Opportunity Breaks NASA's 40-Year Roving Record 92
astroengine writes "After nine years of hard Mars roving, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity has broken a 40-year-old extraterrestrial distance record. On Thursday, the tenacious six-wheeled robot drove 80 meters (263 feet), nudging the total distance traveled since landing on the red planet in 2004 to 35.760 kilometers (22.220 miles). NASA's previous distance record was held by Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt when, in December 1972, they drove their Lunar Roving Vehicle 35.744 kilometers (22.210 miles) over the lunar surface. Although it's broken the NASA distance record, it hasn't surpassed the international record, yet. The Soviet Lunokhod 2 remote-controlled moon rover roved 37 kilometers (23 miles) across the lunar surface and, so far, remains the undisputed champion of distance driving on an extraterrestrial surface."
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Where does 7 to 1 come from? 7 to 1 of what?
I think NASA's done pretty well for itself...
Re:Soviet Strong (Score:5, Funny)
Soviet Union
1st Satleite to orbit Earth
1st Animal in space
1st Man in space
1st Woman in space
1st multiple personnel in space
1st Object into inter planetary space
1st lunar probe
1st Venusian probe
1st Martian probe
1st Space walk
1st space station
NASA
1st Cokacola in space
Re:Soviet Strong (Score:5, Informative)
Kind of funny but wrong or misleading both by commision and omission. Commission: 1st Venusian probe and 1st Martian probe -- the USSR had the first landers on each (which operated for a few seconds or minutes) but the USA had the first flybys of each (Mariner II for Venus and Mariner IV for Mars; Mariner II was the first successful mission of any kind to another planet besides the earth-moon system) and "space probes" by definition include flybys.
Omission: The list of "firsts" which USA-NASA accomplished is long, but the highlights are:
Manned moon landing (had to put that one in first)
First and so far only probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. First and only orbiters of Jupiter and Saturn.
First and only spacecraft on escape trajectories from the solar system.
First probe to Pluto (on its way now).
First and only probes to Mercury (Mariner 10 flyby and Mercury Messenger in orbit now).
Only landers on Mars which worked for more than a 15 seconds.
The list above is far from exhaustive. Both the USSR and USA had notable space accomplishements and neither would have moved as fast without the competition of the other, but this pervasive meme that the USSR did everything first is just false.
Re:Soviet Strong (Score:5, Interesting)
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No hard feelings, especially since I see you are well informed in space history and not just repeating the meme without knowledge. One thing is certain about the first decade of space exploration -- without the competition between the USSR and USA, neither of them would have done near as much and they both achieved great things.
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Actually Cassini is half european. The platform is NASA, but the antenna for communication is Italian, and the instruments come from both side of the pond.
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NASA
1st man on the moon...
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Soviet Union
1st Object into inter planetary space
If I remember rightly, the 1st Object into inter planetary space was Luna 1 [wikipedia.org] which was ment to be the first first luna probe ... but missed went into solar obit and was hurredly dubbed a "new planet" and renamed Mechta ("Dream")
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Re:Soviet Strong (Score:5, Interesting)
I know far too much trivia.
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And the only reason for the entire Lunokhod project is that the Soviets failed to get a crew to the moon and blew up the second N1 rocket in 1969 after a loose bolt got sucked into a fuel pump.
The Soviets lost the space race and never did get a man on another planet. They sent that thing instead, attempting to save face.
Funny how the poster forgot things like "first space rendezvous" and "Winning the space race and PUTTING A MAN ON THE F*CKING MOON". He counts ten seconds of functioning lander as a victo
Re:Soviet Strong (Score:5, Funny)
We're still kicking ass in terms of total distance traveled in space, thanks to V'Ger... err, Voyager. But we still have a long way to go to catch up with total extraterrestrial crash landings and highest BAC in space.
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Re:confusing distances (Score:5, Informative)
Re:confusing distances (Score:4, Insightful)
That's European syntax. Ten thousand point five would be 10.000,5
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That's European syntax. Ten thousand point five would be 10.000,5
point == . != ,
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Of course you say "comma" when you write a comma, unlike in the parent post.
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In France they more commonly have a space instead of a point: 10 000,5
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Considering this website IS based in the US, then US convention rules.
When you pronounce "1,5km", do you say "one point five" or "one comma five"?
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Considering this website IS based in the US, then US convention rules.
After a moment of confusion, simply ask yourself whether the rover has completely circumnavigated Mars. If your answer is no, then it must be the US convention. If your answer is "I don't know," then hit Ctrl-W and go read Perez Hilton or something.
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countries such as India and (Peoples republic of) China.
Except that both India and China use "." as a decimal point.
Citation: Decimal Mark Use [wikipedia.org]
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l10n (Score:2)
I see how there could be confusion with the trailing 0 in the thousandths place. I have to presume they really did measure that distance down to the millimeter. Since NASA released the figures, make sure to localize the radix point and thousands separator to "US" when reading. Here's a lengthy but incomplete list of localized separators [oracle.com].
Re:l10n Ooops (Score:2)
Should have read "down to the meter".
And the winner is still a machine. (Score:2)
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After the asteroid, who will be around to control them? We need manned missions if the human race is to avoid extinction. We Have All Our Eggs In One Basket, you FOOL.
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Right now the space station has cost us more than $100B, and for what? Even Apollo? Where is my return on investment, and no i don't mean mone
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I'd say we've received SOME return on that investment.
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Even if you are a space buff, wanting NASA to take humans to mars is not the way to humans living in space. Apollo push that goal no further forward and neither will another more extreme Apollo.
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Right now after the asteroid all that will happen is it will be a race to see if lack of food, water or air kills your off Earth humans.
Robots will allow us to prepare a site for humans. You are trying to put the cart before the robot horse.
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I don't know.. 9 years for a whole 22 miles, it'll take those television show people DAYS to cover more space if they ever get there.
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speedy... (Score:5, Informative)
( and imperial types can translate from SI themselves)
Re:speedy... (Score:5, Funny)
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Wolfram Alpha? Seriously, you need an online resource for that?
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.0000735 smoots/s
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And the winner is.... (Score:1)
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First one to the finish line gets to use their secret moonbase laser to blow up the losers.
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Except in North Carolina, of course....
amazingly slow...and awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:amazingly slow...and awesome (Score:5, Informative)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_(rover)#Shoulder_troubles [wikipedia.org]
Probably would make more progress if it wasn't for this, then.
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Voyager 1, 35 years.
My washing machine - 14 years
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Even with incredibly dirty laundry, I doubt a washing machine operates in the same kind of harsh and hostile environment :)
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You haven't seen my apartment. Heh.
No, in all seriousness i'm merely pointing out that the original posters assertion as perceived by me, that it was incredibly rare for mechanical devices to survive 9 years without maintenance, is not necessarily the case. Plenty of washers, dryers, cars, and things like servos, industrial machines etc... may not receive maintenance for a LONG time and still continue to function as designed. A good example would be Russian nuclear lighthouses, which are hundreds of miles f
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Show me any moving device that had received no maintenance in 9 years and still works.
Never taken a taxi in Africa then, huh?
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My fridge?
Electric, Solar-Powered Cars (Score:1)
seem already to work quite well... on Mars
Cernan and Schmitt covered that distance in 22 hrs (Score:4, Interesting)
, spread over 3 separate EVAs in 3 days. All of the unmanned US and Russian rovers took a lot longer to set their distance records.
If the Apollo program was allowed to continue past 17, there were plans for even longer distance surface excursions. There were even preliminary studies done for a small flying vehicle to allow the astronauts to cover even longer distances from their landing site.
Apples and Oranges (Score:1)
I don't think lunar travel can even begin to compare to travel on a planet like Mars. There is no atmosphere and very low gravity.
mars probes vastly more geologic stops (Score:2)
42.195 km (Score:2)
If they offer me the flight, I'll run the full marathon to break the record
Gene Cernan still has the speed record (Score:2)
That was 19 km/h on the first Apollo 17 EVA, down a fairly steep hill, though John Young was sceptical, probably because he was the record holder at the time.