Posted on 02/24/2004 4:52:19 PM PST by Phil V.
Daily Updates - February 24, 2004
Spirit Status for sol 51 Making Ground posted Feb. 24, 2 pm PST
To inspire a morning "run" on sol 51, which ended at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, PST, Spirit woke up to Vangelis’ "Chariots of Fire." The rover deployed its arm, took microscopic images of the soil in front of it and then proceeded toward its target, "Middle Ground." Spirit drove 30 meters (98.4 feet), breaking its own record for a single-sol traverse. Along the way, Spirit paused to image rocks on both sides of the drive path with its panoramic camera.
The auto-navigational software that drove the last 12 meters (39.4 feet) of the traverse to the "Middle Ground" target warned Spirit that the slope into the hollow that houses it was too steep (according to parameters set by rover engineers). Spirit then paced along the rim, looking for a safe way down. Unable to locate a secure path into the crater before the sol ended, Spirit ended up facing slightly west of north instead of northeast, as called for by the plan. This orientation will reduce the amount of data the rover can return (due to interference between the UHF antenna and items on the rover equipment deck), but it will be corrected in the coming sols.
As of today, Spirit has moved 183.25 meters (601.21 feet) and is now roughly 135 meters (442.91 feet) from its landing site, Columbia Memorial Station.
The intent for the next several sols will be to drive Spirit into "Middle Ground" and take a full panorama of the surrounding area to identify scientifically interesting rocks.
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Opportunity Status for sol 30 A Beautiful Grind posted Feb. 24, 11:15 am PST
On sol 30, which ended at 2:56 a.m. Tuesday, February 24, Opportunity performed its first rock abrasion tool operation on a rock target known as 'McKittrick Middle Rat' at the El Capitan site inside the crater. The tool shaved the rock over a period of two hours, grinding into a total depth of about 4 millimeters (.16 inches).
The auspicious day began with the song 'Rock'n Me' by Steve Miller and some miniature thermal emission spectrometer sky surveys and sky stares to study the atmosphere. After completing these activities, Opportunity took a short siesta to recharge its batteries. The rover has been doing a lot of science work at night, and the season on Mars is changing to winter, so the rover has less energy to work with than it did earlier in the mission. The martian days are getting shorter and the sun angle is not allowing either rover to power up the solar panels as much as in the past.
Opportunity woke up from its nap at 11:30 Local Solar Time on Mars to run through the series of commands required to retract the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and close its doors; take several microscopic images of another nearby rock abrasion tool target called 'Guadalupe;' flip the wrist; take a microscopic image of "McKittrick Middle Rat;" and place the rock abrasion tool on its target to run at 13:00 Local Solar Time.
After the abrasion tool was retracted, a series of microscopic images of the scene were taken, and the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer was successfully placed into the abrasion tool's hole late in the day.
Some additional panoramic camera, miniature thermal emission spectrometer readings, and hazard avoidance camera imagery was completed through the day.
The plan for sol 31, which will end at 3:36 a.m. Wednesday, February 25, is to continue getting long Moessbauer readings of the rock abrasion tool hole and to prepare the tool for more work again on sol 33 or 34.
They're too busy arguing over next week's "wake-up music" hit parade, so that they can keep the idiots happy. You know, the morons who are happy to pay, because the government is so advanced that they've even been able to design robots that can listen to music, and wake up when they hear it.
(If anyone doesn't realize that that's the point of this stupid "wake-up music" charade, well, wanna buy a bridge?)
On a less sarcastic note (note that I did not say "a more serious note"), I suspect they're going "oh, shiiii..." and trying to figure out how to gracefully ignore the elephant under the rug.
After enduring decades of bovina fecundis from the Tinfoil Brigade, who "saw" everything from the infamous "face", to "machinery" on the ground (rocks) to "buildings" on the "Twin Peaks" hills (jpeg artifacts), they're suddenly confronted with some genuinely "interesting" stuff, and what do they do? They let the beneficiaries of the taxpayer' largese sit on the "interesting" stuff, until they've had a chance to play with it by themselves, "prepare for publication", blah blah blah.
How do you spell "outrage"? Hint: It's a four letter word, begins with "N".
Why didn't they mention this any sooner? This sort of embarassed secrecy makes me wonder what other defects they're hushing up. And it'll also make people wonder if it's just an excuse to avoid having to explain what they've been finding and not commenting on.
They must be really excited. So excited, that they can't even talk about what is exciting them! The only thing they can manage to say is that they're excited.
This is starting to get weird.
They can't even "hear" the music. The entire premise is beyond absurd.
They might as well be "playing music" to their typewriters.
To be a fly on the wall...
Digital artifacts in the image. Sometimes intentionally placed in the image file for alignment and other purposes. Other times they are there from conversion to another format (i.e. .jpg from tiff & etc.).
Not in taxes...but in the final product cost. Ever wonder why a bottle of pills from the pharmacy costs so much? R&D, brother...R&D. Your bottle of Viagra includes the cost of all failed research, too. Complaining about the cost of NASA, the Hubble, etc. is simply myopic, for we the people pay either in taxes or at the retail level.
Ah ha! The man names the "thing that shall not be named" by ultra-conservative (scientifically speaking) geologists and paleontologists. Bravo, dear fellow! If this thought is on the minds of those scientists, imagine the debates and discussions raging right now!
As a scientist though, and one not privy to all the accumulated data, of course I must be reluctant to side with such an interpretation just yet.
"They" are also keeping this in mind as well.
Kindly step away from the computer. You are using technology paid for with "other peoples' money".
Ah, no, but it is folded into the costs of products and services, and passed onto the consumers.
But then of course the consumers have the choice as to whether or not to buy the product.
Yes it cost us a lot to get Hubble on-target, but it's still working very well beyond its service life
Contrast this to the Keck telescopes/interferometer. When fully functional will have greater resolving power than the Hubble for a total of $30million all from private sources
What you're writing is commonly called a strawman. It does not square with reality
This was in yoresponse to your irrelevant statement that mistakes are the cost of learning. quid pro quo
Results are good, but could be better, when we don't crash them into the planet.
However they do keep crashing or something happens to them
, if the mission teams were as apathetic as you suggest, why would they go to
I didn't say that they were apathetic. I don't think they are. I just said that there were no consequences to failure. The only downside is that the taxpayers don't get pictures of rocks and dirt for their money .
: NASA science and engineering, for all it's inefficiency, is not a welfare system. The
NASA is not welfare in the sense that people actually have to show up and do something to get their checks. It's more like the Roosveldt WPA and CCC where unwanted uneeded work was performed for taxpayer money.
Government funding DISTORTS the market place in that it puts money to whoever has the most political clout, not where the people who pay want it. What you get might be good or might not, but it sure isn't what's wanted or you wouldn't have to pay for it by taxes
I invited myself - bite me.
Wrong as usual. I paid for this one toots. And BTW aren't you the a$$hole who threatened to shoot me for disagreeing with them a couple of months ago?
Please, don't try to be clever. You're not equipped for it.
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