Posted on 08/19/2014 3:39:13 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The 1-ton Curiosity rover had been heading for Mount Sharp - a 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers) mountain in the center of Mars' Gale Crater - via 'Hidden Valley' - a low-lying sandy landscape about the length of a football field.
However, Curiosity turned back shortly after entering the valley's northeastern end earlier this month after finding that the sand surprisingly slippery, NASA officials said.
'We need to gain a better understanding of the interaction between the wheels and Martian sand ripples, and Hidden Valley is not a good location for experimenting,' Curiosity project manager Jim Erickson, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
The mission team is now assessing possible alternative routes that would take Curiosity north of the valley.
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(Excerpt) Read more at designntrend.com ...
For those that only read the title before posting, it is stuck.
.
lol....
I’ve noted some here really dislike non-manned spacecraft/exploration...
Others understand it has and will pave the way to the solar system, galaxy and beyond if man lasts that long...
There was plenty of dust. It got all over everything. Thomas Gold had predicted a layer of deep dust tens or hundreds of feet thick, but this was ruled out by the Surveyor landings, which gave a good idea of the surface characteristics.
...or how about like I recall from a Bob & Ray spoof radio ad for a parking garage attendant driving school, "GUN THE MOTOR THEN SLAM 'ER IN REVERSE LIKE I LEARNED YA!"
Headline: President Obama to speak at 9pm about
Mar’s rover. “Use the 9 iron and be sure to rake
the trap after.”
(Better stop using that stuff!)
Sheila Jackson Lee can tell you when...
...1969.
someone will put the katrina guy next to it i’m sure.
Funny you mention the wheels. How many know that Curiosity is leaving Morse Code all over Mars? At least one of the wheels has Morse Code spelling out J P L. A curious bit of trivia for Curiosity.
Go back and read post 13, and get back in contact with the discussion, rather than diverting it with your irrelevant trivia.
It’s just Curiosity doing his best impression of a golf ball in a sand trap at a golf course on Mars!
It’s not stupid to prepare for the worst .. they prepared for the best ,, and they cannot get there from here ...
dust/dirt/sand deep or shallow ... doesn’t really matter now ,, they cannot get traction.
The experiment package is genius, the delivery system is less so.
But sand is not dust,
************************
I don’t care , those tires are all wrong for anything but hard packed “earth” ,, agree dust ¬= sand ,, but sand can be mighty slippery ,, a better wheel would be a TRACK ,, or a tall narrow wheel that would bite down through the surface dust/dirt/loose crap and get to something solid.
The engineers made a decision to “float” the rover and accept poor traction in return for kicking up less dust/dirt into the atmosphere and instruments.
Sand is slippery because there are no “fines” mixed in, thus little friction between the sand particles.
Kind of like dry beach sand that has been disturbed after it dried out.
You have to give them a break, they really had nothing to base their design on in terms of soil/surface conditions, and this thing is wandering and finding lots of different conditions.
And it takes a long time between instruction and reaction too.
And no pitching wedge either!
.
Doggone near lost a $1.8 billion dollar hand car.
LOL!
From now on, Curiosity needs to stick to the William J. Le Petomane Thruway.
That’s a long way to go back for a s**tload of dimes!
Harrumph!!!
Maybe "car guys" should listen to JPL engineers and find out why they made the choices they did, before blathering ignorantly.
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