Martian Meteorite Gets NASA Mars Rover's Attention 94
coondoggie writes "NASA's Mars rover Opportunity will take a small detour on its current journey to check out what could be a toaster-sized iron-based meteorite that crashed into the Red Planet. NASA scientists called the rock 'Oileán Ruaidh,' which is the Gaelic name for an island off the coast of northwestern Ireland. The rock is about 45 centimeters (18 inches) wide from the angle at which it was first seen on September 16."
Hmmm...... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I take it NASA engineers have never read Calvin and Hobbes?
I know I wouldn't sneak up on any rocks on any foreign planets.
Something is missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In the ground, which is at an angle in this photograph that would either put it out of sight, or off frame?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Lots of material spashes out of an impact. Also many small meteorites do not make craters, A thin atmosphere may help.
Re:Something is missing (Score:5, Informative)
Destroyed by winds and soil erosion.
Re:Something is missing (Score:5, Informative)
http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2006/11/19/meteorite-hits-car/ [wordpress.com]
Look at the size of that rock. It didn't make a crater the size of a house, all it did was add an easy access hole to someones trunk. And roof.
I imagine by the time a rock that size passes through the atmosphere and survives, its moving slow enough to rebound off the surface, or, in this case, get stopped by a car.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless it has the mass like the one that created the crater in the southwest USA. That one was far larger and had a entry trajectory that only had to deal with a few miles of atmosphere instead of coming in shallow and having a long time to do aerobraking.
that same meteorite on mars if it had came in straight on at high velocity would have made a big crater.
Plus one has to think of relative velocities. not everything in space is going 70 billion miles an hour, there is a good chance that that meteorite
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Rocks coming from space arrive at speeds from slightly less than escape velocity to much more than escape velocity*. A rock following the planet in a similar orbit may enter the planet's gravity well at a speed relatively near to 0, but by the time it hits atmosphere the relative speed will be very high. And a rock falling towards the sun on an elongated elliptical orbit that intersects the Earth's will be going extremely fast at the point it reaches the atmosphere.
The incident angle is more of a factor h
Re: (Score:2)
http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2006/11/19/meteorite-hits-car/ [wordpress.com]
Look at the size of that rock. It didn't make a crater the size of a house, all it did was add an easy access hole to someones trunk. And roof.
I imagine by the time a rock that size passes through the atmosphere and survives, its moving slow enough to rebound off the surface, or, in this case, get stopped by a car.
Yes, but keep in mind the Martian atmosphere is far less dense than the Earth's. That said, the rock in question on the Martian surface looks like it could well have bounced a fair way away from its impact site as well, and have been blown even farther during storms since it's mostly round and the ground is mostly flat.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a rock, not a tumbleweed, and as you say, the Martian atmosphere is far thinner than Earth's.
Re: (Score:2)
On Mars? Forgetting the not so minor difference in atmospheres between Earth and Mars are we?
Re: (Score:1)
Air is Air.
Its like water.
Doesn't matter if theres a foot or 100 feet of water. Or if its aerated or thickened. You hit it fast enough its still gonna stop you, and it will still feel like your hitting a brick wall.
I realize that the atmosphere is thinner. Just means an meteorite needs to have a slower relative speed to not make a giant crater.
As a previous reply pointed out, many things effect the relitive speed of a meteorite.
Re:Something is missing (Score:5, Informative)
A) it's small. Small meteorites don't make much of a crater because their velocity is slowed much more than larger meteorites
B) the area that Opportunity is visiting has experienced substantial erosion on the bedrock surface, such that even if it did make a small dent in the surface, it could be eroded away by now. More durable rock types (such as the iron-nickel meteorites found previously, and also the hematite "blueberry" concretions that litter the surface) tend to accumulate on the surface as the softer rock is worn away. It's what geologists call a lag deposit [encyclopedia.com].
Incidentally, Opportunity has already moved a closer to the rock in question. The picture in the article was taken on Sol 2363 [nasa.gov], and there are now pictures downloaded to Sol 2367, such as this one [nasa.gov], and this one [nasa.gov]. The higher-resolution "Panoramic Camera" images aren't fully downloaded, but you can see the edge of the rock [nasa.gov]. Looks like the next download pass they should have some pretty good shots. Check the "raw images" page for the Opportunity Rover [nasa.gov] in the next couple of days and there should be plenty of closer shots.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Something is missing (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem know nothing about trig and astrophysics so your assertions are completey bollocks. I can come up with at last 50 scenarios where that rock can simply plop there from space slow enough to make a smallish crater, bounce out and lay on the surface. And I only took classes up to the 101 level.
Are you assuming that everything in space has millions of miles per hour relative velocities? You know the soil composition of that location?
Are you telling me that if it came in a very shallow angle it could not get any aerobraking? Strange.... as NASA thinks it can, and I am absolutely certain they know a WHOLE LOT MORE than you do on the subject.
Also given the gravity well strength of Mars, if that rock was simply captured because it was lazily floating about at only a couple hundred miles an hour, it's impact would be a low energy impact due to relative velocities calculated by any acceleration from mars's gravity well. These are only off the cuff in the head calculations. I'll leave it to you to crack out the calculator or mathlab and give us exact numbers. please calculate out at least 10 reentry angles and show us how you are right and NASA is wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
I can prove 1+1 != 2 too, but I won't bother cause I don't want to join you in looking stupid and failing to understand the subject matter.
Hahahah yea, NASA NEVER makes a mistake ... like not converting units from one measurement system to the other or launching when they shouldn't or any number of a million other things they have done wrong.
Its BOUND to happen because they do A LOT of things and ALMOST ALL of them are done right, but its pretty fucking stupid
It's a teabagging fest! Get yer sacks unlimbered! (Score:2)
And I call double bollocks on your '...so your reasoning is bollocks.' statement.
A) From the fine article:
"The dark color, rounded texture and the way it is perched on the surface all make it look like an iron meteorite," said science-team member Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory...
and:
Opportunity has found four iron meteorites during the rover's exploration of the Meridiani Planum region of Mars since early 2004. Examination of these rocks has provided information about the Martian atmosphere, as well as the meteorites themselves, NASA stated.
So they have seen this before, and have some good people checking this stuff out.
All we know about this is that what appears to be a meteorite sitting there.
If you bothered to actually look at the pics the AC linked to(especially the second link- note the Big Fscking Rock that this meteorite happens to be perched on, and the prevalence of rocks making up the surface in the immediate area.
We don't kn
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't know that it didn't bounce or roll there- no telling when it got there, the planetary conditions at the time it arrived- maybe Mars had a thicker atmosphere then, whether it impacted there or is it just a fragment of something else that landed there.
This is the amusing bit: the dweebs here who assume that the only way a piece of rock from space ever winds up on a planetary surface is to come crashing straight down into the atmosphere and drill a deep hole without any fragmentation or ejecta.
I guess they are ignorant of the entire class of meteorites found on Earth that are believed to be ejecta from Martian impacts. Or they are too stupid to realize that if a rock can hit Mars hard enough that fragments sometimes wind up on Earth, maybe a few of the
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In the BBC series Wonders of the Solar System [bbc.co.uk], this type of non-crater-producing Martian meteorite is used as possible evidence that Mars had a thicker atmosphere in the distant past when these meteorites impacted. It was in the Thin Blue Line [wikipedia.org] episode if I remember correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
A) There is not that much Martian atmosphere to slow the "meteorite" to the point a "soft landing" and I can see no re-entry rockets on said rock; so your reasoning is bollocks.
You are assuming that the rock is at present in the same location as when it impacted. I see no evidence to support that assumption. Given that there are months-long global sand storms on Mars (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast11oct_2/), and the area it presently sits is flat and half-covered in sand (a perfectly good lubricant) we cannot rule out that the meteorite -- if it is indeed a meteorite -- has not been moved about by weathering forces.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
OTOH they also have huge craters and 'no meteorite' in Mars
(And on Earth as well)
Oileán Ruaidh (Score:2, Informative)
Oileán Ruaidh translates to red island.
Re:Oileán Ruaidh (Score:5, Funny)
Oileán Ruaidh translates to red island.
"Oileán Ruaidh" is pronounced "red island". FTFY.
Re:Oileán Ruaidh = "ay-lan ruah" (Score:3, Funny)
A bit like "ay-lan ruah" apparently but yes, let us know if we're supposed to prounce that in an Irish accent, an American accent, or a Martian accent..... ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
A bit like "ay-lan ruah" apparently but yes, let us know if we're supposed to prounce that in an Irish accent, an American accent, or a Martian accent..... ;-)
A closer pronunciation is "ill-aawn rew-ah".
From a friendly martian.
Re: (Score:2)
Neither the Martians or Irish (or Scots) appear to have much of an imagination.
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming Irish Gaelic is anything like Scottish Gaelic, it actually means 'red island'.
Neither the Martians or Irish (or Scots) appear to have much of an imagination.
Damn NASA, that unimaginative joint Martian/Irish/Scots space agency.
Re: (Score:2)
Oileán Ruaidh translates to red island.
No, actually "Oileán Ruaidh" translates to "what the fuck were they smoking when they came up with this name".
Seriously, I really have to wonder sometimes about those NASA guys and their intergalactic space weed...
Probably not "Red Island" (Score:2)
Modern Irish would be "Oileaacute;n Rua"; "rua" is "red". "Ruaidh" is an archaic spelling, and ("oileaacute;n" being a masculine noun) would most likely signify the genitive case. So a better translation might be "Red's Island", where "Red" might be a nickname. Google returns mostly proper name results for "ruaidh", including "Cuan na Maoil Ruaidh" (Mulroy Bay), suggesting that "Roy Island" might more apt. This appears in at least one local guide:
Re: (Score:2)
Oops. That should be "Oileán" - forgot the ampersand. And didn't look carefully enough at the preview.
This sounds familiar... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Mars->Earth is comparatively easy because Mars has much lower gravity and (nowadays) has quite a thin atmosphere. I'm not sure Earth->Mars is even physically possible. It would certainly be many, many times less likely.
In any case, out of the many thousands of meteorites found on Earth, less than a dozen are known from Mars. So it's very unlikely that the few examples that Opportunity has found are anything other than the usual bits and pieces from collisions in the asteroid belt. The iron-nickel
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I guess the main issue is that for a Mars->Earth trip the object has to lose energy (easy) whereas for Earth->Mars the object has to get energy (snowball chance in hell)
Re: (Score:2)
So the ages-old mystery of how life began on Mars is finally solved!
18'' (Score:2)
Toaster-sized at 18''? That's a quite a toaster...
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
If martians use a 18" toaster, this is very scary indeed....
NASA scientists obviously overpaid? (Score:2)
---
For the irony challenged, I don't really think NASA scientists are overpaid. What does the Tea Party use to make the toast at its tea parties, anyway?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously a four slicer.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Toaster-sized at 18''? That's a quite a toaster...
To be fair, the standard SI toaster was defined in 1897, when toasters were a novel luxury item and generally much larger due to the newness of the technology. The original standard toaster, made of solid iridium, is still kept in a vault in Paris.
In 1992, the standard toaster was redefined with dimensions based on the wavelength of a particular spectral line of light given off by a nichrome toaster heating element heated to exactly 1044 K.
Re: (Score:2)
An an imperial unit, the breadbox is no longer standardized in and of itself, and is in fact defined as 1.285 toasters
Why? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
A rock which has been somewhere else can tell you about conditions at its source, and along the path it took to its present location. It makes sense to investigate rocks like this now because Opportunity may not live much longer. Best to take the opportunities (yeah) as they come.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have here a server that cost well over $450,000 new and I use it only to run Quake 3 tourneys after work.
Using worn out hardware to do other work is simply smart. the rovers are worn out, hell it's a engineering miracle they are still operating. have you SEEN photos of how dust covered they are?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Mars_Spirit_rover's_solar_panels_covered_with_Dust_-_October_2007.jpg [wikimedia.org]
this was in 2007, it now has 3 more years of dirt and dust on them.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
There may be all sorts of science-y reasons why we would want to examine an 18-inch rock on mars, that I can get behind.
But naming it? Seriously? If we start naming every rock and boulder and sand dune we run across, we're going to run out of all the cool names. Then later when we land on an area with an 1800 meter meteorite, we'll have to settle for "OR XXVI" or something dull like that. Plus, think of the future - we'll have stupid historical markers and protected rover trails all over the terraformed
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose we can give them IP6 addresses. Got plenty of those.
Re: (Score:2)
But how will we route packets to them? I suggest GUIDs. :D
Re: (Score:1)
Umm... (Score:2, Funny)
Bad naming scheme (Score:2, Insightful)
> NASA scientists called the rock 'Oileán Ruaidh,' which is the Gaelic name for an island off the coast of northwestern Ireland
Can't NASA scientists think ahead a little bit to make the future a safer place? GPS manufacturers of the year 2437 are gonna be pissed when their customers end up on Mars while trying to fly to Ireland...
Re: (Score:2)
The rovers have seen so many rocks they must be running out of names.
Re: (Score:1)
Don't they read xkcd or use git? They should start calling the rocks by SHA1 checksums of Earth names prefixed by "Mars: ".
Actually, Charles Schultz thought of this first [wikia.com], more or less.
Re: (Score:2)
A smarter way would be to create anagrams of Earth names. If you want numbers just start at zero and ++ for each rock you find.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see the advertisements at all.
Typical (Score:5, Funny)
Typical, just typical. We spend all this time and money going to an exotic location to see the sights, but once we're there you want to spend all this time looking through the imported kitsch.
Oilean Ruadh (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The best way to get a fada is to use the acute character entities from html. So á comes out as á. Similar for é (é), í (í), ó (ó), and ú (ú).
You can also use numeric character references, but that's not very portable. What works for Windows is wrong on a Mac, for instance.
It's the future (Score:2)
You can also use numeric character references, but that's not very portable. What works for Windows is wrong on a Mac, for instance.
I thought Unicode (especially UTF-8) was intended to resolve this issue. With UTF-8 becoming nearly ubiquitous, EOL issues are a much bigger problem than character encoding.
Don't get me wrong: I wish ISO-8859 [wikipedia.org] and CP1252 [wikipedia.org] would be incinerated by a bolt of lightning from Zeus for all the issues they have caused me over the years. The divine hammer can't be dropped soon enough: even Slashdot is stuck in the early 1990's by continuing to insist on using ISO-8859-1
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmmm, cuneiform...
Nope, didn't work.
Cyrillic...
That either. Bummer.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, my take on the translation [slashdot.org]. "Rua" on Wiktionary [wiktionary.org].
Re: (Score:2)
jvonk is right; this should be done in Unicode [unicode.org]:
From the Latin-1 Supplement Character Code Chart [unicode.org].
if you kiss this rock (Score:2)
you will be endowed with the gift of martian gab
of course, that could be just a bunch of blarney
Oileán Ruaidh? (Score:2, Funny)
Maybe the GREAT ONE lives on Mars.
Next up... (Score:2)
Toaster sized? (Score:2)
Someone has been watching "the Brave Little Toaster goes to Mars" too many times.
Keep on chugg'n (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it's amazing that despite expectations Mars has enough wind to mostly blow the solar panels clean. It's not amazing at all that NASA designed every aspect of the rover as robustly as possible even with the presumption of no wind and a consequent 90-sol lifespan. It is, though, amazing what the operations team has done given the practical realities and real difficulties of operating even a robustly designed rover on freaking Mars.
3rd one opportunity has found (Score:2)
The little robot that could. (Score:2)
The thing that keeps amazing me every time I read something about the mars rovers is their stamina.
Think about it, it landed in January 2004 for a 90 (ninety) day mission on the surface of mars.
As we speak it's still driving around and making new discoveries, just mindblowing.
That's 2343 days more than expected. Massive kudos to the engineers of these little wonders.
Pronouncing 'Oileán Ruaidh' (Score:2)
Maybe it's my eyes but... (Score:2)
Or perhaps I've not been keeping up with the latest Mars news!