Posted on 01/12/2004 5:20:16 PM PST by blam
Nasa's Martian rover nearly ready to roll
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 13/01/2004)
Nasa scientists are readying the Spirit rover to roll down a ramp on to Gusev Crater after a delay in its mission to find evidence of water on Mars.
Engineers scrapped plans for a forward roll off after they were unable to retract partially-deployed airbags that could have snagged on Spirit's solar panels.
They will now turn the rover 120 degrees atop the lander, a process that will take two Martian days. Mission control in Pasadena, California, delayed the rover's departure by one day, until Thursday morning, to test a three-point turn in a sandbox mock-up of the landing site.
The first rotation of Spirit by 45 degrees was planned for this morning, the second and third for Wednesday night. Then Spirit will roll off on Thursday morning.
British scientists tried yesterday to find the Beagle 2 probe. They imposed radio silence on the landing site to force Beagle into an automatic "SOS" mode.
Hah! That's hilarious! :-)
I'm going to pass that on to my neighbor who works for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. My neighbor is a good friend of one of the team members at JPL in Pasadena who actually "drives" the Spirit rover. My neighbor has been sending e-mail to the guy at JPL mercilessly taunting him for the excruciatingly slow and methodical process of moving the rover in which he constantly accuses him of driving like a little old lady from Pasadena.
My neighbor forwarded this really funny quote today from his friend at JPL in response to the snide remarks about their Mars rover driving skills:
"...To all you 'geniuses' complaining about how slowly we 'drive' Spirit at JPL, I raise the rover IDD arm upward in a skyward projection and extend the single digit of the RAT tool simulating the universal hand gesture known to motorists everywhere. Downlink THIS, you morons! :-)"
Whoa! Another government worker is about to go postal on us. All in good fun, of course. LOL
P.S.
IDD = Instrument Deployment Device
RAT = Rock Abrasion Tool
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