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EngrBohn writes "NASA has named the Mars Spirit landing site the 'Columbia Memorial Station'. They've obviously been planning this, as there's even a plaque at the CMS."
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It's very interesting... Many many people at JPL knew all about this, however the information was not known to be secret until yesterday, when it was announced that there'd be a bit of "unvieling" of the disk.
I"m surprised news didn't get out to the public before.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activty Planner Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers
They proably made it out of aluminum because it's light and plastic would probably degrade faster.
Well, that, and the plaque is stamped on the back of the probe's high-gain antenna [nasa.gov]. Space & weight are at a steep premium on these probes, and there really isn't room to add an extra slab of metal for any non-scientific purpose, even if most people would find the gesture fitting.
By way of comparison, read about the Marsdial [slashdot.org] project [slashdot.org], which does basically the same thing: mount a "frivilous" device onto one of the key components of the rover, done in a way that there's substantially no additional hardware (extra mass to require fuel, additional parts to possibly break down, etc).
Sentimentality is nice, but pragmatism is critical here.
I had totally forgotten until I read this story that also on the rover is a DVD containing the names of millions of people who could register via a website
http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/disk.htm
I only remember it because my daughters name is on the disk.(Well I hope so, its a little difficult to check)
Columbia Memorial (Score:5, Informative)
I"m surprised news didn't get out to the public before.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activty Planner Support Staff
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Martian weather (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that, and the plaque is stamped on the back of the probe's high-gain antenna [nasa.gov]. Space & weight are at a steep premium on these probes, and there really isn't room to add an extra slab of metal for any non-scientific purpose, even if most people would find the gesture fitting.
By way of comparison, read about the Marsdial [slashdot.org] project [slashdot.org], which does basically the same thing: mount a "frivilous" device onto one of the key components of the rover, done in a way that there's substantially no additional hardware (extra mass to require fuel, additional parts to possibly break down, etc).
Sentimentality is nice, but pragmatism is critical here.
Which reminds me.... (Score:3, Informative)
http://spacekids.hq.nasa.gov/2003/disk.htm
I only remember it because my daughters name is on the disk.(Well I hope so, its a little difficult to check)