Some angry locals missed the target
Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
41–50 of 93 posts
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#42A wild ROCK appears?
I can't help but hearing Frank Zappa while reading this news. Strangely this music really helps me concentrate on coding.
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#43I find it interesting that there is no better word to describe "tiddlywinking", and that this obscure game has become part of our vocabulary for this very rare circumstance.
Hardly an obscure game, or an obscure word. At least not in the UK.
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#44How big a deal is it, scientifically speaking, that the rover has access to the freshly-exposed underside of the rock?
You'd think they would start to put a plow or til on these rovers.
Or a digging laser. Dig out a small area with a laser and wait for the other side to cave in. We have digging lasers, right???
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
CSS has race conditions ?
It's JS, check the gist. The race condition is with image loading. I don't think CSS has race conditions, but someone please prove me wrong here :)
I suppose implementation could have, but since the language is declarative, I think that could rightfully be considered a bug.
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#46The locals are upset at our occupation and are throwing rocks at us. Pretty obvious really.
I think that's the unsaid part of the story, everyone secretly believes that some intelligent being placed that rock as a peace token (otherwise this kind of news won't make headlines)
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#47If you had watched Apollo 18 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772240/) you would know what that rock is.
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#48How big a deal is it, scientifically speaking, that the rover has access to the freshly-exposed underside of the rock?
Pretty big. I've often wondered why they don't send a dragline digger to Mars, so they can dig a decent trench. When Spirit's wheel broke and they started dragging it along, digging a little trench, they made a nice discovery and that was with something not designed to dig at all. If they could get a few feet down, who knows what they could find?!
It may have been big, but curiosity has a scoop to scoop up dirt, a drill, and a laser that can vaporize rock to look inside of them. It's not like the rovers can only look at the surface.
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#49"“So my best guess for this rock … is that it’s something that was nearby,” said Squyres. “I must stress that I’m guessing now, but I think it happened when the rover did a turn in place a meter or two from where this rock now lies.”
Opportunity’s front right steering actuator has stopped working, so Squyres identified that as the possible culprit behind the whole mystery."
Reading a lot of speculation, but this seems pretty plausible - without the need for anything crazy like aliens, subterranean oozing or a rock falling from space and just so happening to land in front of the rover... But, Hey! Perhaps it is martian-cow dung afterall!
Re: Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover
#50How big a deal is it, scientifically speaking, that the rover has access to the freshly-exposed underside of the rock?
Pretty big. I've often wondered why they don't send a dragline digger to Mars, so they can dig a decent trench. When Spirit's wheel broke and they started dragging it along, digging a little trench, they made a nice discovery and that was with something not designed to dig at all. If they could get a few feet down, who knows what they could find?!
The Exomars project will land a 2 metre vertical drill on the surface, sampling much deeper than anything done so far.
It's just a question of priorities. Drilling 4cm into a rock with a specific surface abrasion tool is a long way from plunging a 2 metre metal shaft into unknown terrain. Engineering this so it has no chance of jamming, breaking, overheating etc is not gonna be a trivial task. How do you lubricate a drill without contaminating the environment and with such a wide temperature variation?