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11 Amazing Things NASA's Huge Mars Rover Can Do
TheNextCorner writes "NASA is getting set to launch its next Mars rover this week. The car-size Curiosity rover is the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, slated to blast off Saturday (Nov. 26) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The rover will employ 10 different science instruments to help it answer questions once it touches down on the Red Planet in August 2012."
Can it convert imperial measurements to metric measurements?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Combination hookah and coffee maker, also makes Julienne fries!
Can it drift? Otherwise I'm interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neoUi4poCXI
It can not terraform? Bah.
CCCP Rover Does You!
It can go to MARS! Well, assuming all the measurements are in metric (although if they aren't, it'll still go to Mars, just a little faster than expected.)
Ok, now that's out of the way
Curiosity's ChemCam instrument can vaporize rocks from up to 30 feet (9 meters) away with a laser. Three spectrographs will analyze the composition of the vaporized bits.
Anyone else find it disturbing that we are putting lasers on robots now? And putting them in space? It's like we're asking for Skynet to develop. Let's hope we just don't see the headline "Curiosity killed the human" next.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Finally, at last a true succesor to the Viking missions.
Let real science be done, no more toy robots scouting the surface of mars at 1 cm/s.
Can't wait to see the discoveries this new rover will make.
First we send a shoebox sized rover. Then we send one the size of a Power Wheels kids car. Now it's a rover the size of a jeep with a nuclear RTG. What's next, a bus sized rover? When does this start to piss off the resident Martians?
can it kill a cat? Or at least the cat?
NUMBER 5 ALIIIIIVE!
I'll be impressed if it actually manages to land there. Otherwise the things it can do after landing are pointless.
When the most important thing in your life is money you're a sad excuse for a human being.
When the most important thing in your life is money you're a sad excuse for a human being.
If money isn't important to you I suggest you take all the money you have and send it to the poster you were replying to.
They could have flown the shuttle like two more times for that!
Sig: I stole this sig.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/mars-rover-beginning-to-hate-mars,2072/
This will inevitably happen to MSL as well.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
"Of course you know, this means war!"
A laser armed rover sounds a lot like a high tech tank.
Curiosity killed the cat!
Dispelling rumors of the threat posed by a nuclear-powered, laser-armed robotic invader, K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, said:
Having been reminded that the gelsacs of many metrication consultants were punctured to bring them this information, there were no questions from the press corps.
So money is either "the most important thing" or "not important"?
even the space.com site states in the page title "10 Amazing Things..." and the actual text then again reads "11 Amazing Things..." :D
in a burning, screaming wreck?
It should have a cargo-hold full of Wall-E type devices that can scatter during the day and return home to charge at night.
Give more than one scientist at a time a chance to drive.
(And reduce the risk of total mission failure in case of a Walowitz incident.)
This car can be parked free anywhere on the planet and it's immune from speeding tickets!
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Just looking at the type of movement it should support seems to indicate that this is just another rover that should get stuck. The wheels don't seem able to climb rocky terrain, nor is it clear that it won't get stuck in sand... sand which could be mixed with something (?). Shouldn't we put more quality into our expensive toys?
Is it an Autobot or a Decepticon?
If I had say in the matter, I would include more redundance.
Instead of one of each type of camera on the mast, I would include redundant cameras on each mast.
Instead of one mast, I would require two masts, with separate motors, computers, etc.
I would include both mechanical (or pneumatic if compressors that work in that environment can be made compactly enough) and electrostatic lens cleaning mechanisms.
I would include redundant "legs" and wheels, with the primary set being ejectable in the event of failure.
The cost would go up, but given that when you come down to it this amounts to a $2.5bil RC car, spending a few million more on extreme redundance to guarantee reliability (after it hopefully lands safely) is very cheap insurance - it's not like you can just send out a minimum-wage Geek Squad "technician" to (hopefully) repair it and upsell it on gold-plated HDMI cables and Norton AntiVirus. ;) It'd suck if the one mast failed, or one "leg" failed without a backup unit or mechanism.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Can it chase astronauts around the martian service when it accidentally slips into "combat" mode? I'd like to see that on youtube.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I hope it wasn't built by the Russians or it might end up flailing in Earth's orbit forever.
Well, it's one more amazing thing, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most rovers, you know, will have ten amazing things. You have ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you have ten amazing things on your rover. Where can you go from there? Where?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
No, curiosity was merely the bait, ignorance killed him.
Free Martian Whores!
Take samples of the air and land and bring them back to Earth (somehow), where we already have all the tech. to do this analysis, much cheaper and with increased accuracy of results?
Money is only a tool of trade, and only fools worship their tools. I agree with the GP, if money is the most important thing in your life (let alone the only thing in your life), you're a sad excuse for a human being and I pity you.
Free Martian Whores!
I think they are wasting the descent stage module. In the video it hovers above the ground with rocket propulsion, at a very low altitude (10 meters?) while the rover itself descends to the surface, then releases the rover and flies away in a random direction like crazy (and presumably crashes) - what a waste after it flew all the way to mars and got so close to an actual landing? Why not just let the descent stage land softly nearby, and use it for something, maybe as a radio relay or as a backup solar panel?
Hopefully NASA has a better contingency plan than they did with their car-sized Venus Probe that ran amok in the '70s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4st0a0gWp0
Dear Will, the plums were poisoned. -- Cheese Club
I'm guessing no.
Does it have a trailer hitch?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
It can totally kick Spirit and Opportunity's ass. I mean its bigger and nuclear powered! No contest!
This topic confuses me. Can someone post a car analogy?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The half life of Plutonium-238 is 87.7 years, its got two computers and some redundancy in wheels and comm.
Assuming everything is in working order upon landing how long can it last? The NASA material says it has a two year mission. Does anyone know what NASA's guess is? Could it still be doing useful work in 20 years time?
But will this one wipe its own photocells or will it have to wait for convenient dust devils (read playful martians) like the last ones.
Wait! What do you mean "No Photocells"? Geez, not only are we going to shoot up the place, irradiate the local microbes and cook whole millimeters of the planet's surface but we're also going to do the local Martians out of their fun.
If money isn't important to you I suggest you take all the money you have and send it to the poster you were replying to.
Why would I want to feed their unhealthy obsession? It would make more sense for me to donate it all to a charitable organization to help sociopaths and psychopaths. (I am the AC you replied to).
They really should have designed it with replaceable batteries. That way we could sent a second one later with a spare nuclear battery for it. Maybe even design the thing with 4 battery compartments since you can continue to get some juice from the old batteries.
..frickin space robots with laser beams attached to their heads.
You can tell it's an American probe by the nuclear-powered ass sticking up in the air.
Table-ized A.I.
It could check if there is water on Mars and discover it for a gazilionth time....
But why don't you just make the ten things a little more amazing, make that the number of amazing things and make that a little more amazing?
Just because organisms can survive doesn't mean they can reproduce. Usually they survive in a dormant low-energy state in which reproduction is not possible.
Nasa budget/Fed budget=0.60% personal tax/federal revenue=40% Depending how you look at the deficit, what bucket Nasa funds come from, and how much tax you actually pay, you probably spend less per year on NASA than on watching science fiction movies, regardless of delivery. Personally, I vote for spending money on the real thing.
There are probably algae which CAN thrive.
And, my guess is that they were already put in place on Mars.
http://www.sdsucollegian.com/2011/07/21/research-project-could-help-colonize-space/
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2011/08/08/losing-the-war-on-pond-scum/
http://usalco.com/company/news/nasa-funds-students-work-with-blue-green-algae-173