NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Grinds "Cool" Rock 70
coondoggie writes "While its sister rover Spirit has garnered most of the attention lately, NASA's other Mars traveler, Opportunity, is chewing up Martian dirt and unearthing the mineral and chemical makeup of the red planet. NASA scientists said this week the rover uncovered 'one of the coolest things Opportunity has found in a very long time:' a dark, basketball-sized rock known as 'Marquette Island.' According to NASA, the Marquette Island rock is a coarse-grained rock that indicates it cooled slowly from molten rock, allowing crystals time to grow. Such composition suggests it originated deep in the crust, not at the surface where it would cool quicker and have finer-grained texture, NASA stated."
Re:Opportunity Rocks (Score:3, Insightful)
Silly humanoid - did you measure using martian time (sols?)
Re:Opportunity Rocks (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Opportunity Rocks (Score:3, Insightful)
This actually isn't a question of over engineering. The only reason we are getting so much life out of these units is because something most unexpected happened early in the life of the rovers once on Mars. The surprising fact is, dust has not been settling on the solar arrays, which would otherwise prevent the units from recharging. From day one, everyone expected dust to settle on the solar arrays where over time this would eventually completely cut off power to the units. They expected this to happen within a 90 day time frame.
Since little dust has collected over time the robots have continued to recharge, thusly drastically extending their life beyond their proficised expiration date.