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Mars Opportunity Rover Appears To Contact Earth; Turns Out To Be a False Alarm (vice.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the false-positives dept.

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."

3 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. In other words by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2

    It appears that somebody made an inopportune announcement before verifying all the facts.

  2. Re:Edge on black holes by meglon · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure how it relates to Opportunity, or Mars, or the weather on Mars effect on said rover....or anything else here, but lets see what we can do.

    If you look at a galaxy with an AGN that is side-on to us, you would indeed be able to see the debris field surrounding the black hole just like you can with HGC 4261..... IF you could see through the galaxies arms, which would be much denser, much larger, and have a shit ton more matter. One thing you have to realize in that picture... you're not seeing the event horizon... you're only seeing stuff outside of the horizon.

    Most all large galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, so yes, every side-on galaxy you see in a picture is also a side on view of it's central SMBH and the debris field around it, you just can't see it because the entire galaxy is in the way. In fact, because we're in one of the arms of the Milky Way, looking at our own SMBH (Sgr A*) is looking at it side-on.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  3. Is it plugged in? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 2

    Have you tried turning it off and then on again?