Phoenix Mars Lander To Begin Rasping Ice Shavings 80
Rob writes with an excerpt from an article at spacefellowship.com: "A powered rasp on the back of the robotic arm scoop of NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander is being tested for the first time on Mars in gathering sample shavings of ice.
The lander has used its arm in recent days to clear away loose soil from a subsurface layer of hard-frozen material and create a large enough area to use the motorized rasp in a trench informally named 'Snow White.'
The Phoenix team prepared commands early Tuesday for beginning a series of tests with the rasp later in the day. Engineers and scientists designed the tests to lead up to, in coming days, delivering a sample of icy soil into one of the lander's laboratory ovens.
'While Phoenix was in development, we added the rasp to the robotic arm design specifically to grind into very hard surface ice,' said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This is the exactly the situation we find we are facing on Mars, so we believe we have the right tool for the job. Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule.'" I still can't get enough of pictures of a little hunk of metal on Mars.
Universe's most expensive snow cone (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Universe's most expensive snow cone (Score:5, Funny)
In my day, we ate our rust-flavored snow cones and we liked 'em!
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In my day, we ate our rust-flavored snow cones and we liked 'em!
In my day they we didn't have the snow, they were just paper cones filled with rust!
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Cones!? You had cones?
Try using your shoe, lad. That's all we did. All the paper was used for clothing in those days, and that wasn't even the good stuff.
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Try using your shoe, lad.
Couldn't, I'd eaten them for lunch the week before!
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Shoes? You spoiled brats had shoes to put your rust-cones in? In my day we would have given our left arm for shoes. Well, we would, except we had already had them torn off by wild dogs.
We had to saw the tops of our heads off with stone tools and use our skulls as bowls. And in those days, you had to eat your rust-cone fast, so you could get your skull back on your head before the ravens started trying to eat your brain. The bone would still be cold, so you got brain freeze from two sides.
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Jesus, first huffing and now this. Will these youngsters ever learn?
I predict a short life if he continues on this road.
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Jesus, first huffing and now this. Will these youngsters ever learn?
I would have thought they'd learn when the wrist started hurting [slashdot.org]
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Just great! First contact and... (Score:1)
Sublimation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Sublimation? (Score:5, Interesting)
MarsPhoenix: Team wants to see how quickly test shavings sublimate (turn to vapor) to help them estimate how quickly I need to move real samples to oven.
Wow (Score:1, Offtopic)
Wow, now even planetary landers have Twitter pages?!
Jeeze, I am so out of touch...
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Bio I dig Mars!
Har har.
But seriously, it's pretty cool that Phoenix has a Twitter page.
Re:Sublimation? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sublimation? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would hope that NASA considered this already. I imagine that the rasp will loosen a sufficient enough quantity so that the ice won't completely sublimate by the time it reaches the testing oven. Sure some will, but hopefully not all of it.
Also, I believe what is important here is not necessarily the H2O ice itself, but what else is contained within it. Even if the ice sublimates, all the minerals, salts, and creepy-crawlies should be left behind.
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What makes this rasp extra special? (Score:1, Insightful)
Honeybee Robotics in New York City did a heroic job of designing and delivering the rasp on a very short schedule
Not to diminish the difficulty of getting something as complex as Phoenix onto the surface of Mars, but seriously how tricky is it to deliver a rasp on a short schedule? I can drive to the nearest Home Depot in about 10 minutes.
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Re:What makes this rasp extra special? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find interesting is the ongoing semantic deterioration of the word heroic.
All hail our heroic... ahm... rasp deliverers!
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On the other hand, after 9/11, everybody knows the meaning of heroes. Or do they?
Hmm, let me think who the people consider heroes...
Professionals who risked their lives entering a disaster area to rescue people... Yes.
Civilians who rushed to the scene to do whatever they could to help... Perhaps.
Politico who stood around with a bullhorn telling people to keep doing what they already were doing... No.
Yeah, I think everyone has a pretty good grip on what constitutes a hero. :)
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Not to pick on you specifically, but you're the perfect example of someone whose understanding of hero is by and large accurate, but vague.
Heroes are people (or animals, sentient creatures to be most broad) recognized for putting their lives on the line to do something meaningful for others. Heroes sometimes are rewarded for their actions with only death--not even success necessarily. And yes, there are various degrees of heroism, and to further complicate matters, various degrees of recognition for heroism
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Not to pick on you specifically, but you're the perfect example of someone whose understanding of hero is by and large accurate, but vague.
Yes, because a 5 line post was intended to be precise.
To directly reply, it doesn't really matter whether someone is a professional or an amateur, so long as the intended effect is accomplished.
My comment was not in any way intended to imply that. It was a simple statement of fact as to what happened. Firemen went into the building to rescue people. Civies didn't. I
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Unfortunately, I have to disagree. The average person really doesn't have a good idea of what constitutes heroism. The average person has the vague idea that somebody who does something unusual worthy of acclaimation is a hero, but I don't think most people would be able to get very far beyond that. The media's purposeful distortion of the word for the sake of sensationalism doesn't help at all. But when producing a deliverable on-time and within budget can be heroic to a, I presume, well-educated person as
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No, I think the average person makes a distinction between using hero in the truly honorific sense like when they describe a fireman carrying a child out of a fallen tower, and in the media-weakened non-serious sense that it is used in phrases like "Guitar Hero". Words have different meanings in different contexts. Ask the average person if they think the usage in the nasa article is the same as when they describe a 9/11 rescue worker. If they say yes, then you're right. If they say no, you're being a p
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Better yet, ask them for a definition of a hero. See whether they come up with a vague, idol-type of definition, or whether they can consciously make the distinction. I would give you that if they could figure out the more specific definition of hero even if it took them hours or days, that they would fall into the category of knowing what hero means. But I think most people would present the vague one and call it quits.
It's like the short video experiment on seeing how many college students know the defini
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It's like the short video experiment on seeing how many college students know the definition of suffrage by asking them to sign a petition against women's suffrage.
You're comparing the word hero to a word like suffrage in terms of common knowledge? Really?
Quite frankly, I don't think anyone who knows and respects the idea of a hero would use the word so nonchalantly.
I disagree, I think it's perfectly fine just like it's fine to use the word "tragedy" to describe things less awful than the Holocaust. It's
Not only are they heroic... (Score:2)
They are also modest and humble.
There is absolutely no mention of all those technicians that gave their lives so that Phoenix Mars Lander could get it's rasp on time.
We should all honor them with a moment of silence and contemplation about how many men and women are no longer with us cause they gave the ultimate sacrifice.
Those greatest among us, that willingly fell in dozens - for each single one of the rasp's teeth.
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All hail our heroic... ahm... rasp deliverers!
I for one welcome our heroic... OH FUCK IT!
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Exactly. They should've gone with the already proven, and venerable, inanimate carbon rod.
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Not to diminish the difficulty of getting something as complex as Phoenix onto the surface of Mars, but seriously how tricky is it to deliver a rasp on a short schedule? I can drive to the nearest Home Depot in about 10 minutes.
According to a program I saw on the Discovery channel, the tool bit itself was actually purchased from a regular hardware store.
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And billed out at $7,300, no doubt.
Is Slashdot NASA's RSS feed? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the second story today on the Mars Lander. How many more will we see? Sure it's interesting, but Phoenix can't be the only news on this site.
Re:Is Slashdot NASA's RSS feed? (Score:5, Funny)
You read it wrong. We are "News for Mars, Stuff that Gathers", you insensitive clod.
Re:let's see the european space agency do that (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the ESA does quite well.
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60 times less implies
x - 60x = -59x
Somehow I doubt the ESA pays back every citizen 59 times what the average American pays in taxes for NASA. That's an expensive way to run a space agency.
Surely you meant 1/60th?
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(in b4 don't feed the troll)
Picture quality (Score:3, Interesting)
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How do we get excellent color pics of the eguipment and surroundings and everytime there's some interesting stuff like the ice it's in black and white?
How many colors one expects to see on a martian ice rasping ?
Re:Picture quality (Score:5, Informative)
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Machines on Mars (Score:1, Funny)
For some reason, every time I hear something about the Mars rovers I picture a couple of Daleks wandering about on a red desert.
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For some reason, every time I hear something about the Mars rovers I picture a couple of Daleks wandering about on a red desert.
Oh no! Not the Daleks! I think I hear them coming -- "Destroy...Destroy...Destroy..."
Pap Smear (Score:5, Funny)
Wait ... Rasp ... Snow White's trench ... Mars is getting a pap smear! She's really into preventative medicine.
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I can't wait for videos of when they start drilling into it.
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I can't wait for videos of when they start drilling into it.
You are aware that they are doing all this with the hope of finding a few little green dwarfs, right?
Ice shavings (Score:3, Funny)
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Fuck everything, we're doing five blades!
I don't care if the engineer has to put one vertical!
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Well, Good. (Score:1)
Concerned... (Score:1)
oblig. (Score:2, Funny)
Phoenix was a NASA 'bot,
But Phoenix is no more.
What Phoenix thought was H20
was H2SO4
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Sulfuric acid. I had to look it up...
Pieces and parts (Score:2)
I don't know but I would guess (Score:2)
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Sounds like a date I once had...
More pictures from NASA (Score:3, Interesting)
There are some more good photos of the pre- and post-launch rover up at www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/new-latest-images-collection_archive_1.html [nasa.gov]. I especially like this one [nasa.gov] - I'd thought the rover was quite a bit smaller than that!
Low signal in article (Score:2)
The NASA press release, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-133 [nasa.gov]
The company that made the scoop and rasp, some very good pictures.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-133 [nasa.gov]