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Mars Probe Brings the "Weather Rock" New Respect
radioweather writes "What looked to casual observers like a malfunction, a dangling wire with
something on the end, seen in the
first photo of
the meteorological mast on NASA's
Phoenix Mars Lander,
actually
turned out to be the real instrument. Surprisingly, it is much like the
novelty 'weather rock' seen as a novelty gag around the world. The instrument
called the 'Telltale'
is described as a 'passive wind indicator' and uses an extremely lightweight
Kapton tube hanging in Kevlar fiber. Images taken of the instrument will show
the deflection of the Telltale due to the Martian wind."
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Fascinating. This may be the first time 'angle of dangle' could be used in an actual scientific context.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Don't you hate it when... Simple makes sense?
Anything you say will be held against you.
Simon and Garfunkle fans think.. The answer my friend is blowing in the wind...
Wonder if they included some good old fashioned Dowsing Rods to find water too?
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Why didn't they put in a lightweight weather vane with a small fan? That way they could tell direction and velocity. With the rock you can basically gauge the initial wind, but once it starts swinging in the opposite direction its practically impossible to tell if the deflection is from an opposing wind or merely the pendulum swinging. It becomes even more useless if there are sudden changes in wind speed/direction since it will just seemingly bounce round in random directions none of which are reflective of the actual wind direction or velocity.
I don't see how this is any better than a weather vane, cheaper, or smaller. It sure is way more useless.
Nice save, NASA.
And they already had enough respect as a simple form of wind indicator. You may have seen one at an airport, for example. It's not a weather rock.
See, the point, or "joke" as it were, of the weather rock is that it can't actually tell you anything you wouldn't have already known due to your own senses. "If it's wet it's raining, white it's snowing, bouncing and there's an earthquake." But you could tell all those things without the rock... get it?
A wind sock isn't very sophisticated, but it tells us things that wouldn't have been as apparent without it.
The enemies of Democracy are
So, of course, they will collect both angle of dangle (azimuth) AND degree of dangle (intensity), both of which vary over time and circumstances. I just don't want to know what they are using for the low-budget ground based simulator. "No Jim, lay back down. Your shift isn't over."
Invenio via vel creo
Telltales have long been used in sailing. Most sails have some visible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell-tale
That they are incredibly rudimentary and primitive does not diminish their usefullness, provided they're used for what they're meant for. They're not going to predict anything, for example.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
I think I saw this somewhere in a textbook. I believe it was when Spain was looking for a new route somewhere... oh ya! that is in 1600's my bad. They used that to find wind I forgot, NASA=Outdated. I guess they will use Dowsing Rods.
Martian weather forecasting rock
o Rock has dust on it - there has been a martian sand storm
o Rock is swaying back and forth slighly - a martian sand storm is brewing
o Rock cannot be seen - there is a martian sand storm
o Rock is white - there is frozen water on Mars
o Rock is levitating - There is a UFO with an anti-gravity beam
o Rock is floating - Rock is in orbit around planet
o Rock has gone - UFO has been here and removed rock
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I can't wait for the first manned landing with the first weather report from Mars. "Well it looks kind of windy, hold on, let me take my glove and helmet off so I can lick my finger and hold it up to get a measurement of what direction the wind is blowing...." "POOF!" "ARRRGGGGGG!"
"Mars base, this is Houston, over"
"Mars base, this is Houston, over"
"Damn, I think we lost another weatherman..."
Occam's Razor.
Thank you for bringing us this "Telltale tale."
Invenio via vel creo
We were at the beach Everybody had matching towels Somebody went under a dock And there they saw a rock It wasn't a rock It was a rock lobster!
Condition______________________Forecast
Stone is Wet___________________Liquid Water on Mars!
Stone is Dry___________________Mars Still a Frozen Desert
Shadow on Ground_______________Sunny
White on Top___________________Well, We Did Land At The North Pole
Can't See Stone________________Dusty, or Phoenix Broken
Swing Stone____________________Windy
Stone Jumping Up and Down______Marsquake
Stone Gone_____________________Aliens
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
an extremely lightweight Kapton tube
Behind the nearest large rock is some Alien...
Kapton!
Kaptoff!
Kapton!
The Kaptor!
To the best of my ability to read, we just spent a few million dollars so that we could learn the direction the wind was blowing. At one point. On a rock. A rock very, very far away from here. Where no humans fly, boat, or do anything else which benefits in the slightest from wind directional data.
Except, you know, that whole "understanding the environment of Mars" which benefits quite a bit from knowing about the wind. Sure it's only one location. On the other hand, it will be the only measurement we've ever had and thus a substantial increase in knowledge. They could have spent more on more sophisticated devices, compromising the mass (and dollar) budget, if you really wanted to.
It's hard for me to imagine how you could approve of the overall $420 million project, yet disapprove of this simple, lightweight, and relatively cheap instrument. If you're expecting anything discovered by the Phoenix to have a direct impact on sailing, boating, or any other thing we do here on earth, well, it's possible it will happen eventually, but don't hold your breath. So is it the entire concept of investigating other planets in our solar system that bothers you? Or is it really just the unsophisticated wind indicator?
The enemies of Democracy are
A dowsing rod doesn't actually detect anything (even according to practitioners) - it is simply a device to magnify subconscious body language of the operator. The theory is that the human operator detects water via poorly understood senses below conscious awareness. Some dowsers don't bother with the rods, claiming to have trained themselves to become more aware of these senses.
I know I "see" something like a flash of light whenever someone turns on a fluorescent light with magnetic ballast in another room - so I don't think the idea of additional senses is completely crazy.
First you think third graders learning science is pointless busywork and then you think a $420M probe to Mars has this wind detector as its sole and only purpose? Get over your jaded self, please.
Are you kidding?
On the off chance you are not: the telltale is but one tiny instrument among many others that are much more sophisticated. A freebie, if you will. The vehicle is a very complex, self-contained geological lab, including:
+ Robotic Arm
+ Robotic Arm Camera
+ Mars Descent Imager
+ Meteorological Station
+ Surface Stereo Imager
+ Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer
Evil is the money of root.
Well, for instance, if it turns out the wind is steady and in only one direction, or varies with the seasons, that would be very useful information to have. Sure, it's one data point, but it's one data point over a long period of time, and one which can be correlated with more indirect methods to calibrate those instruments.
The pressure is too low for more sophisticated methods, even the traditional weather vane and anemometer wouldn't overcome bearing friction except in gale force winds. It and the more exotic methods use almost an order of magnitude more mass than the system in question (the camera was already on the lander, for instance.)
If you're going to send a $420 million lander to a remote place on mars, why not spend the extra buck and get two more pieces of information about that rock?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
This just in, casual observers have seen what look like round objects that have attached themselves to the bottom of the Phoenix Lander that don't appear to be moving in any of the pictures. Scientists have confirmed that these are wheels. A simple solution used since the dawn of mankind, they are being used to move the Lander across the surface of Mars. They appear not to be moving because the camera takes pictures too quickly to observe their slow rotation speed.
figured here would be a good place to bring up
Would it be difficult to design a small launcher that could contain scooped rocks, dirt, etc from Mars and be launched towards Earth?
It does not have to hit Earth - it can be picked up in Space near Earth somehow and brought back in
Just thinking out loud during a bored moment at work.
Will keep tigers away?
Actually I was hoping they would have seen some condensation on it.
What?
Of course we'd have to wonder why we do anything on a rock at all when there are no humans there. We do not see an immediate application as a product, thus this kind of science is useless.
Or, of course, these kinds of experiment help us understand the system that make up Mars so that at a later point we are able to actually do something with the planet - mine it, for instance. Yes, being able to predict the Martian wind is important for that; an unforseen sandstorm at the wrong time might destroy the rocket used to get the stuff into orbit.
There is a life past next quarter and sometimes you do have to invest without knowing for certain that you wil see returns in the immediate future.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
So they hung a string from a pole and called it a 'wind-measuring device'
Yeah, it's great and works really well, but did they really need the 'extremely lightweight Kapton tube hanging in Kevlar fiber'
How about a bit of fishline?
No troll, why did they need something so sophisticated? The martin environment is hostile, and the string would need to be awfully light, but why wouldn't a bit of reflective fishline work? It'd hold up pretty well...
And before I say this, let me say that I think NASA needs to be given more money; space research is important.
But how much did they spend on this 'extremely lightweight Kapton tube hanging in Kevlar fiber', that looks like it could be replaced with fishline?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
To me this is the most exciting thing to happen to space exploration in a very long time. We're about to get an idea of what's inside the Martian soil. We just carried out a remote landing on a different planet without using airbags to bounce around aimlessly. and we're looking to get quite a little bit of data from it.
The most important thing to come out of this is to have a new generation of kids interested in space exploration - I mean aside from fragging aliens. I don't know about anyone else, but those first images from the lander of the Martian ground send shivers down my spine.-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
...cause it took a CD up with it containing Earth's greatest hits!
http://fawkes4.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_532.jpg
Either that, or Apple's scored a deal with NASA to lock in the Martian music market...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
This is a great experiment. Please re-read the paper you linked. The telltale was selected as a budget-friendly alternative to other wind measurement instruments. It's a very simple and reliable tool that can provide valuable data. It also does the job without using the lander's valuable battery power.
Recording wind direction and relative speed allows for some basic meteorology. With some calibration it can even provide absolute wind speed. It also can be used to determine local wind conditions before deploying other experiments that might be affected by high winds in a particular direction.
You want the government to deliver results? It did.
PS: Your windsocks, while maybe not of practical use to most third graders, are still used at airports around the world to provide critical wind data to pilots.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
From: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/science03.php "Objective 1: Study the History of Water in All its Phases Currently, water on Mars' surface and atmosphere exists in two states: gas and solid. At the poles, the interaction between the solid water ice at and just below the surface and the gaseous water vapor in the atmosphere is believed to be critical to the weather and climate of Mars. Phoenix will be the first mission to collect meteorological data in the Martian arctic needed by scientists to accurately model Mars' past climate and predict future weather processes." So, this simple device is tracking the movement of a key element (gaseous water vapor in the atmosphere) locally. Probably to detect how fast the surface wind is moving and calculate how much water vapor it can pick up from the solid water ice below the surface. The LIDAR probably takes a broader view while the orbital takes a global view. Just a guess.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
But how much did they spend on this 'extremely lightweight Kapton tube hanging in Kevlar fiber', that looks like it could be replaced with fishline?
Kapton and Kevlar are both used in aerospace engineering. Kevlar is often used to sheath fiber optic cables and in composites. According to Wikipedia, Kapton is used as an aerospace (electrical) insulator and plastic structural support in space. Know what? Being aerospace engineers and all, in a lab environment, they might have just had this stuff lying around, and cut a few lengths as needed. I don't know that for a fact, but chances are...
Now compare that to the cost of sending someone out to buy fishing line (fishing line + gas + vehicle maintenance and insurance + employee time on the clock) and you tell me which is cheaper...
from mars. In imperial units that's
about one and a half our.
Aw, come on guys. It's the only thing worthwhile the danish scientists at the mars lab at the University of Aarhus contributed to the mission. I've been at their lab a couple of times to see it.
Apparently they have one of the only wind tunnels specifically designed to simulate the Martian environment, which meant they got to make that silly wind gauge. And somewhere else in Denmark they have a special kind of dirt which can be used to simulate soil from mars. It contains a high level of iron oxides. It has magnetic properties and being a fine grain soil etc.
K'breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders mocked the primitive meteorological technologies of the invaders from the evil blue planet at a recent audience with the free and independent press.
"This confirms our longstanding assessment of their inferior technical capabilities. Their eventual defeat at our splors is assured."
When asked for other examples of amusing, primitive technologies on the mechanical invader, K'breel declined comment, but instead urged that loyal Martians not forget the broken wheel on the crippled and failed attacker elsewhere on the planet.
(With apologies to TMM).
HOW DARE YOU QUESTION NASA'S NEEDLESS BLOAT SPENDING!!!!!
Seriously, fuck you slashdotters who mod this guy troll when he brings up a perfectly valid point about needless wasteful spending of American tax dollars. Just because he criticizes your precious infallible science machine doesn't mean he needs to be modded troll for speaking out on the truth. NASA refused to ackknowledge the waste that is a shuttle program when there are far more cheaper and efficient ways to put people in space. Finnaly they are scraping that 50 year old technology and "moving forward" onto somthing else while the russians and chinese have free reigns on space travel. You ignorant hardheaded bastards..
Titties however...
That is a good hypothesis. I have unusually sensitive hearing. I cannot use power tools without hearing protection. I cannot enjoy concerts at normal volume level. I can't stand noisy computers (give me quiet over a another Ghz any day). It will require some thought to set up a reasonably controlled experiment (e.g. me not knowing whether the switch is actually thrown).
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
When racing sailboats, every little of winds counts. You can see strong winds coming over the water at a distance, but the ones next to you are difficult to make out. So, you fix small feathers to strong lightweight thread to the fore, side and back stays, and it becomes possible to see the wind as it shifts around. Including watching how your sail impacts the wind. Obviously when the winds are 20-60 mph, nobody will care, but the light 1-15 is very important. It use to makes the difference of wether you can beat Buddy Melges or not.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Phoenix / Firebird / Firefox / Firestone / Firefire probe.
Maybe I start a profitable business of selling non-copyrighted names...
Who is "Telltale"?
Is he one of those li'l coloured ribbons hanging from the sail showing the airflow?
Anyhow, when sailing - to determine the wind direction and strength- we usually use a plastic supermarket bag - hopefully emptied of all its booze - tied to one of the mainmast stays, where it's easily visible from the wheel.
I dunno what we'll do when plastic has been finally banned from the supermarkets and liqueur stores... go back to using the heavier (and less reliable) ensign, I guess.
.
- aqk
F U
This was actually developed by Carlos Lange from the University of Alberta. It was constructed in Denmark at the University of Aarhus. And of course the project is run from the University of Arizona.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5de7e220-b9d3-4540-8c02-f9369339c52c
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25509
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=9360
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/620268/The-Telltale-Wind-Experiment-for-the-NASA-Phoenix-Mars-Lander-2008
One thing for certain.. it's definitely a U of A project.