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Mars Opportunity Rover Appears To Contact Earth; Turns Out To Be a False Alarm (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: NASA's Mars Opportunity rover appeared to briefly make contact with the agency's Deep Space Network on Thursday afternoon after 5 months of silence. In June, a dust storm took Opportunity offline and every attempt to bring the rover back to life has failed. NASA scientists were hoping that seasonal winds that sweep the planet from November to February might blow the dust off of Opportunity's solar panels. Was this the rover's first attempt trying to get back into contact with Earth? Update 11/17/18: No. It turns out that the data received by the Deep Space Network was not from the Opportunity rover. "Today [the Deep Space Network website] showed what looked like a signal from Opportunity," JPL said in a tweet. "As much as we'd like to say this was an #OppyPhoneHome moment, further investigation shows these signals were not an Opportunity transmission. Test data or false positives can make it look like a given spacecraft is active on [the Deep Space Network website]. Our work to reestablish comms continues."
It appears that somebody made an inopportune announcement before verifying all the facts.
They were using Opportunity to align their death ray.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Again, a simple question,
When you identify objects you believe to be black holes, do you ever find ones that you think are edge on?
I see things like NGC 4261, ... face on, with the event horizon around them, but are there edge on black holes? Long thing structures you think are black holes behind event horizon debris?
They should be very common.
I suspect that the chance is small, and it definitely had a good run.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
HGC 4261, sort of shows the halo effect I'm expecting from a black hole.
"so yes, every side-on galaxy you see in a picture is also a side on view of it's central SMBH"
That's an interesting point. Yeh maybe that's what I'm looking for.
Have you tried turning it off and then on again?
I will be in the vicinity next week-end.
What do I have to do already? Dust it off and put back on its feet? Roger.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
NASA is a victim of its own success. Rover was never supposed to be operational at this point. The fact that it is makes it seem like engineering blunders abound when its just a happy surprise if one hears anything. I suspect there are probes/sattellites nearby that rover can communicate with but they can't relay anything to NASA. They could send a team to repair rover, or perhaps some of the communication sattellites between earth and mars can be set up as a relay. There are a couple of sattellites launched in the last few years that might be able to handle a relay. It is very difficult to change a sattelite's mission post launch but it has been done before, not even by NASA, and not even by the european space agency. Of course, seems very likely it will take some top shelf analysis.
Jealousy will get you nowhere. Unless you're in politics.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I believe the message was from a martian prince there who wanted to reach NASA urgently about some inheritance.
Perhaps one day Mars' winds will blow the dust off and Opportunity will say, Hey! Remember me?
If it doesn't get enough power to call home now it'll freeze to death in the winter, February to May are the coldest months so if no dust devil clears up the panels before that it's the last nail in the coffin. That's on the off chance that nothing else broke and there's a Goldilocks amount of dust covering the panels - too much to call home, not enough to run the batteries dry. The nature of the dust could also be an issue, a bigger storm than ever before could also have whirled up coarser dust that a dust devil will have a harder time clearing. Overall I'd give very slim odds of it coming back to life.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Have gnu, will travel.
And replace all the batteries while it waits.
possibly be mistaken for random "false positive" data?
That seems preposterous. The handshake presumeably is complex, extended, and extremely specific.
And if they're instead of talking about only a handful of initial bits of such a sequence, they shouldn't have announced anything.
This is a weird story.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I mean initial broadcaster identification and verification sequence (layered, from carrier ping up to digital error-coded message), not really a handshake, because speed of light.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's okay, a well known team of troubleshooters has contacted the rover with this call:
"Hello, ve are calling from de Vindows Support Center because we have been getting reports that your solar pannels are contaminated with dust and wiruses".
"Are you sitting in front of your computer?"
"Do you see a key with de Vindows symbol on it?"
"Please be hlding that key and pressing the R..."