51–60 of 116 posts
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Opportunity tried to see the descent, but it did not work: http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/1019152...
Damn. So cosmic rays are pretty intense huh?
That streak was a classic CR. Depending on the angle of incidence on the CCD, you can see different shapes.
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I'm waiting for the day where someone can tell their rover to drive / fly over and find out what the heck happened.
We have proven designs for Mars rovers, and a proven delivery system. The R&D has been done, the infrastructure is in place - why don't we send some more? We should be able to make incremental updates and constantly improve the rovers capabilities.
What a shame. The only consolation, if any, is that they are not the first ones to crash on Mars. If I remember correctly the historic chances of landing successfully on Mars is about 50/50.
Reminds of the "Seven Minutes of Terror" video that NASA put out ahead of the Curiosity landing explaining how they intended to make it safely to the surface. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki_Af_o9Q9s (Note: I get goosebumps every time I watch this, absolutely amazing problem solving.)
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I'm waiting for the day where someone can tell their rover to drive / fly over and find out what the heck happened.
Opportunity is not so far (it's actually inside a crater nearby I think), but it'd take months to get to place, and there may not be enough scientific value in doing so just to see the charred remains of Schiaparelli. But who knows, it's so over it's expected mission life that maybe someone goes "f * it, let's go take a look".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm waiting for the day where someone can tell their rover to drive / fly over and find out what the heck happened.
We have proven designs for Mars rovers, and a proven delivery system. The R&D has been done, the infrastructure is in place - why don't we send some more? We should be able to make incremental updates and constantly improve the rovers capabilities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have proven designs for Mars rovers, and a proven delivery system. The R&D has been done, the infrastructure is in place - why don't we send some more? We should be able to make incremental updates and constantly improve the rovers capabilities.
The rovers we sent cost us about $400 million each. And one failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
Opportunity by this time must be fueled by some dark magic since the darn thing out lasted it's planned mission by freaking 12 years.
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I'm still amazed that it succeeded. I was prepared to bet quite a bit of money that at least one of the many quite complicated stages of the landing would fail. I'm happy I was wrong.
To me, the air bags[1] used to land the Spirit and Opportunity rovers seemed like a saner way to go than trying to deposit them gently directly on to the surface using a sky crane. The reported reason the sky crane was used for Curiosity is that it was too heavy for the air bag approach. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRCIzZHpFtY
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The rovers we sent cost us about $400 million each. And one failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover
Considering that both rovers were planned to last for 90 days each both of them outlasted their mission like a boss you can't say any of them failed, yes Spirit has failed but after 2269 days in operation. Opportunity by this time must be fueled by some dark magic since the darn thing out lasted it's planned mission by freaking 12 years.