Mars Rover Opportunity Lands Safely 426
JoeRobe writes "All indications are that the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has safely landed on Mars. After 10 minutes of bouncing and rolling, it has come to a rest and transmitted its signal. There are no fault tones, indicating that there were no errors during landing and rolling. The rover has landed in the Meridiani Planum, where there are large deposits of hematite, indicating the presence of past water. The lander has landed on one of its side petals, so the next step is to make itself upright and deflate its airbags." And loconet writes "Reuters and abc.net.au, among others, are of the first news sources to confirm that Opportunity has successfully landed on Mars. The probe had successfully made contact with controllers on Earth after landing at 0505 GMT on Sunday in an area of the planet known as the Meridiani Planum. The landing procedures achieved a best-case scenario on which all systems performed as expected. At first, engineers thought the lander had been rolling for a long time, but it turns out the antenna used to communicate with Earth was pointing towards the ground, which made the signal bounce off Mars and as the Earth moves, made it seem as if it had been bouncing for over 5 minutes. The lander is currently side petal down, and will take a while before it straightens itself out. California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ex Vice-president Al Gore were in attendance at the event in the JPL facilities." Many readers also wrote to point out the coverage at spaceflightnow.
2 for 2 (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:2 for 2 (Score:5, Informative)
Mars: 28 Earth: 9
I think the Soviets set the record for most failed mars missions in row. Their first 12 missions failed taking nearly 14 years to get a successful mission in 1974 with Mars 5.
They don't call it the death planet for nothing.
Re:2 for 2 (Score:3, Funny)
stupid commie bastards, why the hell would you name your 13th mission 'mars 5'.
Sweet. (Score:4, Funny)
Yipee! (Score:2)
Heh (Score:3, Funny)
I was watching the whole thing on the webcast. I was personally disgusted when cnn & the others cut it off to run some interview with Nicole Kidman while it was still rolling across the surface.
Re:Heh (Score:2, Funny)
They have webcam's on mars covering the mars rover? Awesome!
Re:Heh (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah. They're part of the Naked Mars Rovers Internet Teenage Sorority House XXX Voyeur project. Didn't you get that e-mail? I can send you a few of my spare copies if you didn't...
p
Opportunity and Spirit (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of the old botwar games where you program your bots (rotate, move, or shoot) and watch them go at it.
Spare Parts (Score:5, Funny)
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets [alaska-freegold.com]
Re:Spare Parts (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Spare Parts (Score:4, Funny)
"Oh goody! My Dildonium Q36 explosive space copulator!"
Re:Spare Parts (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a better idea is to leave all those old probes exactly where they lay. Being the optimist that I am about space exploration, I really believe we'll eventually colonize the planet. If this is the case, I'd like the old landing sites to be preserved just as they are. Perhaps build space history museums around them, or some of them can become part of the town square or something of a community.
Naturally this assumes that Mars is not too harsh on these old probes and there will be something left to look at, since it will likely take a long while before colonization of the planet becomes technologically and economically feasible.
Re:Thats a plaent you are talking about (Score:5, Informative)
But even with this knowledge, current technologies don't have the landing precision to land near to the rover. Opportunity landed 24 km from the target spot, spirit 13km IIRC. Those are considered very precise landings. And if you would send a rover that could drive 24km say in a few weeks, why bother trying to fix a rover that will only be driving 100m/day (and I'm being optimistic here).
I think it would be cheaper trying to cover the martian soil with lego bricks (if you get a large volume discount:)).
go fix Spirit! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:go fix Spirit! (Score:2, Funny)
My guess is that it is infected with MS-Blaster.
How Long? (Score:4, Funny)
Good work, JPL (Score:3)
Thanks from NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
I would like to thank all of the other engineers and scientists that have worked on this mission... many of which worked untold hours of unpaid overtime to do the things that the budgets couldn't afford (and that the mission couldn't live without).
I'd like to thank the leaders of our nation for giving us the resources to accomplish this feat, and their support politically.
But most importantly I'd like to thank the public for their interest, excitement, and moral/fiscal support. We're doing this for you and your children, that they might understand the universe better. Thanks for all of the fans out there!
Oh, and if you haven't already, now is a great time to grab Maestro, [telascience.org] NASA's public science tool for visualizing mars data (which I helped to develop).
What a great night!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:2)
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
mars isn't the "death planet" - that moniker is reserved for venus:
now that's a death planet... and yet the soviets managed to drop a lander [wustl.edu] on it successfully way back in 1982 and even sent back some pictures [nasa.gov]
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:5, Informative)
Well done guys and congrats..
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
Well done guys and congrats..
Austrailia has been a wonderful friend to the US, and the Canberra installation has been invaluable to many space missions. Thanks for all your help from down under!
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been following the whole thing very closely to a point where I've neglected some other duties. I'm just fascinated by it and would expect a hell of a lot of people all around the world feeling the same way.
Congratulations and thanks on behalf of humanity.
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Though there are challenges on mars each new day, every inch of ground we take, every meter of atmosphere we penetrate, every bit of data sent back is indeed a success of modern science, engineering, and planning. There can be no doubt about this. Many critics of the space program (not that I suggest that you are one of them) do not realize the tremendous number of things that must go precisely right for a mission to go well.
We have landed a working vehicle on mars, and have received communications from it. That alone is, without a doubt, worth celebrating.
Yes there are many more things that must still be done, and perhaps we will fail at one or more of those. But tonight we have succeeded, and that cannot be taken away from us.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Thanks from NASA (Score:2, Funny)
I guess that depends on what part of the software he wrote, the roving software or the reentry routines...
lots of free music downloads, plus games, recipes, and more [earth2willi.com]
Re:No thanks from Mars (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as we finish drilling in your rock garden we'll roam off. Keep the heat shield and air bag with our compliments.
Salvage Rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets [alaska-freegold.com]
Re:Salvage Rights (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Salvage Rights (Score:3, Insightful)
If we leave a lander on Mars for decades and eventually someone gets there and finds it
Of course the laws will probably change by then - once people start going into space governments will make laws concerning space. And I can see one of the first ones saying that 'all early spacecraft belong to the people who sent
Re:Salvage Rights (Score:4, Funny)
Whoever gets there first. If you can get to it, you can have it.
Re:Salvage Rights (Score:5, Interesting)
Salvage rights do not apply to government owned vessels and equipment.
A good case in point would be the CSA Hunley. Even though it's government no longer exists, all of the CSA's naval assets were transferred to the USA as part of it's surrender. So, when they went to salvage it, they had to get permission from the US government. Same applied to the CSA Alabama.
In space, it is even more restriction as the Space Treaty automatically make the national government the owner of record for anything constracted by it's citizens or corporations. It has not been run through and courts yet, but it might get a little wierd as things start picking up.
Re:Salvage Rights (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. Suppose I won the dot-com lottery and built my own frickin' rocket with my own frickin' money, flew it to Mars, set up my own habitat, and enjoyed the sights.
Now, my launch may have broken any number of FAA regulations, and my government's free to fine me for it (or they can come the fuck over here to Mars and arrest me! :)
But you're tellin' me that this treaty says my government also owns my Martian base, even though I built it with my own money?
This treaty needs to be abolished immediately, if not sooner. 100% taxation of extraterrestrial assets is not how you pave the way for commercial development of space.
It won't "get a little weird as things start picking up", because with a treaty like that, there's no way in hell anyone will ever start a private space venture. There'll be no space Hilton, because Hilton already gives enough cash to the government in the form of taxes every year.
They didn't even lose the signal! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They didn't even lose the signal! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, assuming that is NOT what you meant, I will give you a good answer:
The Deep Space Network is a world-wide network of radio dishes that NASA uses for sending and receiving communications from (you guessed it) craft in deep space. Some of these dishes are 70 meters in diameter! NASA said that "all eyes are on Mars," refering to this network, so all the resources of this network were focused on Opportunity. Also, the Opportunity rover had been transmitting just a simple signal, not a complex TV signal. Therefore, using some pretty well-written signal processing software, the Opportunity rover's signal was recognized, yes, all the way from Mars. It's not an easy thing, as you seem to understand, but JPL and NASA and the folks from the DSN are quite capable and have years of experience with such things.
I Love this (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no point here, I just felt the need to gush
Re:I Love this (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, the MER's are a tremendous achievement, and it is incredible that these days we can see the pictures [nasa.gov] coming in to a computer in mission control, LIVE on the internet! Woops, gotta go, next briefing is about to start :)
Bouncing (Score:5, Informative)
NASA TV [nasa.gov] is also broadcasting the Opportunity briefing with NASA officers as well as EDL Developers. A must see for interesting facts on what happened during entry.
To the people responsible for this great achievment once again, great work guys and thank you.
Hematite (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hematite (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hematite (Score:2)
Perhaps we should be asking Spock about all this then.
Re:Hematite (Score:3, Informative)
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/hemati
Re:Hematite (Score:5, Insightful)
I) Chemical precipitation - extensive near-surface water
1) Precipitation from ambient, Fe-rich water (oxide iron formations)
2) Precipitation from hydrothermal fluids
3) Low-temperature dissolution and precipitation through mobile groundwater leaching
4) Surface weathering and coatings
II) Thermal oxidation of magnetite-rich lava
I guess it's just that many of the possible mechanisms for hematite formation involve the presence of water. Though I guess thermal oxidation of magnetite in lava doesn't necessarily. Presumably they want to either rule that possibility out or identify whether the hematite in fact indicates recent or distant past presence of liquid water in the area.
Re:Hematite (Score:5, Informative)
Some links about hematite's composition and how NASA thinks it'll lead to indications of water existence:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y20
http://www.mindat.org/min-1856.html
http:/
Re:Hematite (Score:5, Informative)
When acid-rich water comes in contact with sulfidic rock Fe bearing bodies, such as pyrites, it takes up some of the iron (leaching), which water then, being iron laden, comes into contact with a favorable deposition environment, then then iron drops out. Geochemistry is very complicated here on Earth, and I'd love to get a chance at some off-world geology.
On Earth, there is a suggested analog: THE TINTO RIVER BASIN: AN ANALOG FOR MERIDIANI HEMATITE FORMATION ON MARS? [usra.edu] (*.PDF)
Alaska Bugs Sweat Gold Nuggets [alaska-freegold.com]
And in other news (Score:3, Funny)
Unexpected discovery on Mars? (Score:3, Funny)
How to deal with time lag (Score:3, Insightful)
But you know, the whole time lag thing kept sticking in my mind... When you hear them say "We have landed on Mars," that event actually happened 10 minutes earlier that the telemetry indicates it did.
What's the best way for humans to deal with the inescapable fact of the speed of light here? Should we report things (for the history books and all) as happening 10 minutes earlier than they appear to?
Aw, heck, what do I know? I'm still weirded out by the 7 second delay on radio. :) Go NASA!
Re:How to deal with time lag (Score:5, Interesting)
A comparison I heard fairly recently while studying radio waves and the speed of light:
If there was a symphony being performed at Carnegie Hall (New York City) and it was being broadcast live over the radio, someone listening to the performance on the radio in Los Angeles would actually hear the sound before someone sitting in the back of Carnegie Hall! Interesting take on speed of light versus speed of sound.
Anyway, this was slightly off topic. Forgive me
Re:Simultaneity is not absolute (Score:3, Informative)
However, what that would do is violate the Priciple of Covariance. The laws of physics would be variable with one's frame of reference.
Since it was the Principle of Covariance that led inevitably to the Theory of Relativity (or the Theory of Invariants, as Einstein prefered); and since the Theory of
Ahem... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ahem... (Score:4, Funny)
Al Gore only said he took the initiative in creating the propulsion engine. And a very high up guy who once worked at JPL but now works as a stock option holder at a large defense contractor can back that up.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You mean (Score:2, Insightful)
Semi-hourly Topic Overlay Joke (Score:2, Funny)
Gov Schwarzenegger (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gov Schwarzenegger (Score:5, Funny)
explanation of parent joke (Score:3, Informative)
flip side (Score:4, Funny)
Re:flip side (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:flip side (Score:3, Funny)
-B
Congrats! (Score:2)
Go find those Beagle pieces, little rovers!
First Step in Terraforming: (Score:4, Funny)
I still think they should have sent some kudzu to Mars. Then, by the time that Man actually gets there, he won't need a helmet.
Re: *before the* First Step in Terraforming: (Score:4, Funny)
Otherwise you'd have to keep shipping air to Mars as it gets blown away by solar wind. Might get kinda expensive. Maybe you can work something out with UPS though, I hear they have good deals for long-term customers.
Build your own Rover, sweet Lego kit! (Score:4, Interesting)
Click on the rover picture on the upper right hand corner, or search for the work "Rover" on the site and choose the third link. Very cool Lego rover kit for about $80.
Re:Build your own Rover, sweet Lego kit! (Score:3, Funny)
They gave one of these as a birthday present to Sean O'Keefe during the 1:30am EST news briefing. There were jokes about keeping him away from the real hardware.
Clever tactics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Clever tactics (Score:4, Funny)
Errr... (Score:5, Funny)
Fresh crater (Score:5, Interesting)
Slightly OT from the Opportunity landing, but has anybody seen the amazing picture [nasa.gov] made by Mars Global Surveyor? They not only can see Spirit itself from orbit, they also located several bounce marks, the parachute, the backshell and the heatshield! I have to look up the resolution again, but judging from this picture [nasa.gov] they achieve better than 1 meter after some image processing.
These pictures gave me the following idea (assuming Spirit will get healthy soon): Since the plan was to drive to big crater in the top right of the first image anyhow, why not drive to the impact location of the heatshield. Since this came down without a parachute, it should have dug a pretty deep hole. It is thus possible to study a fresh crater that is only 1 month old!
Re:Fresh crater (Score:3, Informative)
From earlier reports, the lander stopped about 330 meters from the first bounce, so the crater is within 500 meters of it, eminently reachable if they get the rover problems fixed soon.( Just don't touch that heatshield if it's still hot! Tssssss!!.... "Houston, we have another problem..") On the other hand, NASA would certainly want to avoid any unnecessary source of non-Martian contamination, heat-st
Re:Fresh crater (Score:4, Interesting)
We probably will find Beagle eventually, but probably not with the cameras we have up there currently. The little lost puppy will just have to sit it out for a decade or ten.
Schwarzenegger: "GET YOUR ASS TO MARS" (Score:5, Funny)
A reporter reminded Gov. Schwarzenegger that "You blabbed Quaid! You blabbed about Mars!" Schwarzenegger ignored the remark, responding "I've never even been to Mars! What the fuck did I do wrong?"
Later that evening, Schwarzenegger pleaded with Cohaagen to increase the oxygen ration on Mars, by saying: "Giff des people eair!!"
Finally, he shot his wife, Sharon Stone, through the head, closing the press conference by saying "Consider dat a divorce!!!"
Wanna know what I think? (Score:5, Funny)
Pictures just came through (Score:3, Informative)
A few Spirit links about flight software (Score:5, Interesting)
PDF of a powerpoint about static analysis of the code [nasa.gov]
First [gcn.com] and second [gcn.com] links from GCN magazine.
And here is a chatty JPL page showing the key team members and their personal reflections [nasa.gov]
Some technical briefs on the science payload can be downloaded here [cornell.edu] or here [cornell.edu]
A list of Cornell's scientists and their bios etc is here [cornell.edu]
Here [dailymail.com]is an article about another software guy.
A cool technical power point about the computers, only available on google cache, is here [google.com]
And lastly, a technical comparison [darwin2k.com] of today's rovers against something called Fido.
I simply don't know what I did before Google!
Opportunity Pictures (Score:3, Informative)
Images and Excitement (Score:5, Interesting)
Steve Squyres (the principle investigator) is quite excited about the position of the rover... It's insane how many geologically interesting features are nearby the rover, especially considering it was a safe landing site. To quote the press conference, "It's like trying to land in Oklahoma and hope to find the Grand Canyon." It's simply amazing the details we are seeing on even the most compressed of images!
Geologists are excited, engineers are excited... Even people that don't know anything about geology (like myself) realize how important it is to find outcroppings like this... allowing us to see the stratigraphy of the local site... looking back millions of years into the past, it's incredible! I personally hope that we RAT the outcroppings. We're already seeing some hints of layering there... hmm...
But most exciting of all is the chance, as Steve Squyres mentioned, that we could be inside a crater. That would be an incredibly awesome place to start... The chance to study craters up close will be invaluable to our future interpretation of cratered worlds.
Once again I cannot get accross how cool all of this is. Thanks so much to all of you out there who are interested in this stuff... even if it is just which OS the rover runs
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
Re:Images and Excitement (Score:5, Informative)
The above poster is correct. I state clearly in my Slashdot info that I am a university student. I have been working on MER since I was a freshman, and I have spent the last 3 years developing portions of the GDS software used by the scientists. (GDS = Ground Data Systems). I am one semester away from my degree in Applied Physics.
Yes, I am an intern, however I have been doing this long enough as to actually have some idea of what I am doing. When I post in a semioffical capacity, I try to stay within my realm of expertise, or synthesize information that was stated previously by someone who knows what they are talking about.
I'm merely trying to provide some "insider" views to slashdot. The big guys on the mission tend to have a few better things to do than post to slashdot, so I do
Cheers,
Justin
Re:Images and Excitement (Score:3, Funny)
before anyone gets excited because of "Justin Wick"'s signature, realize he is not really a NASA scientist but a little intern guy.
I would say Justin is an intern who has been doing some pretty damned impressive work that he should rightly be quite proud of. I don't see anything particularly self-agrandizing in his many informative posts here.
So what is it you do at McDonalds, Mr. Anonymous Coward? Sweep the parking lot and clean the restrooms?Re:Images and Excitement (Score:3, Insightful)
First Color Photo is up! (Score:5, Informative)
I had the privilege (Score:5, Interesting)
of watching the images returned by MER-B with a fairly prominent planetary geologist tonight, and what he had to say was "That ain't no [expletive deleted] lava flow."
The next couple of weeks are going to be very interesting, folks. And who said the Meridiani site was going to be boring?
Time to go to bed.
Al Gore (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Was this posted from Mars..? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Was this posted from Mars..? (Score:3, Informative)
Nasa TV has the RM stream:
http://realserver1.jpl.nasa.gov:8080/ram
Re:Was this posted from Mars..? (Score:5, Informative)
Featuring COLOR IMAGES [lyle.org] from Opportunity, before JPL has made them available. (By aggregating 2/5/6 filters together to simulate what the human eye would see).
Also, there are stereo anaglyphs up of the lander.
Re:Was this posted from Mars..? (Score:3, Interesting)
Couple of questions.
First, how are you gaining access to these pictures? Are they being placed on a public server somewhere? If so, NASA really rocks for giving everybody near real-time access.
Second, in these pictures does anybody have an idea of scale? For example... the following picture looks like a tissue sample I might see under a microscope.
http://www.lyle.org/mars/imagery/color/128287399- 6
Anyway, thanks for the pictures... they kick ass. You deserv
Re:Was this posted from Mars..? (Score:4, Informative)
They all come from the JPL raw pictures area. My scripts/code turn the raw pictures into color imagery and anaglyphs, and assist me in stitching images together into larger ones.
When it comes to scale, the pancam images (which all the color images are derived from) have a 16.8x16.8 degree field of view. This is about the same as 140mm telephoto lens when used with a 35mm camera. As to the size across the frame, this varies with the camera distance. The closest the camera will be to the center of the frame is about 7 ft, making the picture maybe about 2-3 feet across? The pancam is largely designed to mimic what human vision would see, in resolution and in focal length.
The microscopic imager takes pictures that are about 1.25" across when in focus. I may be able to produce crude color pictures with it because it has a dust cover that is colored orange, and sometimes they take pictures with it on... providing crude color information.
Re:Was this posted from Mars..? (Score:5, Informative)
That's why it's called pseudocolor, because the redpoint is off by 30-60nm depending on exposure. It doesn't mess things up much except for things that have a ton of infrared reflectivity. I also have "nearcolor" pics that take L2/3/4/5/6 filtered pictures together and combine them to be really close perceptually what people would see. But there have not been any qualifying sets of images downlinked from Opportunity yet, nor will there be many. (L3/L4 aren't so useful for science, so it's only things that they're really interested in that they take pictures with all filters---and that thus I can do it for).
See nearcolor pics near the top of my site [lyle.org].
Re:So, this makes what? (Score:2)
Re:So, this makes what? (Score:4, Informative)
Every country that has sent orbiters/landers/rovers to Mars has had a high number of failures, including the Soviet Union (later Russia), the United States, Japan, and Europe.
Take a look at this quality Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] on Mars exploration.
Re:Reality Check (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Let's say, for argument's sake, there was no 9/11 and no subsequent wars. We'd have (at least) $87 billion more in the budget. So in that parallel universe you believe that homeless people are all living in co-ops?
2. I do believe there were quite a few impoverished people before the founding of NASA. The creation of NASA did not take a sandwich out of a homeless guy's hand.
3. Velcro, GPS, Cellular Telephones, discovery of the ozone hole which arguably launched the widespread efforts to fix our planet, Tang
4. And... does everything in your mind have to deal with profit? So, if we find unlimited diamonds and platinum on Mars/Asteroids/etc, then it's worth it? If it's "just a few microbes thus PROVING we are not the only inhabited planet in the universe" then it's no big deal?
5. Lastly (I could be wrong on this one - if this is the one I mess up then fine), I believe GWB wants to lower taxes (not that I agree with lowering them either, but I'm just correcting you on that...)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One question about their mission control tech: (Score:5, Informative)
Why don't they automate the mission control tech a bit more...
General observation about JPL and NASA: they're slow to adopt new technology. This is a good thing. They tend to wait until a particular technology is very mature and clearly useful before adopting it in a mission-critical environment. Individual scientists and engineers are welcome to experiment with all sorts of cutting-edge tools for number crunching, visualization, simulations, etc. - and they do - but mission-critical technology is kept deliberately as simple as possible.
(a) voice comm may still be useful, but why not use IM for a group of people to "chat." Is the voice feed for the media?
Honestly I think that voice communication is far more efficient - most people can talk faster than they can type, and when you know the other person you gain more information from their tone of voice, etc.
(b) why not "follow the procedure" with some online, multi-user app that checks off the steps done on some browser sort of app? The engineering specs have to be changing up to the last minute; why commit to paper something that becomes obsolete once you press Print?
I can think of many reasons:
1. KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid): If you relied on software to make sure you were following the procedures, that software now becomes mission-critical. The software has to be totally foolproof. It takes about 10x as much effort to write robust, clean, documented, verified code as it does to toss off a quick web app.
2. An online form or "procedure wizard" couldn't possibly be smart enough to anticipate any possible deviation from the rules that might be necessary.
3. With rules printed on paper, you can spread them all out in front of you. You can circle things with a pencil. You can make corrections or notes.
4. You don't have to waste valuable computer screen real-estate. Even though many of the mission people have 2 or 3 monitors, they want every last pixel displaying interactive real-time information, not opened to a web browser displaying a list of rules.
Re:One question about their mission control tech: (Score:3, Insightful)
Having worked on three missions in the past (though not any Mars missions), here are some random thoughts. The communications done via voice are fairly routine (unless something has gone wrong). The polling is always arranged to happen during a quiet spot, so there is plenty of time to get it done, and clear procedures if someone has the audacity to say "no go" ;)
Since it is routine, you can casually half listen to the comm, waiting for your call sign, and in the mean time concentrate on doing "real work"
Re:One question about their mission control tech: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Viking missions easier than Spirit & Opport (Score:5, Informative)
The addition of air bags means there is a much greater range of safe geography that can be explored because the final phase of the decent can safely occur even with large horizontal and vertical velocities at parachute release.
Obviously even with this system it is prudent to avoid regions with lots of crevasses and cracks as it would be rather a shame if it bounced along the surface and ended up jammed in a crack and unable to open.