Spirit and Opportunity

[colcifer]

Are so awesome.

[Phalex]

You gave your wife's bewbs some weird names. I call em Laverne and Shirley.

[5StringBlues]

Originally Posted by Phalex

You gave your wife's bewbs some weird names. I call em Laverne and Shirley.

I salute you good sir.

[Eric Cameron]

Sadly, Spirit is now offline permanently. Still, both of them performed above and beyond any expectations, and the information they returned was remarkable. Congrats to the designers at JPL for making an amazing piece of scientific equipment, which lasted 20 times longer than expected.

[colcifer]

Win! That was a great laugh. Seriously though, think of what NASA could do if we bothered to fund them.

[Phalex]

Originally Posted by colcifer

Win! That was a great laugh. Seriously though, think of what NASA could do if we bothered to fund them.

Pfffffft!

It's not like it's Rocket Scie..... Never mind.

[colcifer]

You are on today! Stay logged in, please!

[stratovani]

Originally Posted by Eric Cameron

Sadly, Spirit is now offline permanently. Still, both of them performed above and beyond any expectations, and the information they returned was remarkable. Congrats to the designers at JPL for making an amazing piece of scientific equipment, which lasted 20 times longer than expected.

Also, congrats to JPL on the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. It entered orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004, and its mission was to end on July 30, 2008. But since it's still doing so well, NASA has extended the mission to 2017.

America might have lost the lead on a lot of things, but when it comes to robotic deep-space probes, America is still No.1.

[jmattbassplaya]

Originally Posted by stratovani

America might have lost the lead on a lot of things, but when it comes to robotic deep-space probes, America is still No.1.

We've always been great at probing things.

[stratovani]

Originally Posted by jmattbassplaya

We've always been great at probing things.

ROTFLMAO!

Thanks, I just blew iced tea through my nose!

[colcifer]

I should have known better than to expect the OT crowd to take something seriously...

[Sardine]

[Quickie]

Originally Posted by jmattbassplaya

We've always been great at probing things.

That's what my wife USED to say. Now we are in our 50's and I'm lucky to get an enema from her.......

[Selta]

It's official: Probe is orbiting giant asteroid - Technology & science - Space - Space.com - msnbc.com

[colcifer]

Originally Posted by Sardine

You made me sad. It would be super cool if an android could be sent to Mars though. Way better than a rover.

[colcifer]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/sc...imes&seid=auto

It has been driving on and off for more than seven years, but now it has reached its new destination. Opportunity, a small exploratory rover that landed on Mars in 2004, has trundled to a crater called Endeavour.
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And the first rock it looked at has already opened a new chapter in the study of Mars, NASA scientists said Thursday. On a telephone news conference, mission scientists giddily described that rock: full of zinc and bromine, elements that, at least for rocks on Earth, would be suggestive of geology formed with heat and water.

“This rock doesn’t look like anything else we’ve seen before” on Mars, said Steven W. Squyres, a professor of astronomy at Cornell and principal investigator of the rover mission.

The rim of Endeavour — a 14-mile-wide depression that was carved out by an impact long ago — consists of rocks from an earlier geological era that the impact lifted up from below. If the aging rover holds up, it could spend years examining the new terrain, giving NASA scientists ample grist for discovery.

Scientists are most interested in a close-up look at clay deposits that have been detected from orbit by another craft — NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter — but that Opportunity has yet to find. Clay forms in the presence of liquid water, and the deposits suggest a warmer, wetter period in Mars’s past that may have offered friendlier conditions for life.

“This is a brand new mission, brand new landing site for all intents and purposes, geologically,” Dr. Squyres said. “A whole new set of puzzles for us to go off and solve.”

Opportunity and a twin rover, Spirit, arrived on Mars in January 2004, landing on different sides of the planet with the goal of exploring the surface for signs of past water. Spirit got its wheels stuck in a sand trap in May 2009 and could not get its solar panels pointed toward the sun; unable to generate enough electricity, it stopped communicating in March 2010 and is not expected to be heard from again.

But Opportunity, about the size of a golf cart, continues rolling on. It has now driven 20 miles. It had been designed to travel about two-thirds of a mile.

When it landed in 2004, it rolled by chance into Eagle Crater, which is 70 feet in diameter, and over the years explored a series of progressively larger craters. Three years ago, Opportunity — which had already far outlived its original mission — set off on a journey that no one was confident it would complete. It drove 13 miles to Endeavour, arriving on Aug. 9.

Opportunity is no longer in pristine condition, however. It is now usually driven backward to even out the wear on the gears. One of the joints on the robotic arm is stuck. Care is taken to minimize the movement of the camera to avoid wearing out the motor.

“All in all, we have a very senior rover that’s showing her age,” said John Callas, the project manager. “She has some arthritis and other issues, but in general, she’s in good health.”

Both Spirit and Opportunity have discovered evidence of liquid water, albeit water that is highly acidic, like sulfuric acid, that made parts of ancient Mars potentially habitable, at least intermittently.

The Endeavour rock that Opportunity looked at, named Tisdale 2, is a breccia, and was smashed apart by the impact, then fused back together. That was not unexpected for a rim of an impact crater.

The high levels of zinc, however, were unexpected. Dr. Squyres said it was a clue that this rock might have formed in a hydrothermal system, although it was much too early to speculate about whether it could have been geysers like those found at Yellowstone Park or something much less dramatic, like water vapor percolating through the rocks.

The two rovers were not designed to look for signs of life, past or present. Even NASA’s next Mars mission, which involves an S.U.V.-size rover named Curiosity that is scheduled for launching later this year, does not carry any life-detection experiments. But it will be able to identify some of the molecular building blocks for life.

[pocketgroove]

Originally Posted by colcifer

You made me sad. It would be super cool if an android could be sent to Mars though. Way better than a rover.

That makes me sad too; good to know I'm not the only one, I guess?