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Mystery Rock 'Appears' In Front of Mars Rover
astroengine writes "After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover Opportunity thought they'd seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously 'appeared' a few feet in front of the six wheeled rover a few days ago. News of the errant rock was announced by NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University at a special NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory '10 years of roving Mars' event at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night. The rock, about 'the size of a jelly doughnut' according to Squyres, is thought to have either come from a freak "flipping" event or a very recent meteorite impact. However, the latter isn't thought to be very likely. Although they are still working on the rock's origin, the rover team believe it was 'tiddlywinked' by Opportunity's broken wheel; as the rover was turning on the spot, the rock was kicked from place under the wheel and flipped a few feet away from the rover. Never missing a science opportunity, Squyres told Discovery News, 'It obligingly turned upside down, so we're seeing a side that hasn't seen the Martian atmosphere in billions of years and there it is for us to investigate. It's just a stroke of luck.'"
I bet it's a rock.
Yes -- luck that bored Martian teenagers don't have very good aim.
It's a Horta of course. Doesn't anyone at the JPL watch Star Trek?
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Horta
...it's a SPACESHIP! The aliens come from a microplanet.
This rock could have been clattering around in the rover's hollow wheels for a long time, and just recently fallen out.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm just dumbfounded at the implication here that the rover's ability to flip a small rock is regarded as luck. If it's such a valuable occurrence, should they not have included a rock-flipping function in the plans?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Does no one else notice the almost perfectly rectangular rocks with perfectly straight lines between them as though it was a set stone path or is it just my imagination???
The dirt above the rock looks a bit like a schnauzer with the face being in the very upper right.
Gives new meaning to the phrase "rocket scientists"
Maybe they're Rockettes scientists. Great work, if you can get it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Marvin did it!
"we're seeing a side that hasn't seen the Martian atmosphere in billions of years"
You know that Martian soil - completely gas-tight. And you know Martian rocks - for billions of years, they stay completely motionless.
Gives new meaning to the phrase "rocket scientists"
I don't know about gas tight, but without flowing water or ice, and without plate tectonics, the Martian surface doesn't move around much.
I'm just dumbfounded at the implication here that the rover's ability to flip a small rock is regarded as luck. If it's such a valuable occurrence, should they not have included a rock-flipping function in the plans?
It would only make sense to include that sort of functionality if it would be regularly used, which isn't likely. Given the tremendous constraints that they are under for space and weight it probably doesn't make sense. As to what is lucky, there is more than one description for that.
Old joke: Lost dog! Blind in one eye, missing right ear, tail missing, recently castrated. Answers to name of "Lucky!"
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
That's what happens when you tell the rover to execute a burn out - sand and rocks fly everywhere!
OSCAR WILDE: ..... It was one of Whistler's.
Your Majesty, you're like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
I beg your pardon?
OSCAR WILDE:
Um
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
I didn't say that.
OSCAR WILDE:
You did, James, you did.
THE PRINCE OF WALES:
Well, Mr. Whistler?
JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER:
I- I meant, Your Majesty, that, uh, like a doughnut your arrival gives us pleasure and your departure merely makes us hungry for more.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
And as it was a buried rock, I guess now it's been de-crptyed.
This may have been by accident, but using the rover to flip a rock can also be done on purpose:
"Randy Lindemann knows all kinds of crazy stuff the rover can do. He describes using the rover to flip over a rock. You drive it over the rock so that the rock is between the two back wheels on one side. Then you drive all of the wheels backward except for that middle wheel, and as the middle wheel drags backward, its cleats catch the underside of the rock and flip it. If little Martian bugs crawl out, you win unlimited funding. "
Opportunity only brought scissors, not paper...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
They have wind storms to put our hurricanes to shame. A donut-sized rock surely moves.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
How can you tell it is upside down? Are there any other displaced rocks or pebbles or other marks that show its path? (What is different between these two panels?) Just wondering...
While Martian winds may kick up some respectable velocity as far as feet per second, remember it's blowing around an extremely tenuous close to non-existent atmosphere. A martian wind may kick up to four hundred miles an hour, but if you were standing in it it would be no more force to you than a 25 mile per hour gust on Earth.
I know that the US has long resisted a shift to SI measurements, but since when does JPL measure things in jelly donuts?
. . . it is the Pet Rock, I mean the very first ever Pet Rock sold, who stated publicly that it (?) was fed up with all the commercialism on the planet Earth and was going to take a trip to Mars......
I admit I considered the Pet Rock a bit farfetched at the time (I mean its (?) extremely sophisticated vocabulary and lexicon, as it (?) had only been in existence a short while back then?
I'm just dumbfounded at the implication here that the rover's ability to flip a small rock is regarded as luck. If it's such a valuable occurrence, should they not have included a rock-flipping function in the plans?
Well, maybe it's not as trivial as it sounds to fit an appropriate robotic arm, the sensors to find a suitable rock, the software to try grabbing it and turning it over and compared to the weight, time and effort it's probably just not worth it. Assuming this is really the first time it's happened in the practically ten years (a week left) it's been on Mars it's somewhat of a freak accident, just the right size and shape stone was caught in the wheels in just the right way to flip it over. It's like a free bonus that you weren't even trying to get, isn't that lucky?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Higher up the thread is a link to the Unmanned Space Flight forums, where there are some much better images. There are at least two rocks and some sand that have moved from one image to the next. Apparently this is on the uphill side of the rover, and the rocks may have rolled down from above.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
It has a rock grinder which accomplishes the same task of getting at an unweathered surface. This is just a free lunch, not a new mission capability.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This may be another example of where our geocentric understaning of landscape geology misleads us. Perchlorate-rich soil under carbon-dioxide rich low atmospheric pressure, thermal tides, carbon dioxide ice... What would happen if a bit of CO2 froze inside a rock or in a pocket beneath a stone and eventually got up to its sublimation temperature? Sometimes it would vaporize with enough force to pop the rock somewhere else. What if the perchlorate-water reaction that caused so much excitement with the Viking landers happened naturally due to condensed water vapor? Might that sometimes cause internal pressures within rocks and cause them to fragment?
Well, maybe it's not as trivial as it sounds to fit an appropriate robotic arm, the sensors to find a suitable rock, the software to try grabbing it and turning it over and compared to the weight, time and effort it's probably just not worth it.
I'm a fan of these robotic expeditions, but this really speaks to the rate of exploration that a human colony could support.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The chances of a rock suddenly appearing are a million to one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Or Martian's playing the childrens game Statue
You spin your wheels and throw rocks in my county, sonny, and you'll get a Careless and Reckless ticket! -- Buford T. Justice
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
High sulphur could in theory be a waste product of HS metabolism; microbes are known to utilize this.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Two remarks on the photo. One is that the specific 5 sided shape of the rock is disturbingly similar to the crack feature it is resting on as seen in the "before" picture. second, the rock is white.
I assume the latter is why they think it's a "flipped over" rock. But the two observations together are remarkable.
But remember this lander is huge, like the size of a mini van, and has metal tires, so the prospect of it being able to kick rocks would seem to be very large
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
But then you'd have the scientists designing and playing Martian crazy golf courses all day long ...
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