
Anyway, http://mmmgroup.altervista.org/e-trees.html I have yet to find out if this is a hoax or not. If it's not, why not drop a probe in the bush area (Yeah, keep smilin') depicted and see what pops up? (okay, that did it, I'm outta here) (doh!)
Karma: Bad is the liberal way of saying this guy won't drink the kool aid here on slash dot. I wear my Karma with pride
This is interesting to me in two ways.
Since the EU rovers would likely have a different science package, they'd be able to do more research into what the NASA rovers have already done. That's cool.
But, and this is the part I find the coolest
For some reason, the idea of having two probes sent years apart to the same planet end up in the same location is actually a very cool sounding thing. Having them photograph one another would be sorta mind boggling.
Granted, it may not be as good from a purely science choice -- but, I guess the geek factor of achieving that is kind of impressive. We've had very little luck getting things even to Mars
Anyway, it's probably not nearly as cool to everyone else.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The next one will be at least partly plutonium-powered
Correction. The next *US* rover will be. (I don't know what power system the EU one is yet.)
Table-ized A.I.
Did it dawn on anybody else that the rover shown in the BBC article looks like a mailbox? It may end up breaking down, and the cause will be that Martains stuffed it full of envelopes.
Table-ized A.I.
Communications lag is irrelevant.
"scientists like to study the surveys taken first before/if they pick a spot to investigate close-up. It takes at least a few hours to do this"
Read Isaac Asimov; in one of his stories, a very remote spacecraft gets into trouble and they are wondering what to tell the astronauts to try, since the communications lag means that they won't get a chance to get an answer for more than two attempts. The mission control director's mother suggests that they gossip: just keep talking at both ends about things to try and results from trying them, until the problem is resolved.
Any scientist who let the rover sit idle after sending orders for investigating something, rather than taking that time to pick the next target and send it to the rover so that when it's done with its previous target, it immediately goes on to the next one, is an idiot, didn't read science fiction as a kid, doesn't understand sliding window protocols, or all three.
-- Terry
The EU is not the ESA.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
...the MER's cost several hundred million each, you only get one shot at screwing up by driving carelessly, they aren't fully autonomous, there's little incentive to hurry, and they needed confidence of scientific return rather than a technology demonstrator. The DARPA grand challenge vehicles cost at most 0.1% of that, there was an incentive to be fast, they were required to operate autonomously, the point of the project was experimental technology demonstration with high risks, and if you screwed up you could always recover your gear and use it for other purposes.
Are you new here?