Mars Phoenix Mission

[OUCaptain]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Woah, awesome, first ship to use thrusters to land on Mars. Too large to use airbags. We may now see heavier things dropping on Mars.

Uh this isn't the first one. Thrusters are old school

 

[OUCaptain]

OMG The bit they use to grind the rocks for sampling was bought at a local hardware store.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Originally posted by: OUCaptain

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Woah, awesome, first ship to use thrusters to land on Mars. Too large to use airbags. We may now see heavier things dropping on Mars.

Uh this isn't the first one. Thrusters are old school

I'm fairly sure all previous missions used airbags to land on mars. Thisis the first rover mission to use thrusters to do the final touchdown

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

Originally posted by: OUCaptain

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Woah, awesome, first ship to use thrusters to land on Mars. Too large to use airbags. We may now see heavier things dropping on Mars.

Uh this isn't the first one. Thrusters are old school

I'm fairly sure all previous missions used airbags to land on mars. Thisis the first rover mission to use thrusters to do the final touchdown

Viking.😉

Only Pathfinder and the MER's used airbags. (Beagle2 tried using them, and they might have worked just fine, but no one knows what went wrong with that mission.)
Pathfinder was the first, mainly as a prototype to see if it was a viable means of getting a rover to the surface. It works, up to a point. Once the lander gets too heavy, any airbag has too great a risk of bursting or sustaining a severe puncture.

 

[ObiDon]

Originally posted by: OUCaptain
OMG The bit they use to grind the rocks for sampling was bought at a local hardware store.

"one meal-yun dollars!"

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

Originally posted by: OUCaptain

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Woah, awesome, first ship to use thrusters to land on Mars. Too large to use airbags. We may now see heavier things dropping on Mars.

Uh this isn't the first one. Thrusters are old school

I'm fairly sure all previous missions used airbags to land on mars. Thisis the first rover mission to use thrusters to do the final touchdown

Actually it's more like the other way round. Opportunity, Spirit, and Sojourner used air bags, and I think one of the failed Russian missions, all other attempts used rockets. There have been many attempts to land and or orbit Mars, most ending in failure. Take a look at the "Timeline of Mars exploration" section here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

Originally posted by: OUCaptain

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Woah, awesome, first ship to use thrusters to land on Mars. Too large to use airbags. We may now see heavier things dropping on Mars.

Uh this isn't the first one. Thrusters are old school

I'm fairly sure all previous missions used airbags to land on mars. Thisis the first rover mission to use thrusters to do the final touchdown

Actually it's more like the other way round. Opportunity, Spirit, and Sojourner used air bags, and I think one of the failed Russian missions, all other attempts used rockets. There have been many attempts to land and or orbit Mars, most ending in failure. Take a look at the "Timeline of Mars exploration" section here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars

Ah, my bad. Must have misheard the guy

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: JEDI
the other 2 mars explorers are still operating 2yrs after their battery life date. WTF?

how could nasa (ie: rocket scientist) miscalculate by 2yrs on something that was only suppose to last 6months?!?!

They were expected to get choked out by dust accumulation after 90 sols on Mars (3 months😉). The dust wasn't as bad as expected, and both of them received numerous cleanings thanks to local wind turbulence caused by the landscape.

Now the likely causes of death are either mechanical failure or budget cuts.

Right now, Spirit's got one wheel bad, but is still mobile. For the winter, it's staked out a spot on a nice slope to give it more sunlight - it's not had as much luck with cleaning as Opportunity.

Opportunity remains almost fully mobile. One front wheel no longer steers, but it's not a serious problem. The robotic arm is having some trouble moving though - it's gone through hundreds of extreme thermal cycles, and some of the motor windings are causing trouble. The arm carries along the 4 science instruments, so if it were lost, a great deal of the scientific returns would be lost. However, the arm is deployed now, and may very well remain that way. Every time it would get stowed, there'd be the risk that it'd never come out again, so they just plan to keep it hanging out now.

Additionally, both rovers are now smarter than they were when they landed. Back then, if they needed to go to a target and deploy the instrument arm, they did it in steps, waiting for verification from Earth before putting the instruments on a target. Now it's capable of identifying the target visually, remaining locked on as it travels, and then it will fine-tune its position before deploying the instrument on its own.

They've also got the ability to detect when they're slipping - awhile ago, Opportunity buried its wheels in a sand drift about a foot deep. It was instructed to do a drive of a certain distance, and once its wheels turned the right number of times, it stopped. The sand drifts, which have a crunchy surface, had previously held its weight. Not this one. It took a long time to extract it. Imagine getting stuck in a snow drift, and the only way to get out is to plug it into reverse and lay down on the gas. Now imagine that your maximum speed is only about 1 inch per second.

So to prevent any further incidents like that, the rovers were programmed to detect slip automatically, even if they've been instructed otherwise. So now you can tell them to drive into unsafe terrain, and if they say it's not safe, they'll refuse to do it unless it's specifically overridden.

That happened once before - Opportunity was told to drive up to a cliff ledge to get a good panorama. It saw the cliff edge a few meters away and refused to move any closer. The controllers had to override its protection systems to edge it in a little closer.

When you think of what Opportunity and Spirit have accomplished and start to browse through the enormous archive of images they have sent back you start to get the feeling of just how amazing an achievement these landers have been. Though they may not get much press attention any more they still mark as one of the grand achievements of man kind.

I still get goose bumps when viewing some of the stunning imagery they send back. Anyone else?

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Locut0s


When you think of what Opportunity and Spirit have accomplished and start to browse through the enormous archive of images they have sent back you start to get the feeling of just how amazing an achievement these landers have been. Though they may not get much press attention any more they still mark as one of the grand achievements of man kind.

I still get goose bumps when viewing some of the stunning imagery they send back. Anyone else?

Its really amazing when you consider how far away they really are.
And also how low the power requirements and processing power they have to accomplish the task.

For me though, voyager 1 and 2 are the most amazing.
To have been in space for 30 years and still working.

 

[cpmer]

Anyone got a link to any sites that show some good pics taken from pathfinder and other vehicles?

 

[waggy]

hehe I love Nasa channel. its great

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: cpmer
Anyone got a link to any sites that show some good pics taken from pathfinder and other vehicles?

For Phoenix, this will be here

Looks like my thread ballooned up while I was away. 😀

Looks like it landed safely. I had to watch it on CNN, which had decent coverage of it. Since I'm spending Memorial Weekend at my parents house, and they've got some much junk hooked up to their TV system, nobody knew how to switch from Comcast cable to the dish in order to watch it on Science or Discovery. Bah. Likely, I'll be able to get some HD encodes off BT to see how they covered it though.

On CNN, they statedt that the first pics would be received back around 2145 EST. However, since I don't see anything up on their site yet, I must conclude that they are being screened for things that we're not supposed to see yet. 😉

Edit - Bah, while I typed that, they posted the first pics.

 

[waggy]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: cpmer
Anyone got a link to any sites that show some good pics taken from pathfinder and other vehicles?

For Phoenix, this will be here

Looks like my thread ballooned up while I was away. 😀

Looks like it landed safely. I had to watch it on CNN, which had decent coverage of it. Since I'm spending Memorial Weekend at my parents house, and they've got some much junk hooked up to their TV system, nobody knew how to switch from Comcast cable to the dish in order to watch it on Science or Discovery. Bah. Likely, I'll be able to get some HD encodes off BT to see how they covered it though.

On CNN, they statedt that the first pics would be received back around 2145 EST. However, since I don't see anything up on their site yet, I must conclude that they are being screened for things that we're not supposed to see yet. 😉

Edit - Bah, while I typed that, they posted the first pics.

ohh you need the Nasa channel. they are showing pictures as they get them.

nothing exciting yet. just a ogod picture of the foot Lol.

rather exciting. I love this kidna stuff

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Locut0s
When you think of what Opportunity and Spirit have accomplished and start to browse through the enormous archive of images they have sent back you start to get the feeling of just how amazing an achievement these landers have been. Though they may not get much press attention any more they still mark as one of the grand achievements of man kind.

I still get goose bumps when viewing some of the stunning imagery they send back. Anyone else?

Over at Planetary.org, they've got updates on the rovers - lengthy, detailed reports on the goings-on. What the engineering teams have done with them is amazing, too. They've had a number of problems, and none of them have stopped the rovers. Early on, Spirit had memory issues - something kept writing data when it shouldn't have, and the flash-RAM got filled up, so the rover rebooted something like 90 times before sending back diagnostic info to Earth at a super-slow bitrate. They finally were able to figure out the problem, purge the bad data, and update the software. They've been through a planetary dust storm that blocked out something like 90% of the light getting through - it got to look like late evening at noon. Stuck switches, problems with actuators, and unpleasant terrain - it just won't stop them.

Spirit's had a rougher time than Opportunity, too - Opportunity's driving early on was described as roving across a parking lot. The sand drifts were an inch or two high, and virtually no rocks - just a few lovely craters. Spirit was on a plan just covered in rocks. And then as it was climbing a hill, its one wheel started acting up because of lubricant problems. Solution? Drive backwards to redistribute the lubricant. So they started doing that with both rovers - drive them backwards occasionally to keep the wheel bearings all lubed up.

They have sent back some incredible stuff, not just the images, but also scientific data about the composition of the terrain.

Sunset on Mars

All things Pathfinder

Originally posted by: waggy

ohh you need the Nasa channel. they are showing pictures as they get them.

nothing exciting yet. just a good picture of the foot Lol.

rather exciting. I love this kinda stuff

Where is it? I can't seem to find it right away. Still looking...



Here they are. 🙂
But of course, it's a goddamn Flash-based photo gallery.:roll:
New pics are still coming in.😀


Direct link. No directory permissions, but just increment up/down to move through them.



I am so very glad it's not the ESA doing this. Within minutes of getting the images, they were available online. The ESA takes their sweet, sweet time posting any images - it could be weeks or months before they're made publicly available.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: cpmer
Anyone got a link to any sites that show some good pics taken from pathfinder and other vehicles?

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/images.html

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: Coldkilla
TOUCHDOWWWWWWWWWWN! w00t!

100 points for science - wonder what the overly religious will say if we discover frozen life in the ice.

I don't get why people keep bringing that up. I'm definately religious, and yet I couldn't care less if we find a frozen neanderthal up there.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

First Images OUT!

Black and White though

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
First Images OUT!

Black and White though

If this is like the MERs, all images are taken B&W, but through multiple filters, which then need to be radiometrically calibrated and merged to create approximate true-color images.

 

[BrownTown]

From the first pictures it looks like its all just dirt, I thought they wanted to land in areas with ice?

 

[OUCaptain]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
From the first pictures it looks like its all just dirt, I thought they wanted to land in areas with ice?

The ice is just below the surface I believe. Thats why they gave it a digger arm. They will also be testing the dirt though in two ways. One way is burning the dirt and analyzing any smoke. The other way is a wet chemical analysis.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13

We were lucky. Storms took off most of the dust on the panels. They're falling part though. ALOT of it has been starting to shut down from dust, overheating joints, and other problems. But, this is the reason why we need to keep funding NASA, so they can keep creating quality rovers that keep doing science long after their time.

Solar Panels deployed!

FYI:

"a lot" = 2 words.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
FYI:

"a lot" = 2 words.

Noone spells it that way.

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
From the first pictures it looks like its all just dirt, I thought they wanted to land in areas with ice?

It's not going to be ice as in pure glacial ice you see on earth. It's going to be a combination of dry ice, frozen CO2, water ice and lots of dirt. On the surface it's all dirt.

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Locut0s
When you think of what Opportunity and Spirit have accomplished and start to browse through the enormous archive of images they have sent back you start to get the feeling of just how amazing an achievement these landers have been. Though they may not get much press attention any more they still mark as one of the grand achievements of man kind.

I still get goose bumps when viewing some of the stunning imagery they send back. Anyone else?

Over at Planetary.org, they've got updates on the rovers - lengthy, detailed reports on the goings-on. What the engineering teams have done with them is amazing, too. They've had a number of problems, and none of them have stopped the rovers. Early on, Spirit had memory issues - something kept writing data when it shouldn't have, and the flash-RAM got filled up, so the rover rebooted something like 90 times before sending back diagnostic info to Earth at a super-slow bitrate. They finally were able to figure out the problem, purge the bad data, and update the software. They've been through a planetary dust storm that blocked out something like 90% of the light getting through - it got to look like late evening at noon. Stuck switches, problems with actuators, and unpleasant terrain - it just won't stop them.

Spirit's had a rougher time than Opportunity, too - Opportunity's driving early on was described as roving across a parking lot. The sand drifts were an inch or two high, and virtually no rocks - just a few lovely craters. Spirit was on a plan just covered in rocks. And then as it was climbing a hill, its one wheel started acting up because of lubricant problems. Solution? Drive backwards to redistribute the lubricant. So they started doing that with both rovers - drive them backwards occasionally to keep the wheel bearings all lubed up.

They have sent back some incredible stuff, not just the images, but also scientific data about the composition of the terrain.

Sunset on Mars

All things Pathfinder

Originally posted by: waggy

ohh you need the Nasa channel. they are showing pictures as they get them.

nothing exciting yet. just a good picture of the foot Lol.

rather exciting. I love this kinda stuff

Where is it? I can't seem to find it right away. Still looking...



Here they are. 🙂
But of course, it's a goddamn Flash-based photo gallery.:roll:
New pics are still coming in.😀


Direct link. No directory permissions, but just increment up/down to move through them.



I am so very glad it's not the ESA doing this. Within minutes of getting the images, they were available online. The ESA takes their sweet, sweet time posting any images - it could be weeks or months before they're made publicly available.

Fantastic!

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
FYI:

"a lot" = 2 words.

Noone spells it that way.

Actually, everyone who spells it correctly spells it that way.