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Top Ten Discoveries of the Mars Rovers
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jul 24, 2007 07:49 PM
from the martian-winters-are-nippy dept.
from the martian-winters-are-nippy dept.
eldavojohn writes "Space.com brings us the top ten discoveries of the Martian rovers that landed there in 2004. They were expected to last three months but, as Slashdot has covered time and time again, they have lasted over three years. From minor discoveries about the formation of Mars to images of atmospheric phenomena, to final and definitive proof of a Mars with water, these two robots have definitely reserved themselves a place in the history books. Pending a dust storm, they may not even be done with their mission yet."
Related Stories
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Huge Martian Dust Storm Threatens Rovers 164 comments
Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that a severe ongoing dust storm on the Red Planet has blocked 99 percent of the direct sunlight that powers the Opportunity rover. If these conditions persist for too long, it could finally bring an end to the marathon mission of this robot geologist, and perhaps of its partner Spirit as well. 'Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity's solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust in the air reduced the panels' daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic arm, cameras and spectrometers to study the site where Opportunity is located ... A possible outcome of this storm is that one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or even disabled. Engineers will assess the capability of each rover after the storm clears.'"
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Spirit Outlasts Viking 2 Lander 137 comments
ScottMaxwell writes "Spirit, the Mars rover designed for a 90-day mission, has now outlasted the Viking 2 lander. Viking 2 survived until its 1281st sol (Martian day); Spirit is now on sol 1282 and counting. Assuming both rovers continue to weather the ongoing dust storms, Spirit's sister, Opportunity, will reach the same age in a few weeks. They aren't breathing down the neck of the all-time record just yet, though — the Viking 1 lander lasted 2245 sols on the surface of Mars; Spirit and Opportunity won't break that record for another 2.7 Earth years."
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Opportunity Takes a Dip Into Victoria Crater 79 comments
Muad'Dave writes "From the NASA News Release 'Today, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity entered Victoria Crater for the first time. It radioed home information via a relay by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, reporting its activities for the day. Opportunity drove far enough in — about four meters (13 feet) — to get all six wheels past the crater rim. Then it backed uphill for about three meters (10 feet). The driving commands for the day included a precaution for the rover to stop driving if its wheels were slipping more than 40 percent. Slippage exceeded that amount on the last step of the drive, so Opportunity stopped with its front pair of wheels still inside the crater.' This marks the beginning of perhaps the greatest 'Opportunity' for new discoveries on Mars."
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New Cave Entrances Seen on Mars 110 comments
Riding with Robots writes "The Mars Odyssey orbiter has come across what look to be openings to cavernous spaces under the surface of Mars. NASA reports the find is fueling interest in potential underground habitats and sparking searches for caves elsewhere on the Red Planet. These latest images follow other recent discoveries of intriguing places to explore. From the article: 'The find has led some to wonder if these or other caves on the planet may provide shelter to life or former life on the Red Planet. "Somewhere on Mars, caves might provide a protected niche for past or current life, or shelter for humans in the future," said Tim Titus of the U.S. Geological Survey in Flagstaff. These caves, however, likely never hosted life due to the extreme altitude of their location. "Even if life has ever existed on Mars, it may not have migrated to this height," said Cushing.'"
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Greatest discovery (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Greatest discovery (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Somebody with enough brain to not credit the tinfoil hat nonsense that NASA somehow overdesigns their craft and make performance claims only a fraction of that actually built.
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Do you work in IT? The decision in favor of a solution/team/product/company often comes down to marketing. Well, NASA is in the same boat.
Imagine yourself in a position to make a decision that affects mountains of taxpayer money, and therefore your reputation, and in turn your future employment prospects. You certainly don't have time to critically evaluate everything that comes your way.
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Re:Greatest discovery (Score:5, Informative)
The mission plans called for a minimum of 90 days operations and a certain amount of driving (400 meters IIRC). This was not a prediction of the actual performance, but the criteria for mission success. Less than that would be considered only partially successful.
However, they did expect the rovers to last longer, based on the performance of Pathfinder and Sojourner, and therefore included an operations budget extension of 90 days in the budget. Not exactly a secret. By this time they figured it was about 50/50 whether dust accumulation would have robbed them of too much power or something would've broken, so the budget had an allowance for another extension of 180 days just in case.
At this point, they were pretty sure the rovers would be dead. NASA actually had to get special approval from congress to fund an additional one year of operations funding. Well guess what happened when that year was up. Yep.
So now they've gone 14 times the mission success criteria and 3-1/2 times NASA's best predictions. Opportunity has had a disabled heater on its infrared spectrometer for a while, Spirit has had a dead wheel motor for well over a year, and both of the rock abrasion tools are worn out from so much use, but they're still ticking. Of course, there is a real danger from the dust storm currently enveloping the planet, but I've got my fingers crossed.
Parent
sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the childish urge to conjure up cute little clanking robots instead of simply patting a fellow human being on the back?
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The people are many and nebulous. It takes a lot of people to pull something like this off.
By contrast, there are just two rovers on Mars. People know their names.
And they are easy to anthropomorphize. There they are, alone in a harsh landscape far from home. "Surviving" far longer than anyone had expected. And let's face it, they're kind of cute in a way.
The Hubble telescope is a similar situation. For that matter, so are manned launches. It's a lot easier to idolize the handful of astronauts
Re:sigh... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
In light of recent news this reads like... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, no band survives the greatest hits album.
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Oh, wait.
Too bad #1 couldn't have been.... (Score:3, Funny)
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Died there unfortunately (at least, according to the original edit, not the original release). Beautiful Platinum Blonde girls from another planet dying in a nuclear explosion on a Jungle Venus make me a sad panda :(
Wasting Taxpayer Money? (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, NASA engineers managed to create machines that were able to accurately and consistently navigate the surface of Mars safely and efficiently almost entirely on their own.
If anything, I wish NASA got more taxpayer money.
AC
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I think the success of the Russian space program is attributable in large part to the fact that they co
Top 10 list and... (Score:2)
And a few things they didn't find... (Score:2)
No thanks to Richard Hoagland.
Here's the list without all the clicks (Score:5, Informative)
9 - Evidence of volcanic origin for Gusev crater.
8 - First meteorite identified on another planet.
7 - Discover of sulfur suggests Mars stink.
6 - Helps scientists determine that Mars had three distinct geological eras.
5 - Martian dust devils captured on film.
4 - First shot of Earth from distant planet.
3 - Photographs Earth-like clouds on Mars.
2 - Helps scientists create first atmospheric temperature profile of Mars.
1 - First definitive evidence that water flowed on mars, including blueberries, hematite, and silica.
ASCII Version of list (Score:5, Funny)
9 -
8 -
7 - ~~~ stink
6 - A..B..C three eras
5 -
4 - [ . ] Earth from mars
3 - o@o clouds
2 - ~!~ atmospheric profile
1 - H2O water history
I think the 2 neatests things from a spectator's viewpoint were the dust devil movies and the spherical blueberries. Burn's Cliff was also cool.
Parent
Re:How many found AFTER the expected mission life? (Score:4, Interesting)
Required extended mission, obviously - rovers did not land near the site.
9 - Evidence of volcanic origin for Gusev crater.
Same as above - you may need to travel for a long time to get to the interesting site.
8 - First meteorite identified on another planet.
Required extended mission - you need to find the meteorite.
7 - Discover of sulfur suggests Mars stink.
May not require an extended mission.
6 - Helps scientists determine that Mars had three distinct geological eras.
Most definitely requires an extended mission, and likely to require far more than that to know those eras in detail. Earth geology is not dead yet even though people study rocks for thousands of years.
5 - Martian dust devils captured on film.
Requires an extended mission, unless the dust devil pays you a visit just when and where you landed.
4 - First shot of Earth from distant planet.
Depends on the landing site and the rotation of Mars.
3 - Photographs Earth-like clouds on Mars.
Likely requires an extended mission, unless those clouds are common and can be always seen.
2 - Helps scientists create first atmospheric temperature profile of Mars.
Most definitely requires an extended mission. It will later take thousands of probes spread over the whole planet, and several years, to create the precise, correct thermal profile that the settlers will require.
1 - First definitive evidence that water flowed on mars, including blueberries, hematite, and silica.
May or may not require an extended mission depending on where the samples were collected.
Parent
This is cool stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Missing from the list... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Missing from the list... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Discovery #11 (Score:4, Funny)
http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/n/001/2N
Do a blow up on the circular object on the panel, left and down from center.
The last mission of the rovers... (Score:5, Funny)
Putting the article text in a six line scroll box while 95% of the page is ads or blank should be an offense punishable by being skinned alive.
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If I had to pick just one:
1) reread all of the calibrations to verify the ability to land (safely)
Once that is verified, how about a remake of Capricorn One?.
I'll overlook the fact (in CI) conversations are instantaneous (instead of a delay).
This time, leave OJ[1] on Mars and let the other two come back, even if the simulations say it won't happen.
[1]Yes, OJ Simpson. If you haven't watched it, there's no spoiler there because the rest of the statement is explained fairly early in the film.
I wo
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Costs (Score:4, Informative)
NIH: $28 billion
NSF $5.5 billion
NASA $16 billion
NSF Math and Physical sciences : 135 million in 2002
NSF CISE (Computer
Nasa's Spirit probe $820million
Viking missions cost $935 million in 1974[1] or $3.5 billion in 1997 dollars
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
That's actually the case for everything but metals. As Penn and Teller put it, when recycling becomes so efficient that bums on the street will do the sorting, then you'll know it's actually beneficial for society.
Re:Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:top 10 (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Re:top 10 (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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>about 10 years, and in the 38 years
>since we landed on the moon all things
>electronic have improved with such
>incredible speed, going to Mars soon
>should be a piece of cake right? No. Is
>it because the GHz processors we have
>are too weak? No
A billion times more processor power has no effect because the PROCESSOR POWER IN 1969 was PLENTY ENOUGH. The hard job of landing men on the moon had nearly nothing to do with comp
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The hard problems to solve were structural design and propulsion, not algorithms. Propulsion technology- at least propulsion technology useful for manned lunar missions - hasn't advanced one iota since the mid-60's.
The huge increases in computation power are extremely useful in running simulations, in engineering, fluid dynamics, etc, which may help us advance the propulsion technology. Moreover, landing men on Mars won't be as easy as the Moon, as the landing is considerably trickier (thanks to gravity and atmosphere), for which things like flight computers would certainly be useful.
Virtually every current space project of which I am aware has had massive problems with the flight software and database, and it's coincident with trying to use inappropriate programming techniques made possible by faster computers.
Are you are aware of the quality the Space Shuttle Onboard Systems team produces?
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>are extremely useful in running
>simulations, in engineering, fluid
>dynamics, etc, which may help us
>advance the propulsion technology.
>Moreover, landing men on Mars won't be
>as easy as the Moon, as the landing is
>considerably trickier (thanks to
>gravity and atmosphere), for which
>things like flight computers would
>certainly be useful.
I am fully aware of that, I do it for a living. However, the simulation capabili
Re:top 10 (Score:5, Insightful)
1. No LIFE!!! Stop wasting taxpayer money!!
Yes, lets stop pursuing scientific discoveries and focus our meager resources on invading countries under false pretenses as a proper imperial power should. Books and learning are for hippy surrender monkeys!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"Marwth Vallis Regions"? Anyone else see what's wrong with that?
(Ok, yes, my computer naming convention at work is after the Welsh words for the planets, what's it to you?)
Re:top 10 (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Mars is not our nearest neighbour. Venus is, and by a fair way too.
A scientist should know this.
This business of "our nearest neighbour" has been spun by the pro-space
lobby to good effect. The fact is that probes sent to Venus are far cheaper.
For a start, they go Sun-ward and enjoy a good gravity-assist.
What? You don't like the weather on Venus? That doesn't justify the "nearest neighbour" myth.
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You're level of meanness is a real detriment to Slashdot, where people try to have serious discussions about science and technology.
I've worked as the director of a condensed matter lab for many years at a large well known institution. My field could use some more money, and I must admit I resent so much of it going to NASA. If your not in a scientific field, it might not be obvious to you how m
Re:top 10 (Score:4, Insightful)
uh huh
'I could probably solve more math and physics problems in an evening that you could in a month.'
Likely. Are you implying that there is some sort of association between the two?
Sorry but you aren't a female, you aren't a 'insert race here', you aren't a 'insert nationality here', you are an individual. You neither get to stand taller due to the achievements of nor spin the failures of other individuals simply because they happen to share a group designator with you.
The thing I personally find most amusing, is that the only valid use of gender as a designator is to classify sex objects. And yet, those who want to be identified first by their gender don't seem to want their sex used to identify them as sex objects notwithstanding the entire biological purpose of having genders and the natural reproductive instincts associated with them.
Parent