NASA Launches New Rover, Perseverance, To Look For Ancient Life on Red Planet (nbcnews.com) 42
NASA is heading back to the Red Planet. The agency launched a new rover, a car-size robotic explorer named Perseverance, to Mars on an ambitious mission to scour the planet for evidence of ancient life. From a report: The rover, which launched into orbit Thursday at 7:50 a.m. ET, is designed to study the geology and climate of Mars. NASA says the mission and its subsequent discoveries could lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration of the Red Planet. Perseverance is loaded with seven scientific instruments to explore the Martian landscape and assess whether the planet was ever able to sustain life. The six-wheel rover is also carrying a small helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, to perform experimental test flights in Mars' thin atmosphere, which, if successful, would mark a milestone in powered flight.
"For the first time ever, we're going to fly a helicopter on another planet," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Monday in a news briefing, adding that future missions to other worlds could use similar helicopters as airborne scouts. The Perseverance rover launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Typically, crowds gather along beaches near Cape Canaveral to witness NASA launches, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the agency encouraged space fans to stay home and participate virtually, instead -- particularly as new infections continue to surge in Florida and across the country. Matt Wallace, the mission's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the rover has already lived up to its name, as engineers persevered through the pandemic to ready the spacecraft for its much-anticipated launch. "Nothing prepared us for what we had to deal with in the middle of March as the pandemic struck -- not just our team, but communities across the country and the world," Wallace said. "At that point in the mission, we were in our final assembly activities."
"For the first time ever, we're going to fly a helicopter on another planet," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Monday in a news briefing, adding that future missions to other worlds could use similar helicopters as airborne scouts. The Perseverance rover launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Typically, crowds gather along beaches near Cape Canaveral to witness NASA launches, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the agency encouraged space fans to stay home and participate virtually, instead -- particularly as new infections continue to surge in Florida and across the country. Matt Wallace, the mission's deputy project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said the rover has already lived up to its name, as engineers persevered through the pandemic to ready the spacecraft for its much-anticipated launch. "Nothing prepared us for what we had to deal with in the middle of March as the pandemic struck -- not just our team, but communities across the country and the world," Wallace said. "At that point in the mission, we were in our final assembly activities."
Good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good news (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. There are three spacecraft on their way now, including one from the United Arab Republics of all places. I'll be very interested to see how the Chinese do, they seem to be on a turtle-like slow but steady course.
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I'll be very interested to see how the Chinese do, they seem to be on a turtle-like slow but steady course.
Yeah, but space is turtles, all the way down, so the Chinese are holding it right.
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Don't rejoice too fast. The usual basement dwelling never-accomplished-anything-in-their-miserable-worthless-lives anti-science anti-intellectualism anti-NASA trolls are already on the job polluting this thread with their filth.
Personnaly, I'm glad there are still some people on /. that still have the Curiosity Spirit and still believe humanity should take every Opportunity to explore, discover and learn. ;)
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Don't rejoice too fast. The usual basement dwelling never-accomplished-anything-in-their-miserable-worthless-lives anti-science anti-intellectualism anti-NASA trolls are already on the job polluting this thread with their filth.
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They already have Slate and Salon to peddle their position on. Why here?
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Re:Good news (Score:4, Insightful)
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Regular methane plumes beg to differ.
Not a definitive indicator but a real strong one.
MOXIE is a pointless (Score:1)
The MOXIE experiment is stunt, a pointless stunt. It displaced real science for a stunt to please the Manned Mission Directorate. This Directorate just cannot help themselves and they are always mucking up real science.
This idiotic experiment could have been done in any of a hundred college basements....but now the rover has to lug this dead weight all over the surface. If we must have such a pointless experiment, why not do it on a stationary lander.....
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"That's my body you've got there, and I want it back."
Total Recall tie-back to the topic.
Re:Perseverance (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe the name of the chinese probe is "You break, you buy!"
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Better than Rovie McRoverface, I guess. If they'd had Slashdot host a naming contest, it'd be the Nasa Goatse.cx Rover.
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Re:Perseverance (Score:5, Interesting)
This rover carries a RTG, so it will be able to survive the deeply cold temperatures and dust storms without complaint. So the power they have will be consistent and known in advance. On the other hand, RTG's do supply less heat over time so the power budget will be continually declining over time...
What does this mean? Well, if they succeed in landing this rover, the length of time the rover will provide full functionality will be limited, but we should know well in advance when the power will be insufficient for continuing actual science activities. My guess (and this is just a guess) much like the Voyager probes, which have produced useful science for decades, even after much of their instrumentation has been powered down due to the decreasing power from their RTG's, this rover will continue to produce science data for years after there isn't power enough to drive. So Perseverance is likely going to be a good name.
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Re:Perseverance (Score:5, Informative)
Other RTG-powered spacecraft have typically lasted decades, with Voyagers 1 and 2 still going. So barring other components failing (like Curiosity's badly designed wheels), errant commands, or some natural disaster like a meteor strike, the RTG-powered rovers could hypothetically last for decades. It's worth noting that Spirit and Opportunity were limited to about 20-60 minutes of activity each day due to the limited power provided by the solar panels (more when they got lucky and a dust devil cleared the panels of dust), and had to shut down for nearly half the year during the Martian winter. Curiosity (powered by an RTG) can operate continuously. They're just having to limit its activity to avoid putting more holes in its wheels.
Re: Perseverance (Score:3, Informative)
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For a delightful look back there's the 'Mars And Me' blog from Scott Maxwell, one of the team that drove the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.
http://marsandme.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Perseverance in Safe Mode... (Score:1)
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https://mars.nasa. [nasa.gov]
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>Yeah NASA lucked out with previous rovers' longevity ...Not so much. You think these rovers with a 90-day mission were only designed to last 90 days? The 90 day mission is the goal for the worst-case scenario: everything that can go wrong (aside from landing failure) does go wrong, we can *still* accomplish this much. Almost never do things actually go remotely that badly, and when you've designed your system to last 90 days under worst-case-scenario conditions, your expected real-world operational l
Re:Perseverance (Score:4, Insightful)
No, 90-days were all that Congress would budget, every day after that was a mission extension. Like the Voyager Grand Tour the engineers at NASA have to work around the thundering herd of lawyers in Congress to get anything done.
In the case of the Grand Tour, it was rejected outright when proposed. The Voyagers were only budgeted to go to Saturn (some of the congresscritters even tried to scale it back to Jupiter). NASA launched them during the only window in the next two centuries that would allow a Hohman Transfer to Uranus and Neptune, and then went hat in hand and said, "Well, there's this almost-free mission where we can go somewhere the Soviets can't. Can we please have some more gruel?"
Ah, the stupidity of letting herds of lawyers manage and budget for an engineering program.
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Wish we would send more (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: Wish we would send more (Score:1)
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Because Congress would never fund it. When the purse strings are held by a herd of lawyers who think AOL is the cutting edge of technology you better make every bolt and nut exactly what you need because you're not going to get a chance to send another for a decade or more. Look at Hubble, designed in the 1970s, launched in 1990, still up there doing its job because lawyers don't know that technology has moved in in the past 30 years.
On the other hand, the military and intel agencies have so much money th
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NASA has tried, I think at least twice, two make "cookie cutter" probe designs, for lack of a better word. The last go-around was in the 90's and that's when we smashed two probes into Mars pretty close together. While the MCO (Mars Climate Orbiter) crash was famous, because of an imperial vs metric error, another problem was the goofy asymmetrical design as part of the "let's reuse stuff" idea. If the spacecraft had been symmetrical and flown like most others have the error would have cancelled out and
In other news... (Score:2)
"We have received information that the Blue Planet is sending multiple metal invaders to our peaceful world and they will arrive in approximately a half solar cycle. This is more than sufficient time for us to make preparations for when the invaders arrive. We will gird our gelsacs for the impending battles and victory shall be ours. We will make the Blue Planet pay for their acts of hostility, and they WILL taste the bitterness of defeat!"
But... (Score:1)
It's gonna look really bad if the Chinese and Emiratis succeed, and the US probe fails. Fortunately for Trump, that would probably happen after the election.