Opportunity Rover Encounters Its Own Heat Shield

blamanj writes "Mars Rover Opportunity, a few meters shy of the 2km mark on its odometer, has come across the remains of the heat shield from its landing. This map traces the path of the rover for the past 11 months. It's been averaging about 6 meters/sol. Spirit, which had to stop to dislodge a rock, is still climbing the "Columbia Hills". It's tough going, and Spirit experiences slippage of up to 80% as it climbs the hills."

Must have been a classic "WTF?!" moment at the JPL

Since I assume that they would not know the precise location of the shield, it must have been quite a moment when the thing first slewed into view. It's a bitch getting that Mountain Dew out of the keyboard, isn't it?

Re:Must have been a classic "WTF?!" moment at the

Since I assume that they would not know the precise location of the shield

They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera [planetary.org] that let them know exactly how far away it was. There's actually been several pictures. I forget how long ago they knew, but they've known for some time where it was.

I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long, so it's only now that they get around to looking at it.

Re:Must have been a classic "WTF?!" moment at the

I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long

I was at a presentation by one of the members of the rover science teams six weeks ago.

If there are no surprises, he was talking about the rovers possibly lasting till June or July. By that time, he was suggesting that the rover's batteries would no longer be able to hold enough charge to keep the things operating.

For a while they had been expecting that the solar panels would fail first, but apparently the rate of dust accumulation is less than they expected. (Plus "martian carwash [slashdot.org]" events seem to have cleared off some of the dust. He felt such events were probably caused by dust devils that happened to cross over the rover.)

Re:Must have been a classic "WTF?!" moment at the

To do that you need to push the mean lifetime way beyond the warranty period.

The "90 days" was certainly something they expected - maybe even double that. But they also knew that the Martian winter was coming up and that Mars would go behind the Sun, causing Earth to lose contact with the rovers for a number of days.

I think they were really surprised both rovers made it through the Martian winter. That Opportunity is actually back up to the normal output for the solar panels is a welcome surprise.

Spirit doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well. There's problem with the lubrication of the wheels, the brakes may not be releasing - or the circuit that detects them releasing has gone bad, and the dust accumulation on the solar panels has taken it's toll.

There might be more wrong with the Spirit rover, but even I've been skipping some of the updates on the web site [nasa.gov].

Unfortunately

The crushed-body of an evidently indigenous species was found sprawled in the impact zone of the heat shield....

Re:Unfortunately

The crushed-body of an evidently indigenous species was found sprawled in the impact zone of the heat shield....

The Wicked Witch of the West was unavailible for comment.

ebay it

That stuff is gonna be worth a lot of money some day, when a kid digs it up in their back yard. On Mars. You know, after we all move there.

Ascending

"It's tough going, and Spirit experiences slippage of up to 80% as it climbs the hills."

Sounds a bit like trying to get out of Gehennom with the amulet.

How big is *your* potato?

From the article;

"A potato-sized rock got caught in Spirits's right rear wheel on sol 339"

Come *on* NASA. Potatos vary so wildly in size that comparisons like this are totally useless!

Re:How big is *your* potato?

Perhaps they should have used the more precise "tater tot" standard.

Re:How big is *your* potato?

Tater Tots [oreida.com] are a product of the Ore-Ida corporation and are a delicious processed potato treat. They were developed in 1953 and introduced to a grateful public in 1954.

NASA began using them as an engineering standard in the late 60s durring the Apollo missions. Today, Tater Tots are still as popular in the lab as they are in the dining room.

Re:How big is *your* potato?

what the hell is a tater tot anyway?

In standard space universal measure, roughly 1/2000 of a classic Volkswagen Beetle.

Re:How big is *your* potato?

"What's 'taters', NASA?"

POH-TAY-TOES!!


(don't use so many caps. it's like yelling.)

Re:How big is *your* potato?

Here's the photo. [nasa.gov] Look to the wheel on your left hand side. I wonder if they were anticipating this happening.

Re:How big is *your* potato?

It's a standard metric potato-size. Unfortunately, NASA's contractors inadvertantly prepared for Imperial potato-sized rocks, hence the wheel jam.

heat shield

It's not often that we get a chance to examine the integrity of the remaining heat shield in these missions. Let it take a look and see what JPL guys can learn from it for future missions, eh?

How much buried?

It will be interesting to see how much sand has been blown over the shield in almost a year. Might give more insights into Martian weather.

Lutefisk??

In the image showing Spirit's course there is a rock called "Lutefisk" (Sol 296, top right).

Lutefisk is a disgusting Norwegian dish, think of it as fish jell-o. You take some perfectly good pieces of dried fish (yuck) and soak them in lye (yes, really!) for 24 hours. Then you soak the fish in fresh water for 48 hours, before putting it in a pan and letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. Finally you wrap the fish in aluminium foil and bake in the oven at 200C for 30-40 minutes.

The result is a quivering mass of translucent, inedible fish that is served with potatoes, bacon, mashed peas and melted butter (or melted pork fat).

Now, what I want to know is, how did that disgusting dish of spoiled fish end up as the (informal) name of a rock on Mars?

Re:Lutefisk??

If you reckon Lutefisk is bad, you obviously have not yet had the "pleasure" of encountering the Swedish "delicacy" known as "Surströmming".

To make surströmming you take a perfectly good piece of raw fish, stick it in a tin can, and then let it sit there fermenting for at least a year (the longer the better, apparently).

After that, you open it, and eat it without any further preparation. Don't ask me what you normally have with it, because I don't know; 5 seconds after the can has been opened I am a few kilometers away, desperately attempting to escape the stench (generally together with everyone else in the neighbourhood).

So, just be thankful it's only Lutefisk on that map - had it been surströmming the martians would have accused us of chemical warfare! ;-)

Re:What?!

it has only moved 2km in all this time. Surely this is a typo?!

Not at all. [nasa.gov]

The rovers are astonishing in what they can do, but a human would dramatically outpace them. What it might take a rover an entire day to do, a human could do in a 30-45 seconds. [unspace.net]

Re:Why look at the heat shield?

You got it. They couldn't test the entire heat shield at once. Also, performance was based on estimates of how thick the Martian atmosphere was.

There's also a divot where the heat shield bounced. With any luck, it dug into the Martian surface far deeper than Opportunity could dig. This will give them a chance to examine what's underneath the surface layer - they hope.

Here's the schedule

After the heat shield, what will Opportunity look at?... Are there scientific targets identified, or are they maybe going to try to "sprint" Opportunity and see how far it can get in the shortest amount of time?

I have the NASA rover plans right here, and the schedule is as follows:

1. explore Endurance crater (complete)
2. examine discarded heat shield (complete)
3. run rover for endurance trials
4. sprint rover (you called it)
5. race rover
6. jump rover
7. make rover do acrobatic tricks
8. crash rover
9. profit

Re:Yes.

No. That's the exact same photo from the MERM web site. [nasa.gov]. To find the photo, you can use this page [nasa.gov] to decode the photo name. Danged if I can get the seconds to work out (the 3rd through 11th digits).

• 1 Opportunity
• P Pancam
• 155450047 Number of seconds since Jan 1, 2004 at 11:58::55.816. (works out to Sol 307)
• Data product full frame EDR

That sort of stuff. I lost interest at that point.

And no, I've not heard any comments on this picture yet. There are other pictures with frost, but water would be puzzling on the Martian surface at that pressure and temperature.

I'm pretty sure they'd have mentioned a leak in the Opportunity's radiator.

.... .. .... ..

Re:pictures

Parent forgot to post where the pictures are, go to:

C:\My Documents\My Pictures\Mars Rover Mission

You'll find them there.

Re:What's a "sol"?

The sun is named Sol. A "sol" is what we calls days except a sol is longer. Mars doesn't rotate as quickly as Earth thus making the days longer. Apparently the guys at JPL felt funny about making the "day" longer than the traditional 24 hours we experience here on Earth. They even began sleeping according to Martian sols.