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Space Science

Mars Landers - Opportunity, Bedrock, Aerosmith? 351

Posted by simoniker from the don't-wanna-miss-a-thing dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "As was reported last week, the first Mars rover Spirit had some communications problems that the folks at the JPL have finally managed to trace to problems with its flash memory. Reuters is reporting that Opportunity seems to be having some power-related problems, too. It appears a faulty thermostat is turning a heater on overnight without being told to do so. While NASA isn't concerned about the rover overheating, they're exploring the long-term effects of continued power drain on the second rover." The article also notes: "The first three-dimensional, panoramic images beamed back from Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock" - there's now a color version of the same image. Finally, lightwaveman points to the Spaceflight Now status page regarding new priorities for the Mars mission: "The airing of today's Mars rover news conference is being delayed on NASA TV to show the band Aerosmith touring International Space Station Mission Control at Houston's Johnson Space Center."
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Mars Landers - Opportunity, Bedrock, Aerosmith? More

Mars Landers - Opportunity, Bedrock, Aerosmith?

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  • heaters.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fjordboy ( 169716 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:12PM (#8118399) Homepage
    After the last couple weeks of living in constant cold and snow here in the northeast I think I have a little insight on the Opportunity issue - I'd randomly turn on the heat if I was on mars too! It's cold!

    • Re:heaters.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rallion ( 711805 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:31PM (#8118628) Journal
      I sympathize with a fellow resident of the area which I now refer to as Freezing Hell.

      On the 14th, Spirit was warmer than the people in my hometown.

  • Opportunity got really lucky (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Unregistered ( 584479 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:13PM (#8118420)
    if we could have picked any landing site on mars, it would be Opportunity's. An examination of bedrock will tell us much more about mars than analyzing rocks that may have come from space. Also, is Opportunity set up to look for life?

    btw, Firebird on OSX says the color image contains errors. Anyone else having that happen?
    • "An examination of bedrock will tell us..."
      that Fred and Wilma are grand parents now. Turns out Gazoo is the father.
    • Opportunity and Spirit are mainly set up to find out about the mineralogy, and their task is to try to establish once and for all that liquid water was once abundant on Mars.
    • An examination of bedrock will tell us much more about mars than analyzing rocks that may have come from space.
      Having played geologist for a number of years now, I can say that the bedrock looks like wind deposits to me. The crossbeds that are present look similar to crossbeds you can observe in the Navajo Sandstone in Utah or a number of other formations in the Colorado Plateau. Unless there are some scientific instruments I am unaware of they will not be able to conclusively determine whether the bedro
      • based on my (admittedly) very limited knowledge of geology, i think the type of erosion give some pretty good clues on that subject. IIRC wind and water erode the rocks differently.... but then i could be completly wrong too, it's been an age and a half

      • Playing Geology? (Score:2, Informative)

        by toxic666 ( 529648 )
        You can't differnetiate the mineralogy of a wind-deposited from a water-deposited rock? Umm, might want to try playing a new game. Or, take some sophomore geology courses. Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, Petrology and Mineralogy and Crystallography would be a good start.

        Granted, the source minerals are a little different on Mars, but the instrumentation will tell us what they are in detail. But any competent geologist can make that determination by the Junior year in school.
      • One of the Mars orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor) did extensive spectrographic mapping of the minerals on the surface of Mars. Opportunity has landed in an area that is apparently rich in hematite. Seven of the eight ways this hematite can be formed involve the presence of water. Opportunity will be used to determine if the hematite was water based or volcanically based. Some details here [biomedcentral.com]

    • Re:Opportunity got really lucky (Score:4, Informative)

      by dellis78741 ( 745139 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:43PM (#8119256)
      And today they explained that Opportunity actually rolled around in the crater like a dice tossed into a bowl. Made a figure eight before settling down. That explains a few of those 'imprints' that were off at odd angles. So while the odds of landing in a crater are supposedly incredibly low, once a bouncing rover intersects one its' odds of staying in the crater go up dramatically.

    • Re:Opportunity got really lucky (Score:5, Insightful)

      by linoleo ( 718385 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @10:21PM (#8119849) Journal
      if we could have picked any landing site on mars, it would be Opportunity's.

      Actually, if we could pick *any* landing site, there are *a lot* more interesting ones on Mars to choose from. You have to decode Nasa-speak - what they're really saying is: "to be on the safe side, we always land in very flat regions, which tend to be (geologically speaking) rather boring. We are thrilled to have stumbled upon a flat region that looks *different* from all the other flat regions we've landed in before."

      In other words, we've graduated from Kansas to Oklahoma. The Rockies, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Rift Valley, Himalaya, etc. of Mars are still waiting for us to develop more robust landers and capable all-terrain robots. Check out ESA's first Mars Express images [esa.int] for a taste of some more dramatic scenery. Can't wait till we get a rover into *that*!

      - nic

  • Rock This Way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:14PM (#8118441) Homepage
    I wonder if any of the NASA dweebs tried to get Liv's number from her dad...

    Seriously though, it's been a pretty good week for NASA so far, with Opportunity landing safely and Spirit slowly coming back to health.

    My question is: When they locate a fix for Spirit, will they apply it to Opportunity as well? Are the two really identical, and if so wouldn't Opportunity run the risk of the same sort of major nervous breakdown that Spirit had? Or do they plan on leaving well enough alone?

    • Re:Rock This Way (Score:5, Informative)

      by kcornia ( 152859 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:19PM (#8118503) Journal
      My understanding is they've already made some changes in the way Opportunity uses its flash memory, in an attempt to NOT recreate the problem they're seeing with Spirit. Something about dumping data instead of writing it there unless its crucial.

      I'll try to dig up a link.

      • Re:Rock This Way (Score:5, Informative)

        by kcornia ( 152859 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:24PM (#8118565) Journal
        Here's what I found with a quick google news search.

        Changes to memory usage [kansascity.com]

        The latest theory on Spirit's difficulties involves an overloading of engineering and science data files in the flash memory. The memory had not been purged of files accumulated during Spirit's near seven-month journey from Earth.

        The recovery plan includes a culling of the files and a change in the operating strategy for Spirit as well as Opportunity that will more closely monitor the file content.

        Bold is mine

    • Re:Rock This Way (Score:4, Informative)

      by Iphtashu Fitz ( 263795 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:23PM (#8118548)
      My question is: When they locate a fix for Spirit, will they apply it to Opportunity as well?

      According to the Reuters article one of the theories that NASA is investigating is the possibility that a solar flare could have damaged Spirit during "a vulnerable point during its communications with Earth." If that's the case then there's probably not much they can do to prevent it from happening again. If, however, another theory like the machine overloading itself with datafiles, turns out to be the true culprit then they probably could patch both rovers.

    • Re:Rock This Way (Score:2, Informative)

      by zcat_NZ ( 267672 )
      From the last article I read, the problem with Spirit involves having too many files in flash. So the fix involves deleting old files when they no longer need them.

      They're also deleting files off Opportunity as soon as they've been transmitted and/or are no longer required, so it hopefully won't develop the same problem.

    • Re:Rock This Way (Score:2, Informative)

      by Kenneth Stephen ( 1950 )

      That depends on the nature of the problem doesnt it? If the problem was caused by a dust storm blowing a rock onto Spirit (just a silly example - dont take it literally), there wouldnt be anything to fix on Opportunity, right? Actually, the question you asked was asked by a journalist during one of the NASA briefings, and the answer was something along the lines of "..it depends on the root cause of the problem....". And if its a hardware failure, there might not be a software fix anyway (even though there

    • I heard that they flash the rovers when they're on final approach so I would assume Opportunity is running with the latest version of its software, probably patched up from Spirit.
    • here's [ev1.net] a quick pic of them outside building 30...

    • Open Source the Rover Code ? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ntsucks ( 22132 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @09:04PM (#8119411)
      Why doesn't NASA Open Source this rover code? Not for the outside world to contribute to the development, but for review. The collective intelligence of the open source community could certainly provide productive and insightful reviews. Perhaps problems such as file management could be avoided. At the very least the open souce community would be able to document weak points in the design that could be improved or avoided in production use.

      Its not like this is proprietary, for-profit code. I helped paid for it. Its for the good of all mankind.

      If nothing else, I would love the chance to learn something from NASA. The rover code might be as beautiful as the images coming back (or not!).

      • Why doesn't NASA Open Source this rover code? Not for the outside world to contribute to the development, but for review. The collective intelligence of the open source community could certainly provide productive and insightful reviews.

        Why? Because it's unlikely that the open source community will provide much in the way of useful commentary. They don't have simulators to run the code on. And I find it unlikely that they will spend the months needed to understand a complex, tightly integrated, and utter

  • I've discouvered what happened to the Spirit lander... This picture [botteronet.net] explains everything.

  • um... yeah (Score:4, Funny)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:15PM (#8118457) Journal
    The airing of today's Mars rover news conference is being delayed on NASA TV to show the band Aerosmith touring International Space Station Mission Control at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

    What, Bruce Willis wasn't there?

  • Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman@g m a i l . c om> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:17PM (#8118479) Homepage Journal
    Let's use nuclear power so we can go there. If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off. No more of this multi-million dollar robot BS. I love the robots to death, but we don't need to send them in our stead.

    • Re:Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:5, Insightful)

      by glinden ( 56181 ) * on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:35PM (#8118679) Homepage Journal
      • If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off.
      Not so sure about that. Send people up there and, if the thermostat incorrectly activates (Opportunity) or a software error causes the entire system to shut down (Spirit), people die. Manned space exploration is expensive and dangerous.
      • Yea, but the opportunity doesn't have scissors to cut the lines to the heater.

        Granted, might get a little tingle splicing them back together to turn the heat back on, but I'm sure there would be other accomodations in case of a heater / thermostat failure (i.e. have 2 of them?) if humans were on the surface....

        If the entire system shut down, since humans are on the spot (most likely engineers and scientists) they'd probably be able to hack something together. A little more difficult (not impossible) from

    • Re:Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:49PM (#8118812) Homepage Journal
      Sure, someone could turn it off if they were there. Then they'd freeze to death when it actually did get cold. For that matter, NASA could probably do that now, from Earth.

      Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others. Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL [nasa.gov] and produce a significant amount of power afterwards. Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.
      • someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL
        Uh, are you serious? So there's no other way to successfully land on mars besides parachuting, inflating airbags, and bouncing to a complete stop? Talk about someone taking the phrase "stop, drop, and roll" to the next level. Common.... I'm sure we've all played Moon Lander? What happend to all those skills from the early 80s?

      • Re:Said it before, I'll say it again (Score:5, Informative)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <akaimbatman@g m a i l . c om> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:53PM (#8119344) Homepage Journal
        Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others.

        They're called RTGs, and they weren't used on Spirit or Opportuniry because of backlash from environmentalists. After all, how dare NASA send up a few pounds of plutonium on space craft. Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!

        Right.

        Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards.]

        It's called a Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (GCNR), which is a advanced NERVA style engine. NERVA was completed in the '60s, but cold war fears of nuclear power killed the project. Over the past decade, NASA has had the GCNR under quiet development for use in space propulsion. What most people don't realize (an intentional oversight by NASA) is that GCNRs can produce more thrust than a chemical rocket, but at a much higher Isp. Even the completed NERVA technology had 4 times the lifting power of today's Space Shuttle.

        The really beautiful part about GCNR, is that it could potentially breath gases like O2 and CO2 as fuel. That means that we could easily create space planes that work on Earth *and* Mars. Wouldn't it be nice to fly into Mars' atmosphere instead of falling? (Do a search for "Project Pluto". It wasn't the cleanest plane ever, but it did work.)

        Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.

        Bull. These rovers don't even have a tenth the amount of power, resources, propulsion, and ability that can be accomplished with today's technology.

        We have the technology already. We just need to stop putzing around and *use* nuclear power.

        • Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!

          This is another EXCITING program in the pipeline for NASA. Cassini-Huygens (Huygens being the probe) will reach Saturn July 1st of this year. Then next winter Huygens will separate and land on Titan. I didn't see on NASA's site if there will be a camera attached to Titan or not... That would be cool to see Saturn in the night sky! (See, being relative, if my astronomy serves me correctly, it is a very murky planet.

          --Joey

    • There is more to going to Mars then just using nuclear power. ie producing rocket fuel on mars, finding out how to send people on a 6 month trip in 0 G, finding a rocket ship with enough lift capacity, bringing enough food/supplies for multilple weeks/months, creating a suitable living environment etc... Robots are suitable for now because they don't require any of the things I have just mentioned, and they can still pull off most of the science a Human can. You think we have problems with rob
      • finding out how to send people on a 6 month trip in 0 G

        Nuclear rockets can power a large enough craft to spin. Or alternatively, some engines could produce light gravity via constant acceleration.

        finding a rocket ship with enough lift capacity

        Found it. [nuclearspace.com] GCNR technology is mostly developed. NERVA technology already is developed.

        bringing enough food/supplies for multilple weeks/months,

        That's actually the least of our problems. We've had a lot of experience with long missions thanks to submarines and
    • Let's use nuclear power so we can go there. If the thermostat incorrectly activates, someone will turn it off. No more of this multi-million dollar robot BS.

      Um, or, we could put a couple temp probes on the thing and let the computer control the heater. That'll save about $983 billion or more from your plan.

    • I've Said it before, and I'll say it again (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geekoid ( 135745 ) <dadinportland&yahoo,com> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:25PM (#8119125) Homepage Journal
      If we can't get probeds and rovers there reliable, we have no business sending people.

      We need to set up an infrastructure before we send people.

      I would like to see 8-12 sattalites whose goals are, in order:
      1)relay communication
      2)track objects on the planet
      3)Pictures.

      we should also send a few big units full of supplies.

      Then we should send people who Also have enough supplies to get there and back.
      They should rotate supplies as new missions land

      We should do experiments on building shelters from native materials.

      That could mean caves, mines and/or adobe huts made from local materials.

      Mars is really far away(yes you can quote me ;) and we need to think really big and long term.

      I would also like to send 4 or five teams of 6, each about a month apart.

      • If we can't get probeds and rovers there reliable, we have no business sending people.

        And how many nuclear craft are currently flying? The correct answer is ZERO. Not because it isn't a good idea, but because of FUD surrounding nuclear technology. NASA can't even send up a few pounds of plutonium as a passive power source without everyone claiming we're all going to die.


        I would like to see 8-12 sattalites whose goals are, in order:
        1)relay communication
        2)track objects on the planet
        3)Pictures.

        Agreed.

    • I think that the problems with Spirit and Opportunity might show we need to take it at a cautios pace before sending folks out there. Its been pointed out that these rovers took 10's of G's just to get there and land, and thats gotta be rough. Most pilots and astronauts to this point have seen about 10G's worst case, and for very short periods of time.

      One of the largest concerns about space travel is radiation exposure. Once you enter the Van Allen Belts, which lie outside the protection of Earth's mag

  • I'm assuming that the Quicktimes that you can download at spaceflightnow is coming from nasa feeds. What's up with charging for nasa footage? Don't they get that free? (they might be capturing it and hosting it, but still).

  • Oh, Sure, Like I Believe That... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:20PM (#8118516) Homepage Journal
    Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock" - there's now a color version of the same image

    Yeah, right, that's really Tatooine, if you look closely you can see Luke's uncle's 'farm'. in the distance. I'm pretty sure there some sand people messing with these rovers. At least when the rovers burn out the Jawas will be able to clean things up.

    Obviously they didn't launch rockets to put those there, they used the same hyperspace portal that George Lucas uses.

  • The story says it was submitted by 'lightwaveman'. Lightwave was the app used to do the neato rover video we've seen on TV. Just curious if that guy had any relation to that project or if he just happens to be a fellow lightwaver. If he's the former, you all would probably find the making of that animation interesting, if he'd be willing to talk about it.
  • has a better multi-monitor wallpaper image ever been discovered?

    thank you nasa ;-)
  • That's no bedrock, it's the first martian dinosaur fossil!

  • There's always Mars (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:23PM (#8118551) Journal
    Bad economy, war in Iraq, dodgy dossiers, terrorists on the loose, no WMDs, Gov. Schwarzenegger (I live in California...), rising national debt, companies fleeing offshore in droves, corporate scandals, high unemployement. I'm depressed.

    Then there's Mars. Drama, excitement, scientific adventure: I feel proud of our messed up little species. Stuck somewhere between monkeys and angels, we manage to pull off some cool stunts once in a while. Go Team!

    • Re:There's always Mars (Score:5, Informative)

      by ehiris ( 214677 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @08:05PM (#8118951) Homepage
      Then there's Mars. Drama, excitement, scientific adventure

      Or as Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 a Space Odyssey: "After ten thousand years, man at last found something as exciting as war."
    • The Apollo moon landings, one of the greatest accomplishments of humankind, were made possible only through completely childish nationalistic competition. One of the ironies of being human, I guess.

  • Bedding plane (Score:5, Informative)

    by Party_Pack ( 719951 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:24PM (#8118560)
    Interestingly there seems to be some sort of horizontal feature that in a terrestrial rock could very well be stratification, which would make it a sedimentary rock. I would guess that it's more likely some sort of weathering effect. Although you do quite often see this sort of effect in dykes. Very interesting :)
    • Yep, definitely looks like sedimentary rocks to me. It's unlikely that the stratification would be weathering I think, it looks a lot like rocks which were once sand bars or sand dunes.

      The interesting weathering effect there is the way that it has split into squarish blocks, which is usually a sign of 'unloading'. That is, overlying rock layers have been eroded away, reducing the pressure on the lower layers. Given that the lower layers were slightly compressed under that weight, they fracture into cubical

  • Game over man! (Score:3, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:24PM (#8118563) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only one that can see a face in every one of those rocks?

  • They just got a little confused... (Score:5, Funny)

    by el-spectre ( 668104 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:28PM (#8118591) Journal
    They heard that Liv's dad knew about digging space rocks or somesuch thing...

  • Go Nuke - (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jzarling ( 600712 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:31PM (#8118624)
    Weren't the Viking probes powered by some sort of plutonium or uranium / ceramic batteries - they lasted for years.
    If NASA is concerned about dust build up on the panels don't use them.
    If they are concerned about dust on the camera lenses perhaps they could lease the "on car" camera technology from CART or NASCAR.
    As for Aerosmith - they even less to do with science (unless your a chemist) than they do with football. - They and all the popstars f'up my Monday Night Football Intros, and now they delay delay NASA TV, Im gonna pirate thier latest album just to delete it.
    • they wanted to plutonium. there was a brief flirting with that idea. One of my profs is a mission leader for the MERs and one word for why it didn't get made (simplified and more humorous, but it's the truth):

      Hippies.
      • exactly why they should team with anoterh country.
        We can build everything, the other country only needs to launch the atomic bits up.

  • Color Photo? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ShawnDoc ( 572959 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:33PM (#8118659) Homepage
    Is there a color photo somewhere? The link in the story only points to a B&W photo with a red filter put on it.

    • Re:Color Photo? (Score:2, Informative)

      by elendel ( 229983 )
      Insightful? I say Funny.

      As has been discussed on /. previous, the cameras on the lander are strictly black and white - colors are gained by (wait for it) using filters!
  • Has anyone made any quicktime VR's of these panorama shots? I figured that would be inevitable.

  • if beagle (Score:2, Interesting)

    by relrelrel ( 737051 )
    Had landed in Opportunity's position, it would have been far more fascinating.

    Beagle2 is the most technically advanced out of the 3, and can analyse materials and send the results back to earth, so you could effectively get proof of life (or be it, 'beyond most doubt') on mars within a couple days of it landing.

    Very sad it didn't work out.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:36PM (#8118696)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Message from Opportunity...just in (1 of 5040) (Score:5, Funny)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:38PM (#8118713)
    The original message was received at Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:50:53 -0500
    from neomail03.traderonline.com [10.222.132.7]

    ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----

    (reason: 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown)

    ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to neomail01.traderonline.com.:
    RCPT To: ... User unknown
    550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
    Reporting-MTA: dns; neomail02.traderonline.com
    Received-From-MTA: DNS; neomail03.traderonline.com
    Arrival-Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:50:53 -0500

    Final-Recipient: RFC822; Opportunity@nasa.com
    Action: failed
    Status: 5.1.1
    Remote-MTA: DNS; neomail01.traderonline.com
    Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown
    Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 17:50:54 -0500

    From: Opportunity@nasa.com
    Date: January 28, 2004 2:52:34 PM PST
    To: earth@nasa.com
    Subject: Hello

    The message contains Unicode characters and has been sent as a binary attachment.

  • Two out of two isn't bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by infolib ( 618234 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:39PM (#8118728)
    - so how about reusing the Spirit/Opportunity platform for further robotic missions to Mars? They seem to work (somewhat) and the remaining problems will probably be ironed out. Has the time come for commodity Mars probes?

    What's all you space geeks saying? Is there something we would really miss by using slightly modified versions of these landers that would justify development costs? Or is the question moot since Bush wants manned missions anyway?

    • Already being re-used (Score:5, Informative)

      by shadowj ( 534439 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:56PM (#8118881)
      so how about reusing the Spirit/Opportunity platform for further robotic missions to Mars?

      The Spirit/Opportunity landing system is heavily based on the Pathfinder/Sojourner design. The parachute and airbags had to be beefed up to deal with the additional weight, and some other modifications were made based on what was learned the first time around, but it's basically the same. I understand that squeezing the much larger Spirit and Opportunity into the lander was not easy, which is why the probes arrive folded up like elaborate origami.

  • That picture does a ridiculously good job of reminding me of one of the Roger Wilco games, making me feel nostalgic and mising my younger days. I am now depressed, for they are gone forever.

    Fuck you, NASA, you ruined my life.

  • Is it me? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BTWR ( 540147 ) <americangibor3@ya[ ].com ['hoo' in gap]> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:40PM (#8118737) Homepage Journal
    Or is the press just dying for some bad news? I mean, everyone knows the news saying "You report the one house on fire, no one reports the 10,000 that didn't burn today" (or something like that).

    For the media, bad news is good news (storywise). Here we have unprecidented sucesses of the MERs (and Mars Express - within DAYS of working it has found evidence of it's top mission objective), and now there's all this press about the "failures."

    Or has NASA been "asking for it," as they keep saying how "amazingly perfect" things are going, setting themselves up for scrutiny when they fail? My opinion: no, but what about you?

    • Re:Is it me? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 )
      Well, one rover is incapacitated completely. The other has problems that may (but hopefully not) be a major problem. "Perfect" would be if both rovers had been successfully deployed and functioned as planned. That's not what happened.

      I certainly hope Spirit can be rehabilitated; that in itself would be a triumph. On the other hand, ith the Rover's lifespan of 90 days [nasa.gov] or so, each day on Mars costs several million dollars. Each nonfunctional day makes the mission a day shorter and that much less succe

  • I can hear the envirowackos now! (Score:5, Funny)

    by leftie_hater ( 744932 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:42PM (#8118757) Homepage
    "Opportunity is contributing to global warming on Mars!"
  • there are actually some serious philisophical debates over whether thermostats are conscious

    http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/notes/lloyd-c om ments.html
  • That outcrop of rocks does look intersting, but also familiar. Ealier verions of these [ig.com.br]?

  • NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted then? (Score:4, Funny)

    by CrackedButter ( 646746 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @07:59PM (#8118906) Homepage Journal
    I just downloaded a 4 meg image, they never heard of us or something?

    • Re:NASA isn't concerned with being slashdotted the (Score:5, Informative)

      by the frizz ( 242326 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @09:25PM (#8119485)
      No they're not.

      I work at Speedera who is delivering their content and NASA TV. At 6pm EST when slashdot posted this story the traffic increased only about 100Mbps. Articles posted on AOL, MSN and Yahoo home pages increase the traffic much more. The NASA TV live stream when Opportunity landed was 4 Gbps. There are lots of other sources that are bigger than the slashdot effect.

      See the press release [speedera.com] for more details on the traffic and our SpeedRank [speedera.com] index for historical performance and availabilty of NASA's site.

  • But is anyone else looking at this pictures and thinking to themselves "damn I know it's nasa and a different world an all but pretty much ALL of the pictures look like they've been rendered in bryce and such".
  • Notice on this website [nasa.gov] of the actual raw footage from the most recent panoramic picture [nasa.gov] from opportunity.
    See the pictures that have large squares [nasa.gov] missing? Well, Nasa is taking out the spots where martians get in the frame. They really don't want to start mass hysteria. Can ya' blame em?
  • But personally I think we need to revisit that thead which goes

    NASA is pink-ing out the skies so that we can't see futur-istic (to our eyes) Martian City-Scapes off in the distance

    Much as I hate to whine about the quality of reporting here on The Slash.

    This is *really* getting to be the site for
    • NASA released more photos => New Article
    • SCO released more unbelievale crapola => New Article
    • Micosoft published 'independant researching' touting Microsoft => New Article

    EVEN when they're DUPLICATE PO

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