Mars Opportunity Rover Appears To Contact Earth; Turns Out To Be a False Alarm (vice.com) 55
dmoberhaus writes: NASA's Mars Opportunity rover appeared to briefly make contact with the agency's Deep Space Network on Thursday afternoon after 5 months of silence. In June, a dust storm took Opportunity offline and every attempt to bring the rover back to life has failed. NASA scientists were hoping that seasonal winds that sweep the planet from November to February might blow the dust off of Opportunity's solar panels. Was this the rover's first attempt trying to get back into contact with Earth? Update 11/17/18: No. It turns out that the data received by the Deep Space Network was not from the Opportunity rover. "Today [the Deep Space Network website] showed what looked like a signal from Opportunity," JPL said in a tweet. "As much as we'd like to say this was an #OppyPhoneHome moment, further investigation shows these signals were not an Opportunity transmission. Test data or false positives can make it look like a given spacecraft is active on [the Deep Space Network website]. Our work to reestablish comms continues."
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I suspect that the chance is small, and it definitely had a good run [thesun.co.uk].
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I will be in the vicinity next week-end.
What do I have to do already? Dust it off and put back on its feet? Roger.
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Perhaps one day Mars' winds will blow the dust off and Opportunity will say, Hey! Remember me?
If it doesn't get enough power to call home now it'll freeze to death in the winter, February to May are the coldest months so if no dust devil clears up the panels before that it's the last nail in the coffin. That's on the off chance that nothing else broke and there's a Goldilocks amount of dust covering the panels - too much to call home, not enough to run the batteries dry. The nature of the dust could also be an issue, a bigger storm than ever before could also have whirled up coarser dust that a dust
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How could the comms handshake (Score:2)
That seems preposterous. The handshake presumeably is complex, extended, and extremely specific.
And if they're instead of talking about only a handful of initial bits of such a sequence, they shouldn't have announced anything.
This is a weird story.
And by handshake (Score:2)
In other words (Score:3)
It appears that somebody made an inopportune announcement before verifying all the facts.
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I, for one, welcome our new, Opportunity-imitating alien overlords.
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Off topic (Score:1)
And UBI isn't free money. Professor Hawking explained it all.
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Jealousy will get you nowhere. Unless you're in politics.
It's just Ice Warriors (Score:2)
They were using Opportunity to align their death ray.
Edge on black holes (Score:1)
Again, a simple question,
When you identify objects you believe to be black holes, do you ever find ones that you think are edge on?
I see things like NGC 4261, ... face on, with the event horizon around them, but are there edge on black holes? Long thing structures you think are black holes behind event horizon debris?
They should be very common.
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If you look at a galaxy with an AGN that is side-on to us, you would indeed be able to see the debris field surrounding the black hole just like you can with HGC 4261..... IF you could see through the galaxies arms, which would be much denser, much larger, and have a shit ton more matter. One thing you have to realize in that picture... you're not seeing t
HGC 4261 sort of (Score:1)
HGC 4261, sort of shows the halo effect I'm expecting from a black hole.
"so yes, every side-on galaxy you see in a picture is also a side on view of it's central SMBH"
That's an interesting point. Yeh maybe that's what I'm looking for.
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In that picture, that halo effect is just matter in the accretion disc; the event horizon is deep inside that little bright point at the very center.... and obscured to us by all the matter that makes up that bright point.
Is it plugged in? (Score:3)
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Yes (sort of)
Over the life of the program, the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers have been rebooted and reset a number of times.
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As with all older electronics, the act of turning it off could be what killed it.
Re: Not to fear... (Score:2)
And replace all the batteries while it waits.
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Phew... help is at hand! (Score:2)
It's okay, a well known team of troubleshooters has contacted the rover with this call:
"Hello, ve are calling from de Vindows Support Center because we have been getting reports that your solar pannels are contaminated with dust and wiruses".
"Are you sitting in front of your computer?"
"Do you see a key with de Vindows symbol on it?"
"Please be hlding that key and pressing the R..."