This one of Curiosity puts both rover missions close for comparison.
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cicerone imposter
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Sun 9 Sep, 2012 02:23 pm
@edgarblythe,
Just amazing! Can you imagine not that long ago when there was a time if somebody even suggested we'd have a rover on mars, most people would have thought you have lost all your faculties.
This one of Curiosity puts both rover missions close for comparison.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU5On872QFs[/youtube]
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edgarblythe
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Wed 12 Sep, 2012 08:02 pm
starting on Friday evening, the plan is to drive, drive, drive!" said Jennifer Trosper, a mission manager from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Curiosity is heading towards a place on the crater floor dubbed Glenelg - a location some 400m from the rover's August landing site and where satellite images have identified a junction between three types of geological terrain.
On the way, the rover will stop at a rock where it can fully use some of the tools on the end of the robotic arm. These will include the "hand lens" known as Mahli and the X-ray spectrometer known as APXS, which is able to determine the chemical elements that are present in a rock.
At the centre of this view of the robot arm's tool turret is the APXS instrument
Even in the next few days, the science will ramp up as Curiosity uses its mast camera system to image the passage of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, across the face of Sun.
"This occurrence of transits happens twice per Martian year which is once every Earth year," said Joy Crisp, the deputy project scientist. "What we're planning on doing is taking video with the Mastcam." However, she cautioned it might take some time to download all the frames.
At some point in the next few weeks, the science team plans to command the rover to take a soil sample into its two big onboard laboratories.
All these tasks mean the arrival at Glenelg is likely to be at least a month away.
Curiosity's long-term target within Gale Crater is its central 5km-tall mountain known as Mount Sharp.
Scientists expect Curiosity to find layered rock deposits at the base of this peak that should provide new insights on past environmental conditions on the Red Planet - conditions that may have supported microbial life many billions of years ago.
The vehicle - also known as the Mars Science Laboratory - is funded for two Earth years of operations. But many expect the mission to roll and roll for perhaps a decade or more.
NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Reveals Geological Mystery
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's long-lived rover Opportunity has returned an image of the Martian surface that is puzzling researchers.
Spherical objects concentrated at an outcrop Opportunity reached last week differ in several ways from iron-rich spherules nicknamed "blueberries" the rover found at its landing site in early 2004 and at many other locations to date.
Opportunity is investigating an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The spheres measure as much as one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter. The analysis is still preliminary, but it indicates that these spheres do not have the high iron content of Martian blueberries.
"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."
The Martian blueberries found elsewhere by Opportunity are concretions formed by action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, evidence of a wet environment on early Mars. Concretions result when minerals precipitate out of water to become hard masses inside sedimentary rocks. Many of the Kirkwood spheres are broken and eroded by the wind. Where wind has partially etched them away, a concentric structure is evident.
Opportunity used the microscopic imager its arm to look closely at Kirkwood. Researchers checked the spheres' composition by using an instrument called the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer on Opportunity's arm.
"They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle," Squyres said. "They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It's going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking."
Just past Kirkwood lies another science target area for Opportunity. The location is an extensive pale-toned outcrop in an area of Cape York where observations from orbit have detected signs of clay minerals. That may be the rover's next study site after Kirkwood. Four years ago, Opportunity departed Victoria Crater, which it had investigated for two years, to reach different types of geological evidence at the rim of the much larger Endeavour Crater.
The rover's energy levels are favorable for the investigations. Spring equinox comes this month to Mars' southern hemisphere, so the amount of sunshine for solar power will continue increasing for months.
"The rover is in very good health considering its 8-1/2 years of hard work on the surface of Mars," said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago, and we are looking forward to productive spring and summer seasons of exploration."
NASA launched the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the summer of 2003, and both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004. They continued bonus, extended missions for years. Spirit finished communicating with Earth in March 2010. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.
This is fascinating stuff--it may not be science fiction adventure, but i find it exciting.
I do too. I think it's fantastic that there's exciting news out there that doesn't revolve around Terrorists or Political Hatred.
Thank god humanity is still spending at least a tiny bit of its resources on exploration and discovery. It's like finding a tiny bit of fresh fruit and home made bread amidst an endless pile of junk food and empty packaging.
Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially brining the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.
"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.
Warping space-time
An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind. [Star Trek's Warp Drive: Are We There Yet? | Video]
Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.
Opportunity will be there to greet the first human landing.
Unless Curiosity becomes self-aware and starts roaming the planet zapping previous rovers with its laser to prevent them from discovering life before it does.
Now physicists say that adjustments can be made to the proposed warp drive that would enable it to run on significantly less energy, potentially bringing the idea back from the realm of science fiction into science.
"There is hope," Harold "Sonny" White of NASA's Johnson Space Center said here Friday (Sept. 14) at the 100 Year Starship Symposium, a meeting to discuss the challenges of interstellar spaceflight.
Warping space-time
An Alcubierre warp drive would involve a football-shape spacecraft attached to a large ring encircling it. This ring, potentially made of exotic matter, would cause space-time to warp around the starship, creating a region of contracted space in front of it and expanded space behind. [Star Trek's Warp Drive: Are We There Yet? | Video]
Meanwhile, the starship itself would stay inside a bubble of flat space-time that wasn't being warped at all.
Any technology that can propel a ship at faster than light speeds, can also propel a ship forwards or backwards in time.
I note a dearth of time travelers vacationing from the future.
But time dilation will certainly allow humans to travel between the stars on one-way journeys.
