View Full Version : [Space] NASA - Mars Exploration Rover MER-A "Spirit" - Update Thread
Spirit ha appena trasmesso la telemetria al JPL tramite la Deep Space Network (DSN) comunicando di aver eseguito senza problemi l'ordine di muoversi 1 metro in avanti (9.8 piedi) fuori dalla piattaforma del lander, ora senza più utilità.
Complimenti ai ragazzi del JPL!
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040115lander.jpg
This image from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's rear hazard avoidance camera shows the rover's hind view of the lander platform, its nest for the past 12 sols, or martian days. The rover is approximately 1 meters (3 feet) in front of the airbag-cushioned lander, facing northwest. Note the tracks left in the martian soil by the rovers' wheels, all six of which have rolled off the lander. This is the first time the rover has touched martian soil. Credit: NASA/JPL
Six-wheeling on Mars: Rover Spirit drives off lander
The command ordering the Spirit rover to roll off its lander and onto the surface of Mars was transmitted at 3:21:30 a.m. EST.
"Flight, I have alpha, alpha, charlie, tango, underscore, romeo, two-one, niner-six, decimal alpha, decimal zero, zero in the radiation cue," a controller informed flight director Chris Lewicki when the instructions were ready to go.
"OK, alpha, alpha, charlie, tango, underscore, romeo, two-one, niner-six, decimal alpha, decimal zero, zero," Lewicki confirmed. "This is our command (for) the most significant 3-meter drive in recorded history." The control team laughed. "That's a good readback, you're clear to radiate."
"On my mark," the controller replied. "Three, two, one, mark!"
And with that, coded instructions began racing toward Mars, more than 100 million miles away, where the Spirit lander sat patiently atop its lander, poised for roll off.
It would take an hour and a half for the rover to complete its slow move off the lander's northwest egress aid and onto the surface, to find the sun, reorient its high-gain antenna and radio telemetry back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, confirming its initial foray.
As the waiting began, mission manager Jennifer Trosper cued up the theme song from the TV series "Rawhide" and the familiar refrain "rollin', rollin', rollin'" blared out in the flight control room."
It was the moment the engineers and scientists had been waiting for since Spirit bounced to a successful landing on Mars Jan. 3.
"This is a night that is extraordinarily rich in significance for all of us, certainly for those of us on the science team and I know for everybody here as well," principal investigator Steve Squyres told the team. "When I first presented this long-term (exploration) plan to the public a couple of days ago, I said it was rich in scientific potential. But I also said it was going to be a shared adventure unlike any other in human history. When I said that, what I meant for the press and the public was that it was an adventure we would share with the whole world.
"But on a much deeper and more personal level, it's an adventure that I'm just incredibly proud to share with the people in this room and this team. And so, when we see that picture (showing the lander in the background) and everybody starts getting all choked up and running around hugging people again, please forgive me. Thanks."
Finally, at 4:53 a.m., a controller called out: "We have carrier in lock," meaning NASA's Deep Space Network tracking antennas once again were receiving a signal from Spirit. Five minutes later, a controller reported telemetry confirmed that Spirit had, in fact, moved three meters, or about 9.8 feet from its starting point atop the lander.
"Sounds like it was a nice trip," Lewicki said. "All we need now are the pictures."
Then, two minutes later, the first grainy black-and-white thumbnail image from a rear-facing navigation camera came in, clearly showing the lander, perched atop its crumpled airbags, in the background. Spirit was finally on the surface of Mars and the flight team burst into cheers and applause. Squyres embraced Lewicki and science manager John Callas gave Trosper a bouquet of flowers.
"That's a big relief!" said Rob Manning, the engineer who oversaw Spirit's entry, descent and landing 12 days ago. "We're on Mars. Spirit has landed."
Project manager Pete Theisinger held up a T-shirt with an image of the rover on one side, along with the words "My other car is on Mars!!!" Then someone cued up the song "Who Let The Dogs Out?"
A few minutes later, a higher resolution image came in, clearly showing Spirit's two back wheels and ruddy tire tracks leading back to the lander's egress aids. Martian soil could be seen clumped up on the rear left wheel as the team once again burst into cheers.
"Our wheels are finally dirty," Manning observed. "This is very exciting. What a relief."
http://www.f1grandprix.it/public/IBforum/html/emoticons/salterelli.gif
Fradetti
15-01-2004, 11:38
bentornato :)
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
"Our wheels are finally dirty," Manning observed. "This is very exciting. What a relief."
:D
Però..Davvero incredibile a pensarci ;)
crespo80
15-01-2004, 12:09
la multipla fa schifo
BENTORNATO
:sofico: :sofico: :sofico: :sofico:
:yeah:
duchetto
15-01-2004, 12:31
:cool: :cool:
perchè immagini in bianco e nero?:confused:
Originariamente inviato da duchetto
:cool: :cool:
perchè immagini in bianco e nero?:confused:
E' una preview (thumbnail), giusto per poter avere in tempi ridotti un riscontro visivo con la telemetria. E' molto più veloce da donwlinkare.
Che mito! Il sito della nasa è down continuamento ormai... non si riesce a raggiungere la sezione della missione su marte! :(
Originariamente inviato da duchetto
:cool: :cool:
perchè immagini in bianco e nero?:confused:
Volevi i colori?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040115a/2R127428271FFL0300P1004A0M2_str1-A12R1.jpg
Eccone un'altra:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040115a/2F127428321EFF0300P1003L0M1_str1.jpg
Questo (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html) è il link alla pagina principale della missione su Marte! :)
che storia!!! :winner:
cmq è strana davvero la superficie di marte!
sembra argillosa!
Originariamente inviato da eriol
che storia!!! :winner:
cmq è strana davvero la superficie di marte!
sembra argillosa!
Hai ragione... che mito però! La cosa che più mi "intriga" è la base lunare: speriamo davvero che riescano a farla... sarebbe un passo enorme!
C'è un uomo su marte! E sembra anche brutto! Sicuramente un primitivo...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040114a/95degree_testbed-A12R1.jpg
....ah no era la foto presa dal modello in laboratorio... :D :sofico: (c'eravate cascati, eh? :asd: )
FA.Picard
15-01-2004, 13:34
Neanche un'albero dove pisciare :D
Originariamente inviato da FA.Picard
Neanche un'albero dove pisciare :D
Per quello aspetto a trasferirmi! :O :D
THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2004
1257 GMT (7:57 a.m. EST)
Data from the Spirit rover shows it completed this morning's drive off the lander at 3:41 a.m. EST. Confirmation was received on Earth just before 5 a.m. EST, verifying that Spirit had performed the 10-foot voyage on its own.
The move took approximately 78 seconds, ending with the back of the rover about 2.6 feet away from the lander egress ramp, officials report.
"It's as if we get to drive a nice sports car, but in the end we're just the valets who bring it around to the front and give the keys to the science team," says flight director Chris Lewicki.
That science team will be making daily decisions about where to send Spirit as the roving robot geologist uses its instruments to study rocks, the Martian soil and atmosphere. Starting late tonight (Earth time) the rover's science arm will be checked out.
----
Aggiungo che ci è voluto così tanto perchè, mentre in automatico, data solo la distanza e la direzione del punto finale, arriva a 5 cm/s, in manuale con comando da terra la velocità è di circa un quinto.
Primo target selezionato dal controllo missione al JPL: il "cratere" di Sleepy Hollow.
forte, eh?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/spirit/a3_20040108.html
Originariamente inviato da gpc
...
....ah no era la foto presa dal modello in laboratorio... :D :sofico: (c'eravate cascati, eh? :asd: )
Ma non era questa la foto del modello in laboratorio ?
:confused: :confused:
http://www.hwupgrade.it/sondaggio/1.jpg
:D :D
Preferivo il mostro marziano :D :D :D
Originariamente inviato da kikki2
Ma non era questa la foto del modello in laboratorio ?
:confused: :confused:
http://www.hwupgrade.it/sondaggio/1.jpg
:D :D
:eekk: :eekk: :eekk: :eheh: :D
First rock, soil observations on tap for Spirit rover
The Spirit rover finally rolled onto the surface of Mars today and dutifully beamed back photos showing its now-abandoned lander resting atop crumpled airbags on the frigid martian soil. It was yet another moment for hugs and cheers in a mission that has proceeded from one emotional high to another since landing on Jan. 3.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040115landersmaller.jpg
"Less than 24 hours ago, President Bush committed our nation to a sustained human and robotic program of exploration," said Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "But we at NASA, we move awfully fast, in less than 15 hours, by doing our first step. Spirit is now ready to start its mission of exploration and discovery. We have six wheels in the dirt. Mars now is our sandbox and we are ready to play and learn. I have to tell you, I've never seen so many people so excited by just seeing two tracks in the dirt."
He was referring to the tread marks left in the martian soil behind Spirit's rear wheels.
"Last night ... I looked up in the sky and looked at Mars," Elachi said. "And I'm still awed that we have a rover on that planet. And I was thinking to myself that for centuries, there were millions of people who looked up the same way I looked up and were wondering what's up there.
"But we know what is up there. Just think about that. ... Think of the endless possibilities that this generation is going to leave as a legacy for generations of the future."
For mission manager Jennifer Trosper, who explained the roll off operation to Vice President Dick Cheney the day before, the moment called for a toast. At a 6 a.m. news conference attended by dozens of Spirit engineers and scientists, she pulled out a bottle of champagne and toasted "all the people who contributed to getting us to six wheels on Mars. Your efforts are historical. Thank you very much."
"You know how you write your to-do list for the day?" she asked. "My to-day list for (Wednesday and Thursday) was get some images from Mars, meet with the Vice President, then drive the rover onto Mars. I think as a young girl growing up on a farm in Ohio, I probably never envisioned that that might be my to-do list for today! But I am very honored and privileged to be part of this team that was able to do that."
The command ordering Spirit to roll off its lander was transmitted at 3:21:30 a.m. EST. Confirmation the rover had successfully negotiated its egress route and short drop to the surface came right at 5 a.m. as telemetry and then photographs showed Spirit's wheels in the dirt and the lander in the background (see earlier story for complete details).
"Is there life on Mars? The answer is absolutely yes. And we put it there today," said Joel Krajewski, chief engineer for impact and egress. "Thank you to this whole team for helping us do that."
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040114frontviewsmall.jpg
For Kevin Burke, the engineer responsible for the rover's final egress onto the surface, the first grainy, black-and-white image confirming the successful maneuver was worth much more than a thousand words.
"I've gotta tell you, being the last person who has the last piece of hardware between sticking on the lander and being on the surface of Mars is very, very stressful," he said, prompting laughter from his colleagues. "I'm really glad, I'm really glad that we're done."
Flight director Chris Lewicki said the successful roll off opened a new chapter in Spirit's mission.
"So now it's the time where we kind of hand over the keys," he said. "We get to drive the nice sports car but in the end, we're just valets bringing it around the front and handing the keys over to the science team."
Spirit will remain where it is, close beside the no-longer-needed lander, for three to four days. Starting late tonight, engineers will begin putting the rover's robot arm through its paces, checking out its rock-eroding abrasion tool and taking the first microscope images of the rocky soil directly in front of the rover.
Late Friday, the arm's two spectrometers will make measurements and then, if all goes well, Spirit will begin moving again late Saturday or Sunday night.
Earlier today, principal Investigator Steve Squyres briefed the flight control team on the latest exploration strategy.
"We will do, I'm sure, magnificent things with this vehicle as time goes on, but we want the first drives, the first deployment of the IDD (instrument deployment device, or robot arm), the first-time activities to be clean, straight forward, as free of risk as they can be when you're operating a robot on Mars," he said.
"Ultimately, one of the things we want to do at this site is characterize the geological diversity. That means going and finding the unusual rocks, finding the unusual soils, finding the things that are not characteristic of the typical stuff around it. But before we can do that, we've got to understand the typical stuff.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040114roving.jpg
"So the most important thing to do at the outset is to find characteristic, typical, kind of a baseline material and get a really good characterization of those things with the entire suite of instruments on the vehicle," he said. "I've likened this rover recently to a Swiss army knife, with all the different tools that it has on it. And you want to bring all those tools to bear on the key geologic materials."
Spirit also will participate in a first-of-a-kind joint project with the European Space Agency's recently arrived Mars Express orbiter.
"There's a remarkable event that's going to take place tomorrow where the Mars Express orbiter is going to go over our site and for the first time, we're going to be doing coordinated, international surface and orbit observations on the surface of another planet," Squyres said. "That's going to be really cool.
"Mars Express is going to be looking down with a very sophisticated suite of sensors at the very same time that we can look up and we can look at the terrain around us. So we'll be looking at the same patch of soil, looking through the same column of atmosphere at the same time Mars Express is going overhead. That's an opportunity not to be missed."
Looking ahead, Squyres reminded the flight control team that another rover, Opportunity, is scheduled to land on the other side of the planet at 12:05 a.m. EST on Jan. 25. To minimize the workload, Spirit will be parked over a scientifically interesting patch of soil for lengthy spectrometer measurements while the engineering community focuses on getting Opportunity safely down.
"Around the time that Opportunity lands, I don't need to tell this group that things are going to get pretty hot and heavy in here," Squyres said. "So to make it easier on everybody, for sols-22, 23 and 24, at this site, we're going to have a three-day stand down. By stand down, I don't mean we're not going to do any science activities. In fact, we're going to do a lot of science activity, But we wanted to plan three sols (martian days) that we could really plan in advance, script them ahead of time, get the whole thing ready to go ... and ease the burden on the team for that activity. That requires some significant advance thought and planning."
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040114roverarm.jpg
In an ideal world, he said, "we'd like to get a good, clean characterization of what the rocks look like without any dirt and a good, clean characterization of what the dirt looks like without any rocks. We can't do that here. We're going to end up in a little pebble field (with) all sorts of stuff mixed together. When we first put down an instrument like the APXS (Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer) on this patch, we're going to have rock and soil mixed together. It's going to be a deconvolution problem that we're not going to know how to solve until we've looked at the pure end members.
"But from the standpoint of checking out the IDD, checking out the instrument positioning system, it's a perfect place to do it. It's smooth, it's flat, there are plenty of features there for doing stereo ranging, you couldn't do any better."
And so for now, Spirit will remain right where it is. But by Saturday night or Sunday, it should be ready to roll.
"At that point, we start thinking about which rock to go to first," Squyres said. "Now we're starting to talk about the pure end members. We want to do rock first, followed by soil."
Three rocks directly in front of the rover have been identified as possible targets. Two of them, nicknamed Sushi and Sashimi, are located in a cluster or rocks known as the Wasabi region near Sleepy Hollow. The other rock, located to the left as viewed from Spirit, is known as Pyramid because of its sharply sculpted edges. Squyres said Pyramid is the leading candidate at present.
Once the initial rock observations are complete, Spirit will be positioned over undisturbed, fine-grain soil for the Opportunity stand down. A patch of pristine sand-like particles is present near Pyramid, as well as inside Sleepy Hollow.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040115rockssmall.jpg
Once that work is done, Spirit will drive up the lip of a nearby 660-foot-wide crater in hopes of finding rocks that were blasted out from below the surface. Such rocks may hold clues about whether or not the larger Gusev Crater landing site once held a vast lake.
"By going to lip of the crater, we will be able to sample material that has been thrown out," Squyres said. "There's a lot of talk on the science team about do we go down into the crater, do we not go down into the crater? Don't know, it depends on what we see when we get there, how daunting the terrain looks. We may find when we get in there it's mostly full of drift material. ... But by looking at the ejecta field, we expect to get a good handle on what materials have been excavated. Then, of course, we head for the hills."
He was referring to a cluster of hills two miles away that may be beyond Spirit's range. But scientists are eager to head that way because of the possibility the rover might find rocks that originated at higher levels.
"This is more than just 'get the scenery better,'" Squyres said. "There are several reasons to do this. One is, of course, the closer we get to it, the higher the resolution will be with our remote sensing instruments. Another is that there are a variety of materials ... that could shed off the hills and onto the flats around us. ... which may be a totally different material. And then of course, the image all of us want, is the view from part way up those hills looking back down onto the plains and where we came from."
Gio le ultime due immagini sono "disegni" vero?
Originariamente inviato da teogros
Gio le ultime due immagini sono "disegni" vero?
Si, tranne l'ultima.
Spirit robot rolls onto surface of Mars
WASHINGTON (AFP) Jan 15, 2004
The US robot probe Spirit on Thursday moved onto the surface of Mars for the first time to embark on its quest to find signs of water and past life on the Red Planet, NASA said.
The six wheeled probed rolled off its landing platform onto Martian soil for a brief -- 78 second -- but intricately prepared three meter (10-foot) excursion.
The manoeuvre had been delayed because of problems with the airbag that had cushioned the landing of Mars Expedition Rover vehicle on January 3.
But Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, triumphantly declared: "Spirit is now ready to start its mission of exploration and discovery."
Once off the platform, the robot only paused to realign its camera and transmission antenna before sending information, NASA officials said.
The first data confirming the success reached Earth an hour and 32 minutes after the order was given to start the drive. And six minutes after that, the first image of the landing vehicle taken by Spirit from the ground was at the mission headquarters. Champagne corks popped as the scientists waiting for word cheered.
"There was a great sigh of relief from me," said Kevin Burke, the lead mechanical engineer at Pasadena for the drive-off. "We are now on the surface of Mars."
The immediate objective is to analyze soil samples to detect the presence of water, which could determine if life once existed on Mars and provide future space missions a much needed source of fuel and oxygen.
NASA said that an international team of scientists at the laboratory would now decide how to examine the rocks, soil and atmosphere around Spirit.
"To our northeast, 250 meters (820 feet) to the northeast, is a crater 200 meters (655 feet) in diameter. This is an extremely attractive target," said mission scientist Steve Squyres, noting that it will "provide a window into the subsurface of Mars."
"The goal of this site is to try to find materials that will tell us whether or not Gusev crater once contained a lake and what the conditions were like in that lake," Squyres said.
Since landing on January 3, it has already beamed back colour images and other information about the terrain. NASA has been processing the images to make a high-resolution colour panorama from the most detailed images ever taken of the red planet.
The long-awaited spin on Martian soil came hours after US President George W. Bush announced that he wanted to send manned missions to the moon from 2015, and to Mars and beyond later.
The operation was conducted 12 days after the MER landed in the Gusev Crater.
Spirit's exit from the landing platform was delayed for three days because of problems with one of the airbags that cushioned the landing of the transport vehicle on Mars after a seven month journey from Earth.
NASA rotated Spirit 120 degrees to the right to stop it becoming entangled in the remains of the airbag.
A twin robotic probe, Opportunity, is set to land on another part of Mars on January 24.
Both are powered by solar energy and can move 40 meters (125 feet) each Martian day, more than during the entirety of NASA's 1997 Pathfinder mission, with its 10-kilogram (22-pound) mini-robot Sojourner.
Each robot will operate for three months on Mars.
On Friday, the European probe Mars Express will pass over Gusev crater, said Ray Arvidson, one of the US project scientists.
Mars Express may not be able to "see" Spirit, but the probe will take a series of measurements "looking down" that will prove helpful to the US mission, Arvidson said, praising the cooperative effort.
1803 GMT (1:03 p.m. EST)
At the daily Spirit rover news conference underway at JPL, mission officials are reporting that the scientific arm was successfully used during the just-completed workday. Hovering over the soil in front of the rover, the arm's Microscopic Imager examined the surface. Also, the arm's Rock Abrasion Tool was checked out.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040116arm.jpg
An image from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows its science arm deployed to examine the soil. Credit: NASA/JPL
1820 GMT (1:20 p.m. EST)
A new "overhead" view is created from Spirit photos to show the rover on the surface and the empty lander in the background.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040116overhead.jpg
Spirit's robot arm extended for detailed study of soil
January 16, 2004
The Spirit Mars rover unlimbered its robot arm today and took the first microscopic images of another planet's surface. The smooth operation of the arm during the rover's 13th day on Mars was another major milestone in a mission that, so far, has sailed through activation and checkout without any significant problems.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040116armmove1.jpg
Onboard camera view of the science arm after its deployment Friday. Credit: NASA/JPL
"Today, Spirit began its mission," said Mark Adler, the Mars Exploration Rover mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We had a good day. It was a lucky sol No. 13. About seven hours ago, we made our first use of the arm. We put the arm out in front of the rover, down hovering over the soil with the microscopic imager, and we took the first microscopic images of the surface of another planet."
As if that wasn't enough, Spirit made a series of observations in concert with a European satellite that arrived at Mars on Christmas day.
"We had the first coordinated international observations at Mars where the Spirit rover looked up and the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter looked down through the same atmosphere at the same time," Adler said. "We also had a checkout of our rock abrasion tool, and it checked out great."
Spirit rolled off its lander Thursday morning and parked about a foot away. Before the robot begins moving across the martian surface, scientists want to check out its instrument deployment device, or IDD - the rover's robot arm - and test the operation of its instruments. A rotating turret on the end of the arm carries two spectrometers, a microscopic imager and a rotating rock abrasion took, or RAT, that will be used later to burr into selected rocks, exposing pristine materials not affected by weathering.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040116armmove2.jpg
Spirit's arm moves into action for soil studies. Credit: NASA/JPL
The instruments on the arm will "do some wonderful things by taking close-up images of the soil and also figuring out the chemistry and elemental composition of the rocks and soils within Gusev Crater," said Eric Baumgartner, lead robotic arm engineer at JPL.
"But best of all, this robotic arm sits on a rover. And as we've said, a rover is made to rove. And so the rover will take this arm and this tremendous science package along with it and every time we stop, we'll take a look at a rock or a piece of soil as we traverse across Gusev Crater. We have the ability to collect in situ science, science from the surface of Mars up close and personal and reach out an investigate that surface."
Baumgartner said he was happy to report that "the instrument deployment activities that went on today were very successful."
Ken Herkenhoff, science lead for the microscopic imager, said things went so smoothly "I'm a little tongue tied. It's hard for me to describe all the emotions I'm feeling right now. I'm elated and relieved at how well things are going. As I'll show you, we've got some nice images from our first day on Mars with the microscopic imager."
The microscope is capable of resolving features as small as a human hair or a grain of table salt. Test images taken earlier today were at "the highest resolution by far we've ever seen at Mars," he said.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040116microimager.jpg
This close-up look at a patch of martian soil by Spirit's microscopic imager is the sharpest image ever taken of another planet. Credit: NASA/JPL/US Geological Survey
Overnight Friday, the IDD's Mossbauer spectrometer will literally touch the soil in front of the rover for a four-hour test run. Then, Spirit's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, or APXS, will be positioned a few millimeters above the soil for a planned 20-hour run.
Saturday night, the arm will be stowed for a 15-minute calibration of the APXS. Other IDD observations will be scheduled based on realtime planning while the rover's cameras continue the ongoing characterization of the landing site.
"We're going to have a big science weekend coming up, putting more instruments down on the soil," said project scientist Joy Crisp.
The Opportunity rover, meanwhile, continues to close in on Mars for a planned landing next Saturday night. On Friday, a trajectory correction maneuver was successfully carried out to precisely aim the spacecraft at a landing zone on the other side of Mars.
"Looks like we got a nice burn out of Opportunity," Jim Erickson, the mission manager said in a statement. "We're on target for our date on the plains of Meridiani next Saturday with a healthy spacecraft."
MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 2004
Here is the latest dispatch from Mission Control:
NASA's Spirit rover has successfully driven to its first target on Mars, a football-sized rock that scientists have dubbed Adirondack.
The Mars Exploration Rover flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plans to send commands to Spirit early Tuesday to examine Adirondack with a microscope and two instruments that reveal the composition of rocks, said JPL's Dr. Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager.
The instruments are the Mossbauer spectrometer and the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.
Spirit successfully rolled off the lander and onto the martian surface last Thursday. To make the drive to Adirondack, the rover turned 40 degrees in short arcs totaling 95 centimeters (3.1 feet). It then turned in place to face the target rock and drove four short moves straightforward totaling 1.9 meters (6.2 feet). The moves covered a span of 30 minutes on Sunday, though most of that was sitting still and taking pictures between moves. The total amount of time when Spirit was actually moving was about two minutes.
"These are the sorts of baby steps we're taking," said JPL's Dr. Eddie Tunstel, rover mobility engineer.
"The drive was designed for two purposes, one of which was to get to the rock," Tunstel said. "From the mobility engineers' standpoint, this drive was geared to testing out how we do drives on this new surface." Gathering new information such as how much the wheels slip in the martian soil will give the team confidence for more ambitious drives in future weeks and months.
"Adirondack is now about one foot (30 centimeters) in front of the front wheels," he said.
Scientists chose Adirondack to be Spirit's first target rock rather than another rock, called Sashimi, that would have been a shorter, straight-ahead drive. Rocks are time capsules containing evidence of the environmental conditions of the past, said Dr. Dave Des Marais, a rover science-team member from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "We needed to decide which of these time capsules to open."
Sashimi appears dustier than Adirondack. The dust layer could obscure good observations of the rock's surface, which may give information about chemical changes and other weathering from environmental conditions affecting the rock since its surface was fresh. Also, Sashimi is more pitted than Adirondack. That makes it a poorer candidate for the rover's rock abrasion tool, which scrapes away a rock's surface for a view of the interior evidence about environmental conditions when the rock first formed. Adirondack has a "nice, flat surface" well suited to trying out the rover's tools on their first martian rock, Des Marais said.
"The hypothesis is that this is a volcanic rock, but we'll test that hypothesis," he said.
Spirit arrived at Mars Jan. 3 (EST and PST; Jan. 4 Universal Time) after a seven-month journey. In coming weeks and months, according to plans, it will be exploring for clues in rocks and soil to decipher whether the past environment in Gusev Crater was ever watery and possibly suitable to sustain life.
Spirit's twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, will reach Mars on Jan. 25 (EST and Universal Time; 9:05 p.m., Jan. 24, PST) to begin a similar examination of a site on the opposite side of the planet from Gusev Crater.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2004
Spirit extended its arm today, reaching out and touching the rock called Adirondack.
The first activity was testing the "contact sensors" on the arm's RAT -- rock abrasion tool. The RAT could be used tomorrow to grind into the rock, but science team members are still debating whether to use the tool on this particular rock.
The arm was then used to snap microscopic images of the rock before switching to the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer instrument to study Adirondack's elemental composition. The APXS data collection will be completed shortly, allowing the Mossbauer Spectrometer to begin studying the rock overnight to look for iron-bearing minerals.
Officials report all continues to go well for Spirit and its exploration of the Gusev Crater.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2004
Mars rover science team ponders soil mysteries
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: January 20, 2004
In the first patch of soil examined in detail by instruments aboard the Mars Spirit rover, scientists were surprised to find olivine, a silicate mineral that typically forms in igneous rocks of volcanic origin. It also weathers rapidly in the presence of water, posing a mystery of sorts for the rover science team.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040120soilpatch.jpg
The yellow box in this high-resolution image from the panoramic camera on Spirit outlines the patch of soil scientists examined at Gusev Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Spirit's landing site - Gusev Crater - is believed to have harbored a vast lake in the distant past and the major goal of the rover mission is to find out if water might have existed on the martian surface long enough for life to have evolved.
Olivine was discovered earlier, elsewhere on Mars, by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft currently in orbit around the red planet. The mineral quickly weathers to form clays and iron oxides and its presence could imply an absence of long-standing water in Gusev Crater.
Spirit principal investigator Steve Squyres said he has no doubt the 100-mile-wide crater held a lake at some point in the distant past. But the tortured history of the red planet has likely turned the crater floor into a complex mixture of rock and soil types that will take time to sort through.
"Mars is not going to give up secrets easily in this place," he told reporters today. "It's going to take a long time to puzzle through this. But the key is, we've got the tools to do it."
The discovery of olivine, he said, did two things: It provided an intriguing puzzle for geologists to ponder and served as welcome proof that Spirit's full complement of scientific instruments, including a sophisticated Mossbauer spectrometer supplied by Germany, is working properly.
"What is olivine? It's a mineral, it's a silicate mineral so it has silicon, oxygen, it has iron in it, it has magnesium in it," Squyres said. "It is the kind of mineral that one finds in igneous rocks, volcanic rocks, lava, basalt.
"Now it forms in a number of different kinds of rocks, but it is a primary igneous mineral for the most part, it's not something that you form as a result of lots of chemical weathering.
"Now there are a couple of different ways to interpret this," he said. "One possibility is that this martian soil, rather than being the result of a chemical weathering process, is simply very finely ground lava, very finely ground rock. That's one possibility, that would be a surprise to me.
"Some people on my team are so surprised to see the olivine in this measurement that they don't think we're looking at the soil. It's entirely possible that a millimeter down, two millimeters down beneath those grains is solid rock. Some people on my team believe we're seeing through that fluffy stuff ... so there may be rock solid rock beneath this stuff."
It is possible volcanic activity after the hypothesized lake vanished covered over earlier lakebed deposits. Even so, Squyres is optimistic about eventually finding such rocks.
"I believe it is unavoidable that somewhere beneath our wheels are lake sediments," he said. "How far down do we have to go to get to them? I don't know. There are a couple of possibilities. One of them is this stuff has been churned up so completely by impacts that whatever was present in the way of sedimentary layering is long gone and what we're seeing at the surface is some mixture of maybe volcanic materials, windblown materials, stuff that's been churned up by the impact process. So that's one possibility.
"Another possibility is that what we're sitting on is just stuff that's been blown in by the wind, and volcanic (activity) and so forth and that the lake sediments are, in fact, buried. As I said, it's beneath our wheels somewhere, but I don't know how far down."
Luckily, a 650-foot-wide crater is within reach of Spirit, a mere 820 feet or so away from its current position. The impact that created a crater that wide could have blasted out material from as much as 150 feet below the current surface.
"As we get close to that crater and we start to see the ejecta, the stuff that was thrown out of it, we're going to be getting deeper and deeper into materials that came from far beneath our wheels," Squyres said. "I don't think there's any question, as I said, that there was once a lake at Gusev Crater. But I also said Mars is not going to give up her secrets very easily. And finding those materials is going to take the full capabilities this vehicle has to offer."
Spirit rolled off its lander and onto the floor of Gusev Crater late last week. Its first scientific target was a small patch of fine-grain soil just a few feet from the lander. The rover's instrument deployment device, or IDD - a robot arm by any other name - pointed a microscope at the soil and then two spectrometers, the Mossbauer and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, also provided by Germany. The former is designed to detect iron-bearing minerals while the latter sniffs out rock-forming elements.
The Mossbauer detected olivine and two different forms of iron while the APXS detected high concentrations of silicon and iron, along with calcium, sulfur, chlorine and nickel.
On Sunday, Spirit was ordered to drive about 9.4 feet to a football-size rock nicknamed "Adirondack" and that's where the rover remained today. The rock has been photographed by the rover's microscope and spectrometer runs will be carried out overnight.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040119adirondacksm.jpg
This true color image taken by the panoramic camera onboard the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows "Adirondack," the rover's first target rock. Scientists named the angular rock after the Adirondack mountain range in New York. The word Adirondack is Native American and is interpreted by some to mean "They of the great rocks." Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
The only instrument, or tool, aboard Spirit that has not yet been put to work is its rock abrasion tool, or "RAT," which uses a spinning rotor to bore into selected rocks to reach pristine, non-weathered material. Scientists are debating whether to use the RAT on Adirondack overnight Tuesday.
"We're starting to put together a picture of what the soil at this particular place in Gusev Crater is like," Squyres said. "There are some puzzles, there are some surprises, we have much that we still have to learn, but we're starting to put together an interesting story."
Non ci capisco na' mazza :p non e' che qualche anima pia mi spiega cos'e' quella pietra a forma di piramide :fiufiu:
Spirit's latest images from Mars
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040121lander.jpg
This image mosaic taken by the panoramic camera onboard the Spirit rover shows the rover's landing site, the Columbia Memorial Station, at Gusev Crater, Mars. This spectacular view may encapsulate Spirit's entire journey, from lander to its possible final destination toward the east hills. On its way, the rover will travel 250 meters (820 feet) northeast to a large crater approximately 200 meters (660 feet) across, the ridge of which can be seen to the left of this image. To the right are the east hills, about 3 kilometers (2 miles) away from the lander. The picture was taken on the 16th martian day, or sol, of the mission (Jan. 18/19, 2004). A portion of Spirit's solar panels appear in the foreground. Data from the panoramic camera's green, blue and infrared filters were combined to create this approximate true color image. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
Non ci capisco na' mazza :p non e' che qualche anima pia mi spiega cos'e' quella pietra a forma di piramide :fiufiu:
Si tratta della primo target indivituato dallo Science Team della missione MER presso il Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Si tratta di una roccia di origine vulcanica, soprannominata dagli scienziati Adirondack, come una celebre catena montuosa nello stato di New York.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 2004
Thunderstorms in Australia have created a slow workday on Mars.
The rainy weather at the Deep Space Network communications station in Canberra hampered the transmission of commands from Earth to the Spirit rover today.
"This is something that is kind of typical of spacecraft operations where there are days when it rains and things don't quite go the way you expect," mission manager Jennifer Trosper said. "So not a lot of science was done today, but the rover is in a very safe state. It's healthy."
The Rock Abrasion Tool grinding of "Adirondack" has been pushed back until at least tomorrow.
"When the rover woke up this morning we were actually over the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, because that was the part of Earth pointed at Mars at the time. There was lightning and there was rain and there was a thunderstorm in Canberra," Trosper told reporters at today's Spirit news conference.
"In the morning time frame -- Local Solar Time -- at the Gusev site between about 9 and 9:45 a.m. is an important time frame for us to take all of the work we did overnight, all the of sequences we built, the commands for the rover and send those. We transmit them to the rover. And then (Spirit) will start to act on those at about 9:45 Local Solar Time.
"As a result of the rain in Canberra today, the signal strengths were not able to be received by the rover. So we weren't able to transmit those commands to the rover. It received a weak signal from Earth because of the rain, so it actually didn't get all of data we wanted it to get. As a result, the rover did exactly what it was supposed to do and it continued to run yesterday's master sequence, which takes care of the rover in terms of keeping it awake during the day and continues to do communications."
A UHF communications session with the orbiting Mars Odyssey spacecraft was expected early this afternoon (Eastern Time).
"Depending on what we see in the UHF pass, it is possible we will wait to get all the data we need before we actually move on with the RAT'ing activities," Trosper said. "It is possible that we would RAT tomorrow, it is also possible that we would wait one more day to RAT to make sure we understand all of the things that executed and didn't execute on the spacecraft."
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004
Spirit mission controllers did not receive expected data from the Mars Exploration Rover during scheduled communication passes on Wednesday, NASA announced a short while ago.
"Ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them, but they did not receive expected scientific and engineering data during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day," the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement.
"Project managers have not yet determined the cause, but similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission. The team is examining a number of different scenarios, some of which would be resolved when the rover wakes up after powering down at the end of the martian day (around midday Pacific time Wednesday).
"The next opportunity to hear from the vehicle is when the rover may attempt to communicate with the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter at about 8:30 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday night (11:30 p.m. EST; 0430 GMT). A second communication opportunity may occur about two hours later during a relay pass via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. If necessary, the flight team will take additional recovery steps early Thursday morning (the morning of sol 19 on Mars) when the rover wakes up and can communicate directly with Earth."
NASA says the next update on the rover's status will be announced at the daily news conference scheduled for Thursday at 9 a.m. Pacific time (12 p.m. EST; 1700 GMT).
THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004
The Mars Spirit rover stopped beaming scientific data to flight controllers Wednesday following thunderstorms at an Australian ground station that may have interfered with the daily uplink of critical computer commands.
Spirit controllers dealing with communications issues
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: January 22, 2004 @ 1:40 a.m. EST
The Mars Spirit rover stopped beaming scientific data to flight controllers Wednesday following thunderstorms at an Australian ground station that may have interfered with the daily uplink of critical computer commands.
The rover acknowledged receiving its daily instructions, but during a subsequent overflight of the Mars Odyssey orbiter, Spirit did not transmit science data as expected. Another relay opportunity, this one with the Mars Global Surveyor, began around 11:30 p.m. EST but as of 12:30 a.m., a spokesman for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said he had been unable to reach flight controllers to confirm whether any data were received.
"Ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them, but they did not receive expected scientific and engineering data during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day," said a status report from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"Project managers have not yet determined the cause, but similar events occurred several times during the Mars Pathfinder mission. The team is examining a number of different scenarios, some of which would be resolved when the rover wakes up after powering down at the end of the martian day (around midday Pacific time Wednesday)."
It is possible the glitch has, in fact, been resolved. But JPL's public affairs office is not set up to provide overnight updates from mission control.
During a news briefing Wednesday afternoon, mission manager Jennifer Trosper said the daily transmission of commands to Spirit was affected by thunderstorms at the Deep Space Network's ground station in Canberra, Australia. Whether that had anything to do with subsequent events was not addressed in the JPL status report.
"You've heard about the rain in Spain and how that can cause problems? Well, today it was the rain in Canberra," Trosper said. "When the rover woke up this morning, we were actually over the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, because that was the part of the Earth that was pointed toward Mars at the time. There was lightning and there was rain and there was a thunderstorm in Canberra.
"The morning timeframe, local solar time at the Gusev [Crater landing] site, between about 9 a.m. and 9:45 a.m., is an important time for us to take all of the work we did overnight, all of the sequences we built, the commands to the rover, we transmit them to the rover and then it will start to act on those about 9:45 local solar time.
"As a result of the rain in Canberra today, the signal strength was not able to be received by the rover and so we weren't able to transmit those commands to the rover. It received a weak signal from Earth because of the rain and so, it actually didn't get all the data we wanted it to get. As a result, the rover did exactly what it was supposed to do, it continued to run yesterday's master sequence, which takes care of the rover in terms of keeping it awake during the day and continues to do communications."
Trosper said she expected to hear from Spirit during an afternoon overflight of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. But no data were received then, or presumably later, during an evening pass by the Mars Global Surveyor. Another opportunity was available around 1:30 a.m. EST Thursday.
"If necessary, the flight team will take additional recovery steps early Thursday morning (the morning of sol 19 on Mars) when the rover wakes up and can communicate directly with Earth," the status report said.
The next Spirit news conference is planned for noon EST Thursday.
'Serious Anomaly' Silences Mars Spirit Rover
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 12:40 pm ET
21 January 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- Mars Rover officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Thursday that "a serious anomaly" occurred onboard the robot Spirit Wednesday stopping the transmission of direct data for almost 24 hours.
Peter Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, began Thursday's press conference by telling reporters that they had not received contact from Spirit, either through relays from the Mars Global Surveyor or the Mars Odyssey spacecraft now orbiting the red planet.
However, Jennifer Trosper, mission manager of Surface Operations, interrupted the press briefing to announch that a signal had been recieved from the rover via its direct link to Earth. That said, no direct data had yet to be received from the robotic geologist.
Theisinger explained that the situation remains serious and that "no one single fault ... that we can conceive of" can explain this anamoly.
A communiqué released late afternoon Wednesday from JPL indicated an unresolved issue with the status of the Spirit Mars rover.
According to the statement, ground controllers were able to send commands to the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them.
However, ground controllers here did not receive expected scientific and engineering data from Spirit during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that martian day.
Guybrush_threepwood
22-01-2004, 19:55
:(
ominiverdi
22-01-2004, 19:59
SPIRIT UPDATE: - Jan 22, 2004, 10:35 am PST
The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit radioed a beep Thursday morning confirming that it had received a transmission from Earth. Still, it has not returned any data since early Wednesday. Flight-team engineers for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project are working to diagnose the cause of communications difficulties.
Spirit rover suffers 'serious anomaly'
After a day of troubleshooting, engineers have not yet been able to restore communications with the Spirit rover, which stopped beaming back science and engineering data Wednesday. Project manager Pete Theisinger at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., described the situation as "a very serious anomaly," but said it was too soon to say what might be causing the problem, whether it might be potentially fatal or whether the spacecraft can be restored to normal operation.
"The team has been meeting this morning and through the night working on a set of postulated fault scenarios," Theisinger said. "There is no one single fault that explains all the observables."
He said engineers planned to regroup later this evening to continue troubleshooting and to determine a plan of action.
The loss of contact came at one of the worst possible times for engineers at JPL. An identical rover, named Opportunity, is on target to enter the martian atmosphere around midnight Saturday. But Theisinger said Spirit's troubleshooting would not interfere with Opportunity's descent. The second lander is on target and in good health. Managers are still debating whether to simply stand down on Spirit operations until after Opportunity makes it to the surface.
In the meantime, tension mounted.
"If this problem on Spirit is somehow a software corruption issue, or memory corruption issue that's reflecting itself in software, and there's not a serious power fault, for example, then I think Spirit can go for quite a long time and we can pick up the pieces again," Theisinger said. "But if on the other hand it's had some kind of major power fault ... it may be more difficult to recover from that."
A rainstorm in Australia yesterday interfered with commands being uplinked to Spirit. At that time, the spacecraft sent a short signal indicating it had received the instructions but engineers said the strength of the uplink was much lower than desired and that not all of the commands got through.
The rover's electronic brain is programmed to ignore incomplete commands and engineers thought Spirit would simply stand by, executing previous instructions before calling Earth with daily downlinks of science and engineering data and awaiting further instructions.[/b]
Had the rover been operating properly, that would have happened during afternoon and evening overflights by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters, which are being used as communications satellites for the Mars rover mission.
No data was received during the first overflight. A short signal was received late Wednesday during a Global Surveyor relay pass, but it contained no data. Nothing was heard from Spirit during subsequent passes, either through satellite relay or through programmed direct-to-Earth transmissions using the rover's high-gain antenna.
"There were beeps we heard yesterday afternoon on Mars and then we got the Mars Global Surveyor signal that indicated it heard from the (rover's) UHF link," said Richard Cook, a senior rover manager. "It was not what we expected. We saw a signal, meaning the rover's radio was on, but there wasn't data present. ... The computer wasn't sending information over to it. But we did at least see a signal."
This morning, flight controllers sent a low-data-rate signal to Spirit on the assumption the computer believed it had run into a problem and had loaded fault-protection routines. What may have been a brief response was received. If that data turn out to be valid, it would indicate Spirit is still alive, giving engineers hope they might be able to recover from whatever has gone wrong.
"That would tell us the spacecraft thinks it's on the fault side of the tree somehow, for some reason, that would mean we have positive power, some element of the software is working. ... But, you know, we need to confirm that. So don't take that further than it deserves to go right now."
'Serious Anomaly' Silences Mars Spirit Rover
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 02:11 pm ET
22 January 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- Mars Rover officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Thursday that "a serious anomaly" occurred onboard the robot Spirit Wednesday, stopping the transmission of direct data for almost 24 hours.
Peter Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, began Thursday's press conference by telling reporters that they had not received contact from Spirit, either through relays from the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor or Mars Odyssey spacecraft.
However, Jennifer Trosper, mission manager of surface operations, interrupted the press briefing to announce that a signal had been received from the rover via its direct link to Earth. That said, no direct data had yet to be received from the robotic geologist.
Theisinger explained that the situation remains serious and that "no one single fault ... that we can conceive of" can explain this anomaly.
Fault mode
This morning’s beep from Spirit was welcomed news. That beep confirms that the robot had received a transmission from Earth. Still, it has not returned any data since early Wednesday.
Flight-team engineers for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project are working to diagnose the cause of communications difficulties.
Spirit appears to be in what's known as "fault mode," said Theisinger, given that the robot has beeped back to ground controllers. That is good news for perplexed engineers.
"So at least some element of Spirit’s software that is necessary to process that command and take action…took action," Theisinger said.
However, the robot is not transmitting significant data -- enough information for troubleshooting -- that the engineers can use to fully determine what has happened.
Communication chain
Spirit can communicate with Earth directly via an onboard "X-band system," or it can beam signals up to either of NASA's two orbiting spacecraft using a UHF antenna. There are four chances each day to reach the orbiters.
NASA receives signals from spacecraft through its Deep Space Network (DSN) of tracking stations in Australia, Spain and California.
Direct Mars-to-Earth communications are reserved for critical Spirit mission data, such as rover health and engineering. It takes about 10 minutes for a radio message, moving at the speed of light, to travel between planets. Signals transmitted to the orbiters can be delayed as little as 90 minutes to as long as 24 hours because of the way each orbiter works and communicates with Earth.
http://space.com/images/h_dsn_canberra_02a.jpg
NASA's Deep Space Network antennas in Canberra, Australia, including the 70- and 34-meter dishes. CREDIT: NASA/JPL
There are several upcoming communication periods with Spirit via the two NASA Mars orbiting spacecraft now circling the red planet. Anxious engineers here hope to re-establish solid data contact with Spirit.
Today, a Mars Global Surveyor relay session with Spirit is at 10:10 p.m. (EST). A follow-on Odyssey relay chat session with the rover will take place overnight at 1:35 a.m. EST. On Friday, a wake-up call to Spirit is scheduled to be beamed from Earth at 6:00 a.m. EST.
Power positive
Getting tones from Spirit means a number of important things on the rover are in working order. Spirit is in what engineers call "power positive mode" and is maintaining proper temperatures in the frigid air of Mars. It continues to generate power from the Sun with its solar panels, said deputy project manager Richard Cook.
The command from Earth requested Spirit to react if it did hear a signal. That response came in the form of a beep, lasting for five minutes. It heard the command and acted upon it.
The rover was operating in the day when the problem cropped up. Engineers always worry about the issue of "thermal cycling" -- hardware that must survive repeated day-to-night temperature swings.
Theisinger told SPACE.com that this concern can’t be discounted. "Yes something could break…something could fail." But the likelihood of that being the problem is now low on the list of probabilities, he said.
Wednesday hump
A communiqué released late afternoon Wednesday from JPL indicated an unresolved issue with the status of the rover.
According to the statement, ground controllers were able to send commands to Spirit early Wednesday and received a simple signal acknowledging that the rover heard them.
However, ground controllers here did not receive expected scientific and engineering data from Spirit during scheduled communication passes during the rest of that Martian day.
Officials said weather problems Wednesday at the Australian Deep Space Network receiver, which disrupted communicatins, were not related to Spirit's current quietude.
Two weeks and counting ...
The rover landed Jan. 3 and is slated for a three-month mission.
Spirit had been gradually moving away from its landing pad, in the Gusev crater near the Martian equator. It has already sent back dozens of photographs and had begun exploring the soil of the red planet and digging into a rock named Adirondack.
Spirit's twin, called Opportunity, is on target for landing on the opposite side of Mars Saturday night. The combined mission, designed examine Martian geology and also determine if Mars once had large bodies of standing water, carries an $820 million price tag.
Staying alive
Those who operate spacecraft are used to glitches.
"I’ve never been on a flight project that didn’t have one of these. Every single one that I’ve been involved in has had an event like this, or worse than this," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the overall Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program. Squyres works at Cornell University, which is collaborating with NASA on the project.
Even highly successful spacecraft missions, like Voyager and Magellan, have had technical woes that were eventually sorted out, Squyres said.
"The vehicle is up there. It is talking to us. It’s definitely responding to things that we do. So a lot of stuff is working right on this spacecraft," Squyres told SPACE.com. "I’ve got a huge amount of confidence in this team. This vehicle is very, very good at keeping itself alive."
Squyres said that his expectation is that the Spirit team will pull through this and have a long and successful mission. "But I might not sleep as well for the next few nights as I would have otherwise," he said.
:spam:
non per dire ma... un po' di italiano? :cry:
Non ci capisco una mazza!!!
Insomma lo spirit e' MORTO !! :cry: non risponde + ! Speriamo x domani mattina marziana ! :muro: :mc:
Originariamente inviato da teogros
:spam:
non per dire ma... un po' di italiano? :cry:
Non ci capisco una mazza!!!
SPAM???? Solo perchè è in inglese? E' tutto OT, e mi spiace ma non ho ne voglia ne tempo di tradurre tutti gli articoli...
jumpermax
22-01-2004, 22:32
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
Insomma lo spirit e' MORTO !! :cry: non risponde + ! Speriamo x domani mattina marziana ! :muro: :mc:
non è morto, ha trasmesso un bip per dire che c'è ancora ma non manda dati. Sono pip acidi cmq... :(
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
Insomma lo spirit e' MORTO !! :cry: non risponde + ! Speriamo x domani mattina marziana ! :muro: :mc:
Veramente ha risposto. Il 'beep' ricevuto dall'Odyssey indica che il Spirit ha riconosciuto di essere in "fault mode" e che il problema è serio (può essere di origine hardware o, più facilmente, software).
jumpermax
22-01-2004, 22:39
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Veramente ha risposto. Il 'beep' ricevuto dall'Odyssey indica che il Spirit ha riconosciuto di essere in "fault mode" e che il problema è serio (può essere di origine hardware o, più facilmente, software).
il problema grosso è se i supporti vitali sono ancora operativi. Basta una notte al freddo e ce lo giochiamo...
ominiverdi
22-01-2004, 22:49
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Veramente ha risposto. Il 'beep' ricevuto dall'Odyssey indica che il Spirit ha riconosciuto di essere in "fault mode" e che il problema è serio (può essere di origine hardware o, più facilmente, software ).
oddio spero non gli abbiano installato windows, altrimenti si che il problema e' serio :eek: :asd:
Originariamente inviato da ominiverdi
oddio spero non gli abbiano installato windows, altrimenti si che il problema e' serio :eek: :asd:
:rotfl: :rotfl:
Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
il problema grosso è se i supporti vitali sono ancora operativi. Basta una notte al freddo e ce lo giochiamo...
No, è la cosa più difficile che possa accadere, anche se non è impossibile... tutto l'hardware più importante e vitale e il computer sono all'interno di uno speciale box termocontrollato (il WEB, Warm Electronics Box) sotto i pannelli solari, e costituisce il cuore del rover. Gli ultimi dati dalla telemetria indicano il perfetto stato di tutto l'hardware. E' anche per questo che si pensa ad un guasto del software o, nel caso dell'hardware, di parte della memoria.
Anche lo stato di carica delle batterie potrebbre centrare... forse non è stata effettuata la completa ricarica la notte del Sol 18, magari a causa dei pannelli sporchi di sabbia (il Gusev Crater è una zona spazzata da fortissime bufere di sabbia).
jumpermax
22-01-2004, 23:16
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
No, è la cosa più difficile che possa accadere, anche se non è impossibile... tutto l'hardware più importante e vitale e il computer sono allinterno di uno speciale box termocontrollato (il WEB, Warm Electronics Box) sotto i pannelli solari, e costituisce il cuore del rover. Gli ultimi dati dalla telemetria indicano il perfetto stato di tutto l'hardware. E' anche per questo che si pensa ad un guasto del software o, nel caso dell'hardware, di parte della memoria.
Anche lo stato di carica delle batterie potrebbre centrare... forse non è stata effettuata la completa ricarica la notte del Sol 18, magari a causa dei pannelli sporchi di sabbia (il Gusev Crater è una zona spazzata da fortissime bufere di sabbia).
ah cappero ma in caso di pannelli sporchi credo ci sia più poco da fare ormai... spirit non ha modo di pulirli no?
Cmq credo che le prossime missioni di superficie dovranno per forza di cose essere alimentate ad energia nucleare, le celle solari sono un punto critico, vanno bene per le sonde in orbita ma non per il pianeta...
Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
ah cappero ma in caso di pannelli sporchi credo ci sia più poco da fare ormai... spirit non ha modo di pulirli no?
beh, è difficile che sia successo ora, anche perchè il cambio di stagione si farà sentire solo verso la fine della missione, in marzo. Ad ogni modo, come il vento può alzare la polvere, la può anche togliere, e questo non è poco.
Cmq credo che le prossime missioni di superficie dovranno per forza di cose essere alimentate ad energia nucleare, le celle solari sono un punto critico, vanno bene per le sonde in orbita ma non per il pianeta...
il problemma è che per generare energia non basta un motore a radioisotopi o simile, infatti non si deve spingere una navetta, ma fornire energia elettrica, e per questo, se si vuole usare energia nucleare, richiede per forza un meccanismo di reazione... il problema quindi è il peso e il costo.
jumpermax
22-01-2004, 23:58
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
il problemma è che per generare energia non basta un motore a radioisotopi o simile, infatti non si deve spingere una navetta, ma fornire energia elettrica, e per questo, se si vuole usare energia nucleare, richiede per forza un meccanismo di reazione... il problema quindi è il peso e il costo.
un sistema come quello di Cassini non andrebbe bene quindi?
Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
un sistema come quello di Cassini non andrebbe bene quindi?
no, occorrerebbero dei convertitori termoelettrici molto più grandi (e pesanti) per generare almeno 100 W di energia al giorno (i pannelli di Spirit ne producono circa 140)...
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
SPAM???? Solo perchè è in inglese? E' tutto OT, e mi spiace ma non ho ne voglia ne tempo di tradurre tutti gli articoli...
Era una battuta, non volevo chiederti di tradurre! ;)
Comunque come sta la situazione? Il robot risponde al bip ma non va niente? 'mazza che sfiga...
Originariamente inviato da teogros
Comunque come sta la situazione?
Nessun contatto con Spirit da ieri mattina.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2004
0545 GMT (12:45 a.m. EST)
Mars Global Surveyor did not detect a signal from the Spirit rover during an orbit over the landing site earlier tonight. However, controllers didn't expect Spirit would communicate with the orbiting spacecraft if the rover is truly in its "safe-mode" as engineers suspect.
Mission Control is gearing up to make direct Earth-to-Mars contact with the rover after the Sun rises at the Gusev Crater. Efforts are expected to begin around 3 a.m. Pacific time (6 a.m. EST; 1100 GMT) this morning. Using a communications channel that successfully received a beeping reply from the rover on Thursday, engineers hope they can get Spirit to transmit some data about its health.
Meanwhile, NASA's Mars scientist Jim Garvin appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman tonight, telling the CBS audience about exploration of the Red Planet and showing off pictures taken by Spirit.
"But the thing is busted now, isn't it?" Dave quipped.
"Well not exactly, no," Jim replied.
"You haven't heard from it in about a day, right?" Dave asked.
"We did hear from it (on Thursday). We've gotten a heart beat, and the rover now is in a special mode where it is protecting itself from the extremely cold environment on Mars. We're now communicating with it at very-low rate to tell it how to wake itself back up," Jim explained.
"I heard it was just transmitting, like Paul said, gibberish. You were getting back gibberish and were concerned there were problems with the hardware or software on the rover itself," Dave said.
"Well Dave, we have the best women and men trying to figure out what state it is in now. But we know it called home, we have this little heart beat -- beep, beep, beep -- and now we are going to try to diagnose the problem while we get ready for Opportunity to land early Sunday morning," Jim responded.
"So I guess calling AAA is out of the question?" Dave joked.
"That is true," Jim confirmed!
Silent Night: Spirit Fails to Respond to Mission Control
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 11:40 pm ET
22 January 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- Ground controllers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) continue to troubleshoot what has happened onboard the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover sitting in Gusev Crater.
A communications relay session using NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor at 10:10 p.m. EST today resulted in no contact with Spirit.
The robot has suffered a still unidentified problem, preventing it from transmitting any data since early Wednesday. Engineers continue to underscore hope of recovering the robot, returning it to full-time operation. However, they also caution that the situation remains serious.
PASADENA, Calif. -- Ground controllers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) continue to troubleshoot what has happened onboard the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover sitting in Gusev Crater.
A communications relay session using NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor at 10:10 p.m. EST today resulted in no contact with Spirit.
The robot has suffered a still unidentified problem, preventing it from transmitting any data since early Wednesday. Engineers continue to underscore hope of recovering the robot, returning it to full-time operation. However, they also caution that the situation remains serious.
A signal was sent from Earth to Mars early this morning, with Spirit responding by radioing back a simple tone. That boosted hope that the robotic craft is still in overall good health, but has put itself into safe mode.
Engineers here have suggested two irksome prospects that have crippled Spirit: Corruption of flight software or corruption of computer memory.
Either of those glitches could leave Spirit's power supply healthy and allow adequate time for recovering control of the rover.
Another spacecraft circling the red planet, NASA’s Mars Odyssey will perform a communications relay session with Spirit later tonight, slated for 1:35 a.m. EST.
Efforts to resume direct communications between Spirit and antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network will resume after the rover's expected wake-up at about 3 a.m. PST Friday.
Earlier today, JPL Director, Charles Elachi, advised that everyone "stay calm, thoughtful and careful" and avoid making hasty decisions. "Sometimes you can do more harm than good by reacting too quickly," Elachi said.
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Nessun contatto con Spirit da ieri mattina.
:cry:
Esa
C'è acqua su Marte al Polo Sud
Marte: la sonda europea
rileva presenza di ghiaccio
ARMSTADT (Germania) - C'è ghiaccio su Marte. Secondo Vittorio Formisano, dell'Agenzia spaziale europea, la sonda Mars Express, in orbita intorno al pianeta rosso, ha rilevato la presenza di acqua ghiacciata nel polo sud. Dopo aver avuto problemi tecnici, la sonda europea aveva inziato a trasmettere le prime immagini dal pianeta il 19 gennaio.
Originariamente inviato da alex10
Marte: la sonda europea
rileva presenza di ghiaccio
ARMSTADT (Germania) - C'è ghiaccio su Marte. Secondo Vittorio Formisano, dell'Agenzia spaziale europea, la sonda Mars Express, in orbita intorno al pianeta rosso, ha rilevato la presenza di acqua ghiacciata nel polo sud. Dopo aver avuto problemi tecnici, la sonda europea aveva inziato a trasmettere le prime immagini dal pianeta il 19 gennaio.
Sarà vero? Mi pare un po' come la corsa all'oro...
Dopo che s'è scassato beagle e forse spirit non possiamo che affidarci ai satelliti ...... e sì mi sà di corsa all'oro ;)
Originariamente inviato da alex10
Dopo che s'è scassato beagle e forse spirit non possiamo che affidarci ai satelliti ...... e sì mi sà di corsa all'oro ;)
Boh... speriamo che Opportunity non faccia la fine del fratello!
Schummacherr
23-01-2004, 11:40
Ho visto proprio ora il servizio al tg5..dicono che MarsExpress ha rilevato idrogeno negli strati sotterranei del polo sud :) mah...chissà... :p :p
Originariamente inviato da alex10
Esa
C'è acqua su Marte al Polo Sud
http://forum.hwupgrade.it/showthread.php?s=&postid=3344749#post3344749
Originariamente inviato da Schummacherr
Ho visto proprio ora il servizio al tg5..dicono che MarsExpress ha rilevato idrogeno negli strati sotterranei del polo sud :) mah...chissà... :p :p
Ma come ha fatto? :confused:
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
http://forum.hwupgrade.it/showthread.php?s=&postid=3344749#post3344749
L'ho scritto prima io ....... :D :ops2: :ops2:
Schummacherr
23-01-2004, 11:55
Originariamente inviato da teogros
Ma come ha fatto? :confused:
hanno detto il nome dell'attrezzo ke ha usato..ma era qualcosa di impronunciabile e non lo ricordo :D :D :muro:
Originariamente inviato da Schummacherr
hanno detto il nome dell'attrezzo ke ha usato..ma era qualcosa di impronunciabile e non lo ricordo :D :D :muro:
Capisco! Grazie...
Originariamente inviato da Schummacherr
hanno detto il nome dell'attrezzo ke ha usato..ma era qualcosa di impronunciabile e non lo ricordo :D :D :muro:
L'hanno visto tramite l'OMEGA e l'FPS, in particolare tramite gli spettrometri ad infrarossi.
Ma i risultati più importanti verranno dal radar MARSIS in aprile...
Originariamente inviato da alex10
L'ho scritto prima io ....... :D :ops2: :ops2:
Era per dire di continuare di là...
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
L'hanno visto tramite l'OMEGA e l'FPS, in particolare tramite gli spettrometri ad infrarossi.
Ma i risultati più importanti verranno dal radar MARSIS in aprile...
'mazza che cultura! :p
Comunque anche se ci fosse effettivamente acqua penso che un suo "utilizzo" a breve sia impossibile! E' più che altro una scoperta "fine a se stessa", almeno per il momento!
Originariamente inviato da teogros
Comunque anche se ci fosse effettivamente acqua penso che un suo "utilizzo" a breve sia impossibile! E' più che altro una scoperta "fine a se stessa", almeno per il momento!
No no, è di vitale importanza... la presenza di acqua in abbondanza sul pianeta, e magari anche allo stato liquido, permetterebbe di velocizzare di molto i tempi per eventuali missioni su marte, perchè renderebbe possibile evitare di progettare costose soluzioni per la produzione di energia e per la vita degli astronauti sul pianeta.
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
No no, è di vitale importanza... la presenza di acqua in abbondanza sul pianeta, e magari anche allo stato liquido, permetterebbe di velocizzare di molto i tempi per eventuali missioni su marte, perchè renderebbe possibile evitare di progettare costose soluzioni per la produzione di energia e per la vita degli astronauti sul pianeta.
Sinceramente mi sembra ancora fantascienza...ma spero vivamente di sbagliare! :)
Originariamente inviato da teogros
Sinceramente mi sembra ancora fantascienza...ma spero vivamente di sbagliare! :)
Beh non è proprio fantascienza dato che ci sono programmi ben delineati in questo senso, cmq che sia tra 30 anni o 100, l'acqua rimane fondamentale per ridurre i costi di una missione umana sul pianeta rosso.
Se è un problema software non vorrei essere nei panni di chi l'ha scritto o testato...
Ma maremma porcella, mandi una sonda su Marte, ma progetta almeno un paio di sistemi autonomi di cui uno di emergenza che entra in funzione quando ci sono problemi con l'altro in maniera tale da permettere comunque delle comunicazioni e qualche possibilità di risolvere il problema se fosse solo software... ahhh... devo laurearmi in fretta e andare a sistemare 'ste cose, senza di me non riescono a fare nulla... :muro: :sofico:
E tu che ne sai se non c'e' un S.O. alternativo !
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
E tu che ne sai se non c'e' un S.O. alternativo !
Se la memoria ha un problema, con l'OS operativo i marziani possono pulircisi il sedere... io dico proprio un piccolo sistema indipendente, con l'unico scopo di mantenere le comunicazioni minime inviando dati per trovare il problema e permettere, per esempio, l'upload di una nuova programmazione. Non dovendo gestire esperimenti, movimenti, etc, dovrebbe risultare piccolo.
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Se la memoria ha un problema, con l'OS operativo i marziani possono pulircisi il sedere... io dico proprio un piccolo sistema indipendente, con l'unico scopo di mantenere le comunicazioni minime inviando dati per trovare il problema e permettere, per esempio, l'upload di una nuova programmazione. Non dovendo gestire esperimenti, movimenti, etc, dovrebbe risultare piccolo.
Saranno anche brocchi ma penso proprio che abbiano provveduto a qualcosa del genere! ;)
Originariamente inviato da teogros
Saranno anche brocchi ma penso proprio che abbiano provveduto a qualcosa del genere! ;)
Dopo che hanno perso la sonda perchè hanno fatto i conti senza convertire le unità di misura mi aspetto di tutto :D
Però non so... se l'avessero pensato, perchè la trasmittente è accesa e riceve e trasmette il segnale di "ok", mentre tutto il resto tace?
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Dopo che hanno perso la sonda perchè hanno fatto i conti senza convertire le unità di misura mi aspetto di tutto :D
Però non so... se l'avessero pensato, perchè la trasmittente è accesa e riceve e trasmette il segnale di "ok", mentre tutto il resto tace?
Boh...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
perchè la trasmittente è accesa e riceve e trasmette il segnale di "ok", mentre tutto il resto tace?
questo indica che il rover è funzionante per quanto riguarda l'energia e il resto dell'hardware... e indica che il computer (REM, Rover Electronic Module) pensa che vi sia un problema grave la cui natura è ancora da capire (se di origine software o hardware). In questo caso il computer è programmato per entrare in fault-mode ed evitare spreco di energia. In questo modo la radio viene normalmente attivata durante tutto il giorno marziano e vengono inviati una serie di bit (0 e 1) random, per indicare all'orbiter (l'Odyssey o MSG) che è in fault-mode.
A questo punto vengono messe in pratica una serie di misure (contingency measures) ridontanti, che infatti esistono, per comandare forzatamente il rover a "risvegliarsi" e ordinare al computer di inviare la telemetria e quindi poter capire il tipo di problema. Se questo succede, è possibile al 99% di resettare il computer e riavviare il rover in modo normale.
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
questo indica che il rover è funzionante per quanto riguarda l'energia e il resto dell'hardware... e indica che il computer (REM, Rover Electronic Module) pensa che vi sia un problema grave la qui natura è ancora da capire (se di origine software o hardware). In questo caso il computer è programmato per entrare in fault-mode ed evitare spreco di energia. In questo modo la radio viene normalmente attivata durante tutto il giorno marziano e vengono inviati una serie di bit (0 e 1) random, per indicare all'orbiter (l'Odyssey o MSG) che è in fault-mode.
A questo punto vengono messe in pratica una serie di misure (contingency measures) ridontanti, che infatti esistono, per comandare forzatamente il rover a "risvegliarsi" e ordinare al computer di inviare la telemetria e quindi poter capire il tipo di problema. Se questo succede, è possibile al 99% di resettare il computer e riavviare il rover in modo normale.
ma l'hai progettato te? Ne sai davvero tanto di questa roba!
Originariamente inviato da teogros
ma l'hai progettato te?
Magari... no, sono solo appassionato.
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Magari... no, sono solo appassionato.
Complimenti!
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Era per dire di continuare di là...
Ma certo figurati è che non avevo visto quello specifico di Mars Express ;)
Ha ripreso a funzionare !!!
Originariamente inviato da alex10
Ha ripreso a funzionare !!!
Ohe? Dove l'hai letto? Link link!
Originariamente inviato da alex10
Ha ripreso a funzionare !!!
Visto che anche Windows funziona?! :D :D :sofico: :mc:
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Ohe? Dove l'hai letto? Link link!
SPIRIT UPDATE: - Jan 23, 2004, 5:45 am PST
NASA's Spirit rover communicated with Earth in a signal detected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain, at 12:34 Universal Time (4:34 a.m. PST) this morning.
The transmissions came during a communication window about 90 minutes after Spirit woke up for the morning on Mars. The signal lasted for 10 minutes at a data rate of 10 bits per second.
Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plan to send commands to Spirit seeking additional data from the spacecraft during the subsequent few hours.
Ah ma non hanno risolto allora, sono solo i messaggi automatici...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Ah ma non hanno risolto allora, sono solo i messaggi automatici...
Così parrebbe... :(
Spirit rover communicates with Earth again
WASHINGTON (AFP) Jan 23, 2004
The US Spirit Mars rover communicated with Earth for 10 minutes overnight, one day after suffering a serious breakdown that cut off reception, NASA said Friday.
Data sent by the rover was captured by one of the antennas of the international Deep Space Network near Madrid, Spain at 1234 GMT, NASA said.
The communications came about 90 minutes after the start of the Martian day at a transmission speed of 10 bits per second, which is considered very weak.
NASA engineers were to send Spirit several commands in the coming hours hoping to get some information about its condition and determine the source of its communication trouble.
Specialists first noticed trouble with the rover when communications were interrupted on Wednesday, the rover's 19th day on the surface of the red planet.
Darmstadt, 23 gen 2004 - 15:19
http://www.kataweb.it/news/detail.jsp?idCategory=2224&idContent=592895
Marte, Spirit si rifà vivo.
Il robot americano Spirit, in silenzio da mercoledì, si è rifatto vivo oggi per una decina di minuti. I suoi segnali sono stati captati da un rete di rilevamenteo che si trova in Spagna. (red)
Originariamente inviato da ni.jo
Darmstadt, 23 gen 2004 - 15:19
http://www.kataweb.it/news/detail.jsp?idCategory=2224&idContent=592895
Marte, Spirit si rifà vivo.
Il robot americano Spirit, in silenzio da mercoledì, si è rifatto vivo oggi per una decina di minuti. I suoi segnali sono stati captati da un rete di rilevamenteo che si trova in Spagna. (red)
Non è una rete di rilevamento, è una delle tre principali stazioni che compongono la Deep Space Network (situate a circa 120° di angolazione orbitale ciascuna).
Ad ogni modo ancora nulla di interessante... il rover sta mandando la solita sequenza di bit random sul canale UHF in bassa frequenza tramite i due orbiter NASA.
Spirit Rover Sending Data Again, Status Unclear
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 10:10 am ET
23 January 2004
NASA's Spirit rover communicated with ground controllers early this morning, sending back at first data for 10 minutes and giving hope that normal operations might resume.
The rover had gone mostly silent Wednesday, sending back only beeps to acknowledge it was alive. For unknown reasons, Spirit could not transmit data.
NASA officials said in a statement this morning they had received a signal at the agency's Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain at 7:34 a.m. ET.
Spirit communicated for 10 minutes initially and then later for 20 minutes more, for a total of a half-hour of data transmission.
The transmissions arrived during 90-minute window of opportunity after the rover woke in the Martian morning. Data was transmitted at a rate of 10 bits per second.
Officials did not indicate whether that was normal or how optimistic they are based on the transmission. Mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plan to send commands to Spirit seeking additional data today.
Engineers worked late into Thursday night trying unsuccessfully to establish normal communications with Spirit. Efforts to relay signals using NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor at 10:10 p.m. ET resulted in no contact, however. After a signal had been sent to the rover Thursday morning, Spirit replied with a simple tone but would not send data.
Officials yesterday expressed serious concern for the health of the rover but remained optimistic. If the problem involved hardware, they said, the situation would be grave. A software problem, they said, might be fixable -- fresh commands and even new software patches can be possibly uploaded to Spirit if it is in listening mode.
Indications Thursday were that the craft's batteries were in good shape, that its temperature was being properly maintained, and that it was indeed listening.
Scientists said Spirit's flight software or computer memory might have become corrupted. Either glitch could leave the robot's power supply healthy and allow adequate time for recovering control of the rover.
Spirit landed on Jan. 3 and is slated to scour the Gusev crater, near Mars' equator, for three months. Its twin, Opportunity, is due to land Saturday. The combined mission cost is $820 million.
Earlier Thursday, JPL Director, Charles Elachi, advised that everyone "stay calm, thoughtful and careful" and avoid making hasty decisions. "Sometimes you can do more harm than good by reacting too quickly," Elachi said.
Spirit can communicate with Earth directly via an onboard "X-band system," or it can beam signals up to either of NASA's two orbiting spacecraft using a UHF antenna. There are four chances each day to reach the orbiters.
NASA receives signals from spacecraft through its Deep Space Network (DSN) of tracking stations in Australia, Spain and California.
Direct Mars-to-Earth communications are reserved for critical Spirit mission data, such as rover health and engineering. It takes about 10 minutes for a radio message, moving at the speed of light, to travel between planets. Signals transmitted to the orbiters can be delayed as little as 90 minutes to as long as 24 hours because of the way each orbiter works and communicates with Earth.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2004
1449 GMT (9:49 a.m. EST)
NASA's Deep Space Network communications station near Madrid, Spain, received a signal from the Spirit rover at 7:34 a.m. EST (1234 GMT) today, officials report.
"The transmissions came during a communication window about 90 minutes after Spirit woke up for the morning on Mars. The signal lasted for 10 minutes at a data rate of 10 bits per second," the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced.
Mission Control plans to issue commands to Spirit seeking additional data from the spacecraft during the subsequent few hours.
A news conference is planned for 1 p.m. EST today.
1512 GMT (10:12 a.m. EST)
Mission Control has received actual data from Mars Exploration Rover Spirit after commanding the craft to transmit the information.
"The spacecraft sent limited data in a proper response to a ground command, and we're planning for commanding further communication sessions later today," said project manager Pete Theisinger.
Officials have not yet said what the data indicated or other details.
The data was received in a communication session that began at 8:26 a.m. EST (1326 GMT) and lasted 20 minutes at a data rate of 120 bits per second.
JPL says it sent the command to the rover at 8:02 a.m. EST (1302 GMT) via the Deep Space Network complex in Spain telling Spirit to begin transmitting.
Spirit stopped sending scientific and engineering health data on Wednesday, then missed several scheduled communications sessions. A heart beat "beep" was received yesterday confirming at Spirit could hear Earth and responded with the simple tone. A signal was also detected earlier this morning, prior to the retrieval of data.
Schummacherr
23-01-2004, 15:46
chissà cosa s'è bevuto sto spirit :asd: :asd:
Non è mica piccolo comunque 'sto gingillo...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/movies/mer_EgressTestJan13.mpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/images/mer_EgressTestJan13_th120.jpg
ops, doppio, scusate, il forum stava andando peggio dello Spirit :D
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Non è mica piccolo comunque 'sto gingillo...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/movies/mer_EgressTestJan13.mpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/images/mer_EgressTestJan13_th120.jpg
infatti pensa che pesa 186 kg, contro i miseri 10,6 kg di Sojourner (il rover nella missione Mars Pathfinder)...
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
infatti pensa che pesa 186 kg, contro i miseri 10,6 kg di Sojourner (il rover nella missione Mars Pathfinder)...
Quasi 20 volte tanto!
1700 GMT (12:00 p.m. EST)
Teams are still analyzing the information received from the Spirit rover this morning, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory says. A news conference with project officials to provide a status report on recovery operations is scheduled for 1 p.m. EST today.
Spirit News Briefing, alle 10:00 am PST (1 pm EST, 19 ora locale italiana) su NASA TV. (http://www.nasa.gov/ram/35037main_portal.ram)
1807 GMT (1:07 p.m. EST)
At the news conference underway right now, project manager Pete Theisinger says that the data received from Spirit this morning indicates that the rover's flight software is "not behaving normally."
An anomaly team has been formed to continue gathering data from the rover and narrow the possible causes of the situation.
Theisinger says the rover should be able to sustain its health for an indefinite amount of time. He also noted that restoring Spirit to normal operations could take a couple of weeks.
Oaichehai
23-01-2004, 21:33
traduzione?
1807 GMT (1:07 p.m. EST)
alla conferenza stampa in corso ora il manager del progetto Pete Theisinger dice che i dati ricevuti dallo Spirit questa mattina indicano che il software di pilotaggio non si sta comportando normalmente.
Un team anomalo-per l'anomalia è stato creato per continuare ad acquisire informazioni dalla rover e trovare le possibili cause della situaazione.
Theisinger dice che la rover dovrebbe essere capace di sostenere la propria "salute" per un indefinito periodo di tempo.Ha anche fatto notare che ripristinare Spirit alle normali operazioni potrbbe impegnare un paio di settimane.
Oaichehai
23-01-2004, 22:22
grazie per la traduzione.
quindi spirit potrà andare avanti.....almeno questa dovrebbe essere la speranza a quanto pare....
Originariamente inviato da Oaichehai
grazie per la traduzione.
quindi spirit potrà andare avanti.....almeno questa dovrebbe essere la speranza a quanto pare....
Speriamo davvero! :)
1855 GMT (1:55 p.m. EST)
Here is project manager Pete Theisinger's briefing to reporters from earlier this hour:
"We have been able to command Spirit and we have gotten limited data in return. The flight software is not behaving normally.
"I would like to go into some details of the chronology of events that have happened since I talked to you yesterday.
"When I left here yesterday there was preliminary indication that a request for an acknowledgement sent to the spacecraft at what would have been an emergency or fault command rate was received and acknowledged from the spacecraft -- and that was correct. The spacecraft did see us yesterday.
"We attempted to command the spacecraft to send us telemetry yesterday. We were very late in the day and on top of a UHF command session, and that command did not work for what we believe were those reasons.
"This morning, we sent an early beep to the spacecraft and did not get a response. As we were preparing to send a second, the spacecraft talked to us. We got very fractional frames and then moved very quickly to ask it to speak to us for 30 minutes at 120 bits per second. We got 20 minutes of transmission in that occasion, which was a single frame of engineering data repeated.
"Then we repeated that full sequence of events and we got about 15 minutes of engineering data at 120 bits per second where the frames were updated for 15 minutes and then for the second 15 minutes we had nothing but fill data.
"The spacecraft attempted a short communication window at the end of the day, which ended.
"The spacecraft has been in a processor reset loop of some type, mostly since Wednesday, we believe, where the processor wakes up, loads the flight software, uncovers a condition that would cause it to reset. But the processor doesn't do that immediately. It waits for a period of time -- at the beginning of the day it waits for 15 minutes twice and then for the rest of the day it waits for an hour -- and then it resets and comes back up.
"The indications we have on two occasions is that the thing that causes the reset is not always perceived to be the same. We are confused by that, but that's the facts as we presume them to be right now.
"We know that the sequence which began on Wednesday morning to do some calibration of one of the Mini-TES motors, that sequence did not run to completion. And we know that the spacecraft believes it is now in an X-band fault condition, which can be caused by a large number of things, but one of them could be the inability to move the high-gain antenna.
"If you recall, we did know as of 1 o'clock Mars Time on Wednesday that the spacecraft did not believe itself to be in a fault condition, although it could be having problems. We know that because we tried this beep at 31.25 (bits per second) that day and it worked. That's not a rate we would expect if the spacecraft thought it was a fault condition.
"The team is basically taking the data it had this morning, as collected, and moving forward and analyzing what they know and preparing a plan of action for tomorrow and for the days following. We believe, based upon everything we know right now, that we can sustain the current state of the spacecraft -- from a health standpoint -- for a substantial, perhaps indefinite amount of time. There is no indication that we have an imminent power problem or thermal issue. There's indications that (the spacecraft has) not been going to sleep at night like we expected -- that we have been up for a lot or most of both nights -- and we are looking at what things could cause that to take place.
"An anomaly team has been formed, completely separate from the Opportunity team. They will working a schedule that will look like 0500 Mars Time to about 1500 Mars Time. So they are going to synch up with the Spirit's day. So that means tonight they will be coming in about midnight. The first part of that will be kind of a re-examination of the data, whatever they have been able to collect and analyze in the period of time and kind of a go-forward plan for the day. They will be on consoles for the day and then there will be a post-day, couple-hour meeting of what they know and to work on theories.
"I expect this to go on in this mode for several days of talking to the spacecraft, gathering more data, winnowing out theories, testing those theories against spacecraft observables and continuing that process.
"I think we should expect that we will not be restoring functionality to Spirit for a significant period of time -- I think many days, perhaps a couple of weeks -- even in the best of circumstances, from what we see today.
"Now, we have Opportunity coming in tomorrow night. We have the lander passivation sequence is going to start running tonight. We have made the appropriate personnel and staffing adjustments to make sure we have completely severed the efforts and that we can sustain Opportunity's (entry, descent and landing).
"It is likely, depending upon what happens in the next 48 to 72 hours, that we may not continue the Opportunity impact-to-egress with the same pace and dispatch that we did on Spirit. It depends on if we can get Opportunity to a defined, sustainable state on the ground and we can continue to make progress against Spirit with those assets, we will likely do that and try and continue to make progress on Spirit to get it back to some level of functionality. That's a decision the project will make in consultation with management as we take the temperature of this thing over the next couple of days."
1905 GMT (2:05 p.m. EST)
While engineers work to understand and fix Spirit's troubles, a team reconstructing the rover's entry, descent and landing has made great progress.
This "path" of Spirit's landing has left "marks" on Mars as seen by the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor and Spirit's Descent Image Motion Estimation System camera.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/jan-23-2004/3-labeled_640.jpg
1930 GMT (2:30 p.m. EST)
During the question-and-answer portion of today's briefing, project manager Pete Theisinger gave this summary:
"The software is in X-band fault mode. We surmise it got there because of some problem with the high-gain antenna pointing, and that is why the second high-gain antenna pass on Wednesday did not work. It gives us a little bit of a tale-tell for what is going on with the processor now.
"But as I pointed out to you, the flight software is not functioning normally. The two times we have gone and communicated with the system, we have gotten different flight software behaviors. Therefore we do not have assurance the next time we go and ask for it we will get either one of those two behaviors or perhaps a third behavior.
"We are trying to look at those responses to determine 'ok, how come it's behaving that way? And how come when we boot up it doesn't get better?' Those are the kinds of questions we are raising at the moment.
"We have quite a bit of information but clearly not as much as you would like."
We will have a complete story wrapping up the news conference as soon as possible.
1945 GMT (2:45 p.m. EST)
Pete Theisinger, manager of the Mars Exploration Rover project, says Spirit is in "critical condition" as it sits at Gusev Crater.
"We do not know to what extent we can restore functionality to the system because we don't know what's broke. We don't know what started this chain of events. I think, personally, that is a sequence of things. And we don't know, therefore, the consequences of that.
"I think it is difficult, at this very preliminary stage, to assume that we did not have some type of hardware event that caused this to start. Therefore, we don't know to what extent we can work around that hardware event and to what extent we can get the software to ignore that hardware event, if that is what we eventually have to do.
"So we have a long way to go here with the patient in 'intensive care.' But we have been able to establish that we can command it, and we have been able to establish that it can give us information, and we have been able to establish that the power system is good and we are thermally OK. Those are all very, very, very important pieces of information and state.
"We are a long, long, long way from being done here. But we do have serious problems and our ability to eventually work around them is unknown.
"I'm trying to tell you do not to expect a big sea change in either knowledge or theory in the next several days because this is a very complex problem and we have very limited visibility."
Spirit remains in 'critical' condition
BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: January 23, 2004
The crippled Spirit rover remains in critical condition on the surface of Mars, engineers said today, the victim of ongoing electronic seizures that have caused its central computer to reboot itself more than 60 times over the past two days.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040114roving.jpg
An artist's concept of Spirit sitting on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL
Engineers successfully coaxed the rover to beam back limited engineering data during two brief communications sessions and they were relieved to discover the spacecraft's power system was providing the necessary life support. But Spirit's state of mind was clearly - and unusually - different in both sessions, ruling out any simple explanations for what might have gone wrong.
"We have a serious problem," said project manager Pete Theisinger. "The fact that we've got a vehicle that we believe is stable for an extensive period of time will give us time to work that problem. We can command it to talk to us and even though we get perhaps limited information, we do get good information and that helps us work through the problem.
"I expect that we will get functionality back out of this rover. I think the chances that it will be perfect again, I would think, are not good. The chances that it will not work at all, I think are also low. I think we're somewhere in that broad middle and we need to understand the problem to find out exactly where we are."
Spirit went on the blink Wednesday as it was carrying out a procedure to calibrate drive motors used by its thermal emission spectrometer. Prior to that moment, everything was operating normally. But some event, possibly a hardware failure of some sort, threw the rover's electronic brain for a loop. Since then, the spacecraft has been in a state of limbo, responding in unusual fashion to anxious flight controllers.
"This morning, we sent an early beep to the spacecraft and did not get a response," Theisinger said. "As we were preparing to send a second, the spacecraft talked to us. We got very fractional frames and then moved very quickly to ask it to speak to us for 30 minutes at 120 bits per second. We got 20 minutes of transmission in that occasion, which was a single frame of engineering data repeated.
"Then we repeated that full sequence of events and we got about 15 minutes of engineering data at 120 bits per second where the frames were updated for 15 minutes and then for the second 15 minutes we had nothing but fill data."
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040123theisinger.jpg
Pete Theisinger, manager of the Mars Exploration Rover project. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls
He said Spirit "has been in a processor reset loop of some type, mostly since Wednesday, we believe, where the processor wakes up, loads the flight software, uncovers a condition that would cause it to reset. But the processor doesn't do that immediately. It waits for a period of time - at the beginning of the day it waits for 15 minutes twice and then for the rest of the day it waits for an hour - and then it resets and comes back up."
Complicating the work to track down the problem, "the indications we have on two occasions is that the thing that causes the reset is not always perceived to be the same," Theisinger said. "We are confused by that, but that's the facts as we presume them to be right now."
The reset sequence, similar to repeatedly unplugging one's personal computer and forcing it to restart, began Wednesday morning on Mars when a calibration of the spectrometer motors ended prematurely. An anomaly team has been formed to study the telemetry and to decide what readings to request from Spirit to help narrow down the range of possible failures.
"I think we should expect that we will not be restoring functionality to Spirit for a significant period of time," Theisinger said, "I think many days, perhaps a couple of weeks, even in the best of circumstances, from what we see today."
In the meantime, he said, Spirit remains in "critical" condition.
"We do not know to what extent we can restore functionality to the system because we don't know what's broke," Theisinger said. "We don't know what started this chain of events and I think, personally, that it's a sequence of things, and we don't know, therefore, the consequences of that. I think its difficult at this very preliminary stage to assume we did not have some type of hardware event that caused this to start and therefore, we don't know to what extent we can work around that hardware event and to what extent we can get the software to ignore that hardware event if that's what we eventually have to do.
"We've got a long way to go here with the patient in intensive care. But we have been able to establish that we can command it, and we have been able to establish that it can give us information and we have been able to establish that the power system is good and we're thermally OK and those are all very, very important pieces of information.
"We are a long, long way from being done here, but we do have serious problems and our ability to eventually work around them is unknown. Do not expect a big sea change in either knowledge or theory in the next several days. This is a very complex problem."
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040123armrock.jpg
This image from earlier in the week shows Spirit probing its first target rock, Adirondack. The rover's arm remains extended while controllers try to restore the craft to normal operations. Credit: NASA/JPL
Amid the troubleshooting, Spirit's twin - the Opportunity rover - remains on track to land early Sunday morning East Coast time on Meridiani Planum, a region on the other side of Mars where deposits of minerals that form in the presence of water have been detected. Theisinger said engineers do not believe Spirit's problem poses any generic risk to Opportunity, but he said the flight control team would be much more cautious in its daily operations to minimize the chances of a similar problem.
"It is likely, depending upon what happens in the next 48 to 72 hours, that we may not continue the Opportunity impact-to-egress with the same pace and dispatch that we did on Spirit," he said. "It depends on if we can get Opportunity to a defined, sustainable state on the ground and we can continue to make progress (with) Spirit. We will likely do that and try and continue to make progress on Spirit to get it back to some level of functionality. That's a decision the project will make in consultation with management as we take the temperature of this thing over the next couple of days."
So far, the only change for planned for Opportunity's descent is a decision to deploy its braking parachute at a slightly higher altitude than Spirit's to provide more of a safety margin.
In other developments, engineers today presented a dramatic animation of Spirit's landing based on actual telemetry from the spacecraft, showing how a sudden gust of wind forced small side-pointing rockets to fire at the last second to prevent the lander from slamming down at more than 50 mph.
The telemetry, collected earlier and subjected to complex analysis, also shows how the rover bounced across the floor of Gusev Crater before finally rolling to a stop.
Michael Malin, principal investigator of a high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, unveiled a dramatic photograph showing Spirit, it's parachute and its heat shield resting on the surface of Mars. The remarkable photograph even shows several of Spirit's bounce marks in the martian soil.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 2004
0330 GMT (10:30 p.m. EST Fri.)
Despite two commands from engineers on Earth to enter sleep mode to conserve power, Spirit remained awake all day Friday, Mission Control reported late tonight.
"Shortly before (3 p.m. EST), controllers were surprised to receive a relay of data from Spirit via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Spirit sent 73 megabits at a rate of 128 kilobits per second. The transmission included power subsystem engineering data, no science data, and several frames of 'fill data.' Fill data are sets of intentionally random numbers that do not provide information," NASA officials said.
"Spirit had not communicated successfully through Odyssey since the rover's communications difficulties began on Wednesday."
0400 GMT (11:00 p.m. EST Fri.)
While efforts to revive the Spirit rover continue, the sister-craft Opportunity remains on course for its Saturday night/Sunday morning landing on the Red Planet.
Opportunity's touchdown at Meridiani Planum -- a smooth, flat plain near the equator halfway around the planet from Spirit's Gusev Crater landing site -- is scheduled for 12:05 a.m. EST (0505 GMT).
The landing site for Opportunity was selected because scientists believe there is an Oklahoma-sized area of gray hematite, a mineral that usually forms in the presence of water.
"Gray hematite is a mineral indicator of past water. It is not always associated with water, but it often is," said Joy Crisp, project scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover project.
The rover will search for the material to determine if the hematite layer comes from sediments of an ancient ocean, from volcanic deposits altered by hot water, or from other environmental conditions in the planet's distant past.
"Hematite forms in a number of different ways on Earth but most of them involve the action of liquid water," added Steve Squyres, the rovers' principal investigator. "So you can think of the hematite mineral signatures being kind of a beacon that's saying to us, 'hey, water may have been here.' Now we don't know how it formed, it could have been a hydrothermal system, could have been a lake, we're not sure. But it says, mineralogically, water."
Opportunity carries the same set of science tools as Spirit -- multiple cameras, a rock-grinding device and sophisticated instruments to determine the composition of soil and rock samples.
"We want to know if the grains of hematite appear to be rounded and cemented together by the action of liquid water or if they're crystals that grew from a volcanic melt. Is the hematite in layers, which would suggest that it was laid down by water, or in veins in the rock, which would be more characteristic of water having flowed through the rocks," Crisp wonders.
NASA's orbiting Mars Global Surveyor discovered a couple of years ago that Meridiani Planum featured gray hematite, prompting researchers to send a rover to the locale.
"The area where we are going has 10 to 15 percent gray hematite. What are the other materials found with the hematite? Clays and carbonates would indicate there had been water in the area. If the area had been volcanic, you would expect to see other types of minerals like olivine and pyroxene," Crisp says.
"We're very interested to know if this region could have been like Yellowstone, with hot springs, so we'll be looking to see if there are other minerals in the area such as those at Yellowstone."
The battle cry of NASA's Mars exploration program is "follow the water." Proving that Mars once had liquid water would help to determine if the planet could have supported life long ago.
"Knowing just how the hematite on Mars was formed will help us characterize the past environment and determine whether that environment was favorable for life. One big question, of course, is whether life ever started on Mars. This mission probably won't tell us that, but it may well lead to future mission that can answer that question."
We will provide live updates on this page throughout the landing!
Spirit s'è rincoglionito...? :wtf:
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Spirit s'è rincoglionito...? :wtf:
sembra... è quasi sicuramente un problema del software.
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
sembra... è quasi sicuramente un problema del software.
Bah, che roba... leggevo (non ho visto se c'e' anche nei documenti che hai riportato) che potrebbe essere un problema con il software che gestisce uno dei motori degli specchi del TES (si chiama cosi', no? mi sto rincoglionendo pure io... troppo studio... devo avere qualche bug nel sistema operativo... :D ). Chissa'... speriamo che lo rimettano in sesto.
Non potevano creare un software di back up nel caso quello di serie si fosse rincoglionito ? :O
Originariamente inviato da maxsona
Non potevano creare un software di back up nel caso quello di serie si fosse rincoglionito ? :O
Un sistema che si accorge di problemi e cerca di risolverli in automatico c'e', perche' infatti come si legge negli articoli il rover sta resettandosi automaticamente cercando di far ripartire il software per eliminare il problema... solo che il problema resta.
Non hanno idea di cosa possa essere precisamente, perche' e' una cosa abbastanza casuale e i 73Mb di dati ricevuti fanno capire ancora meno... boh...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Bah, che roba... leggevo (non ho visto se c'e' anche nei documenti che hai riportato) che potrebbe essere un problema con il software che gestisce uno dei motori degli specchi del TES (si chiama cosi', no? mi sto rincoglionendo pure io... troppo studio... devo avere qualche bug nel sistema operativo... :D ). Chissa'... speriamo che lo rimettano in sesto.
il problema principale pare essere legato all'impossibilità da parte di Spirit di muovere l'high gain antenna (necessario per "cercare" il sole e poi puntare correttamente verso la terra), se questo sia dovuto ad un problema software o hardware non è dato sapere ancora.
Sojourner (11 kg) e MER (185 kg):
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/spacecraft/hires/tworovers.jpg
Ma porca...! :eek: Non credevo proprio che fosse cosi' grande!
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Ma porca...! :eek: Non credevo proprio che fosse cosi' grande!
Se va avanti di questo passo il prossimo che mandano sarà un SUV!
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Se va avanti di questo passo il prossimo che mandano sarà un SUV!
Io dico che se ne perdono un'altro si rompono le palle e ci mandano un carro armato, "non si sa mai..." :D
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Io dico che se ne perdono un'altro si rompono le palle e ci mandano un carro armato, "non si sa mai..." :D
un bell avrams alimentato a uranio impoverito e via....cosi se trovano gli alieni sanno come affrontarli:D :D
cmqtasera leggendo questi aggiornamenti mi è venuto in mente che magari quando riprenderanno le trasmissioni visive vedranno un ambiente tutto bianco con gli alieni che ci girano in torno...:eek:
Pasadena - Jan 24, 2004
NASA has been able to reestablish stable communications with the Mars Rover Spirit and begin receiving engineering data. This has allowed critical commands to be sent further isolating the issue. At this stage the problem has been traced to computer flash memory chips though the exact nature of this remains uncertain. However, NASA is now confident the issues can be worked around and Spirit could be rolling again within several weeks.
2003 GMT (3:03 p.m. EST)
Pete Theisinger, Mars Exploration Rover project manager, says the team has made good progress overnight with Spirit. The rover's status has been upgraded from "critical" to "serious" condition.
Engineers are working on a theory that there is a problem between the flight software and the rover's flash memory.
We'll post Theisinger's briefing as soon as possible.
2150 GMT (4:50 p.m. EST)
Rover project manager Peter Theisinger gave the following update on activities to diagnose Spirit's ailment and return the craft to working order:
"We made good progress overnight and the rover has been upgraded from critical to serious. We have a working hypothesis we are pursuing that is consistent with many of the observables and consistent with operations that we performed on the vehicle last night. It involves the flash memory on the vehicle and the software used to communicate with that memory.
"The processor on Spirit has three kinds of memory:
"There is the random access memory just like the memory in your computer, which is used basically in a real-time mode. And that memory is volatile, so when we turn off the rover at night that memory goes away.
"We have flash memory. That memory is just like the memory in a digital camera. It can also be read to and written from easily. But it has non-volatile characteristics -- the information that is stored there stays overnight even if the vehicle is powered down.
"And then we have we call double EPROM, which is electrically-programmable memory. That is more difficult to write to and read from, and we use that to store part of the flight software image.
"The vehicle normally uses the flash memory mostly for the storage and retrieval of engineering and the scientific telemetry. The software has to communicate with the flash memory -- has to open up files, establish file directories, close files in that flash memory. That process has to work correctly.
"We are capable of operating the vehicle without going to the flash memory in what we call a 'cripple mode.' That is name we have chosen -- you should not read too much into that. That basically tells the flight software that when it boots up, it should operate with its file directory out of the random access memory rather than the flash memory. That would avoid any issues that we might have with either the flash memory itself or the flight software that is used to write to it.
"Let me talk about the chronology of what happened in the last 24 hours. If you recall when we last talked at yesterday's press conference, we were attempting to shut down the vehicle because the batteries were becoming depleted. We had an apparent inability to shut down the vehicle last night, yesterday at the end of the Mars day, which is about the time of the press conference at 9 a.m. Pacific. That was in fact confirmed because later we had a UHF communications session with Odyssey where we got 73 megabits of data, mostly fill or garbage data, although we did get some fault data, some current, some 14 hours old.
"We did not know but thought we might go into low-power overnight if the batteries were fully depleted. When came up this morning we looked for the 9:30 Mars time communications window and it was not there, indicating, we thought, that we had gone into low-power. That would cause the vehicle to come up at 11 o'clock and tell us that.
"We, just prior to 11 o'clock, sent a command to the vehicle that said 'go into this cripple mode.' That is only done at the next reset, so then we sent a command to the vehicle that said 'and reset' in order to do that. And we timed it so that when the 11 o'clock session would start, we would begin to get that session at 10 bits per second indicating we'd gone into low-power. When the commands reached the spacecraft light-time away, it would send us into cripple mode, reset the computer and we would come up in the mode. And in fact that is precisely what happened.
"At that point, we commanded a one-hour communications session at 120 bits per second. That communications session happened as planned.
"The progressive set of resets that we were getting into every hour did not reoccur, leading us to conclude that our hypothesis is largely correct -- that is there is something involved in the flight software that talks to the flash memory that's causing this difficulty.
"Why that might cause us difficulty is because when the spacecraft first wakes up it needs to communicate with the flash memory to establish a file structure and when it goes to sleep and shuts down, just like you shut down your computer at home, it needs to go out to that memory and close all of those files and clean everything up. If it is unable to do that, it would not complete those tasks appropriately and will basically reset itself and not shut down.
"In the midst of that 120 bits per second, one-hour session, we decided to shut down the vehicle in order to replenish the batteries. We commanded the shutdown just prior to the end of the communications session so that we would see the communications session terminate early if we were able to operate it correctly. That happened. And we sent two post-shutdown beeps, which we expect not to hear if it is asleep but we would hear if it was not asleep, and we did not get those, once again confirming that the vehicle to the best of our ability to determine is now sleeping on Mars.
"We also yesterday as part of the command sessions during this period of time terminated tonight's UHF passes and reset the uploss timer. The uploss timer is a set of fault code that go into play when the vehicle thinks it has a communications problem and causes some things to switch state and we didn't want to get into that if we could avoid it. Both of those were confirmed to be successful.
"So we have a vehicle that is stable now in power and thermal. We have a working hypothesis that we have confirmed. The fault protection to the best of our estimation has worked as designed. It took us a lot to figure out what was going on, but we think everything has worked in the fault protection as we expected it to do.
"We have a go-forward plan. The cripple mode, which we can use every day, needs to be re-established every day because it loses the memory that that's the way it should start up. So every morning we will need to start up in cripple mode, so we need to establish an operational way of doing that every day for the next few sols (Mars days).
"We need to establish a high-rate link in order to be able to get much more data back, particularly if we want to read out the flash memory and determine what has happened. What we will plan to do is likely to use the Odyssey afternoon relay pass for that purpose prior to the afternoon shutdown.
"We need to then establish the contents of flash to find out what happened and then we need to move forward with the diagnosis and recovery of the vehicle capability based upon what we find there.
"Remember that this was all kicked off by Sequence 2502. That was the sequence that was using the elevation motor in the mast failing out, failing to complete (on Wednesday). We still do not know the details of why that happened and we need to do that.
"The mission consequences of this are uncertain at the present time. But I think that we feel that we probably have more capability left in the vehicle that we can establish than the worst-case scenarios by quite a bit. We still see a couple of weeks to determine what had happened and to rebuild our confidence into what is working on the vehicle and to get back closer to routine operations. I think we are probably like three weeks away from driving, I am guessing.
"The team will begin to go into double-shift operations probably a day or so after Opportunity's landing where we have a re-plan period and then an operational period as we begin to work through the forensics of this.
"But this is a very good news. We've established an ability to communicate with the vehicle reliably, we've established that in fact we do have controllability of the vehicle, can establish a good power and thermal state, our working hypothesis is one that we can work around with significant measure if it turns out our working hypothesis is correct. So a good day for an Opportunity landing."
2106 GMT (4:06 p.m. EST)
"Spirit is still serious but moving toward guarded condition," rover project manager Pete Theisinger reports. "I think we got a patient well on the way to recovery."
In the past day, engineers have determined that Spirit's flash memory hardware is OK. A leading theory today is that a portion of the rover's software simply couldn't cope with all that was happening on Wednesday when the trouble began.
The rover's batteries are now fully charged and the craft shortly will be going to sleep for the night. But before nighttime it will be relaying data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter including engineering and diagnostic information.
Theisinger predicts that Spirit will resume driving around the surface in a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, the Opportunity rover is operating properly following its landing last night.
Bogged down software could explain Spirit's ailment
BY SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: January 25, 2004
The group working to unravel the glitch with Spirit and return the rover to action has narrowed the possible cause of its trouble to three potentials, officials said Sunday afternoon.
"Spirit is still serious but we are moving toward guarded condition now," rover project manager Pete Theisinger said. "I think we got a patient well on the way to recovery."
The rover experienced a problem last Wednesday, disrupting communications with Earth and halting all science activities. The breakdown happened while Spirit was performing a calibration of motors on the Mini-TES instrument.
"The leading theory is that the file management software module in the software has gone to some condition that it could not cope with -- that it was not robust enough for the operations we were engaged in when we had the flaw on Wednesday," Theisinger said.
On Saturday, engineers began focusing on the rover's flash memory and the way the software communicates with the computer memory. To get the rover operating, it was told to avoid using the flash memory for now.
On Sunday, the team was able to reset Spirit's computer to the non-flash utilization mode, Theisinger said. Also Sunday, the ongoing diagnostics determined the flash memory hardware aboard the rover to be healthy.
"There are two other theories that are not as well in competition but cannot be discounted, and they are being worked by anomaly subteams," Theisinger added.
"One is there was some kind of error or hardware issue on the motor control board. That's the circuit board with the electronics that control the motors. That's being examined.
"Also...there was a solar event Wednesday and the timing of that is being looked at with respect to correlation to the onset of our problems. The flash memories are sensitive to high-energy ions and neutrons when they are being read from and written to, and we were certainly engaged in a lot of that activity that day."
Theisinger remains hopeful that Spirit will resume its exploration adventure of Gusev Crater by mid-February.
"I think we've got a patient well on the way to recovery, and I think we have a very good chance now we will have a very good rover when we are done getting this thing back up. Although, once again, it will take some time to make sure that we have completely characterized the problem and that we are able to check out all of the functionality on the vehicle.
"You can't take anything for granted here. So I don't expect to be driving for a couple of weeks, maybe three."
"Also...there was a solar event Wednesday and the timing of that is being looked at with respect to correlation to the onset of our problems. The flash memories are sensitive to high-energy ions and neutrons when they are being read from and written to, and we were certainly engaged in a lot of that activity that day."
Verissimo, le memorie flash sono ancora troppo fragili. Avevo scattato una sessantina di foto in vacanza con la digitale e all'improvviso la scheda dava errori con la conseguenza di aver perso tutte le foto in memoria :muro:
Questo nel mio piccolo :p
Gio,sai dirmi che hardware (cpu, qta ram ecc) monta il lander?
Originariamente inviato da devis
Gio,sai dirmi che hardware (cpu, qta ram ecc) monta il lander?
Tutto l'elettronica di controllo e il computer di volo (flight computer) è contenuta nel WEB (Warm Electronics Box):
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/images/webred1_500.jpg
si trattatta di un box termocontrollato necessario per far resistere l'elettornica alle rigidissime temperature della notte (che possono scendere a -96° C).
Il computer vero e proprio è il REM (Rover Electronics Module). Per comunicare con gli strumenti e i sensori esterni utilizza un particolare bus progettato ad hoc per la missione, chiamato VME (Versa Module Europa). Vi sono 3 tipi di memorie:
- 128 MB di DRAM di tipo ECC (con controllo e correzione errori), usata in real-time mode. Volatile
- 3 MB di EEPROM, usata per immagazzinare parte del software di volo
- Memoria flash (quantità non nota), per l'immagazzinamento di altra parte del software di controllo delle operazioni e della telemetria e delle immagini.
Tutta la memoria è estremamente sofisticata, ed è appositamente studiata per sopportare le condizioni estreme di un viaggio interplanetario e di lavorare in presenza di forti tempeste di radiazioni.
Per il processore non so dirti, non ci sono dati precisi in merito (penso sia sviluppato dallo stesso JPL o dal Caltech).
Grazie per l'esuariente spiegazione :eek:
Per la CPU ho letto, per esempio, che il vecchio Sojourner aveva un preistorico Intel 80C85 . Spero che anche per i MER lo si venga a sapere
Spirit's Hidden Secrets: Trapped Within the Rover, Unique Data Captured with Mars Express
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 04:30 pm ET
26 January 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- As it silently sits in Gusev Crater, NASA’s Spirit Mars rover is frozen in time. It holds in its memory files unique data that can help unlock the secrets about Mars rocks and the planet's atmosphere, including a rare combination analysis completed with the help of the European Space Agency's Mars Express.
On Wednesday, January 21, Spirit was preparing to run its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT), a grinding device that removes dust and weathered rock, on the exposed fresh rock "Adirondack" when the robot came to a screeching halt. The leading theory is that the robot suffered a breakdown in software that controls file management of its memory.
Right now, Ron Greeley, a Science Operations Working Group Chair for the rover effort from Arizona State University in Tempe, and others in his group are trying to figure out what data could be in memory, and of those data, what’s the prioritization.
"We’ve been looking at what are the things that we want to get back. There are some things that are unique data [that] we’ll never have a chance to get again," Greeley said.
"We’re working through what might be in memory, " said Greeley. "So if there’s any choice, we want this first, then this, then this…and work down the list that way."
Mars Express and Spirit Data
Held tight in Spirit’s memory software are choice science products. That library of knowledge includes first looks at the Adirondack rock using the Mössbauer Spectrometer and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, called the APXS for short.
When Spirit is brought back to health, scientists want to move ahead and use the RAT on Adirondack. But the pre-RAT spectrometer data is important for before-and-after comparisons. So that data set is a very high priority, Greeley said.
Both the Mössbauer Spectrometer and the APXS units have built-in memory. But that information is relayed through Spirit’s central brain control. These instruments could be re-queried, but it would take many hours to regain the same data that could be lost.
But Greeley also pointed out that a unique set of data onboard Spirit involves the overhead pass of Europe’s Mars Express. There was coordination of Spirit looking up while Mars Express instruments looked down on the site. Doing so would give scientists a one-of-a-kind profile in time of atmospheric particles in the Gusev Crater region, he said.
"There’s nothing absolutely critical," said Jim Bell, Payload Element Lead for the MER Panoramic Camera (Pan Cam) from Cornell University. "If they have to pull the plug…so be it…if we need to do that to move on. Maybe the worst hit would be those measurements taken during the Mars Express over flight. We were taking data the same time they were."
"We got back the little thumbnails [of data], but we didn’t get back many of the big full-frame images from that sequence. And that can’t be repeated until the next time that spacecraft flies over. But if that’s the worst that we lose some of that data, it’s not going to affect mission success," Bell said. "We don’t want to lose any data of course."
Spirit in rehab
Things are progressing well here at JPL in trying to regain Spirit’s sensibility.
Troubleshooting is going on around-the-clock, said Jennifer Trosper, JPL’s MER Mission Manager. It could be two-to-three weeks of work before Spirit is back in a driving state, she said today at an early morning press briefing.
From its early flat-lined medical condition, Spirit is now in rehab, Trosper said.
Too many memory files, too many tasks being fulfilled, and not enough deleting of less-needed data appears to have conspired to upset Spirit.
"For this mission to be successful, a lot of things have to happen at the same time," said Bell "There were 18 days in a row of this ballet of the engineers, the scientists, the data management people, and the software people -- all working together juggling everything," he added.
Bell said he doesn’t think Spirit’s situation was brought about by overworked or tired personnel, or somebody hit the wrong button. "I don’t think that’s the situation," he said.
Also locked within Spirit’s memory are older Pan Cam shots when Spirit still sat on its lander. There are some pieces of a horizon panorama too, and pictures of the robot’s arm deploying science instruments.
Deep space gremlins
Spirit has already delivered an amazing legacy of scientific data, with by far the best images and spectra ever obtained for another world," said James Garvin, NASA Lead Scientist for Mars Exploration within the Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C.
"I am literally speechless over what it has achieved in only 18 sols of science operations, intermixed with many steps to get moving on the real Mars. And over the next weeks to months, I am confident the MER science team will uncover some of the mysteries of Mars, from the nature of the soils…to the basic chemistry and mineralogy of local materials," Garvin told SPACE.com .
"I believe that our team will get Spirit moving again, doing science and delivering on its promise," Garvin said. "We have only begun to fight the ‘deep space gremlins’ and Spirit will be back in business."
Un'altra cosa: ci sono novità sulle missioni in cui si preleva del materiale per poi riportarli sulla terra ?
Lo spirit ha sicuramente un Intel come cpu, percio' s'e' bloccato, se avesse avuto un AMD non si sarebbe trovato in queste condizioni. Cosa ? E' tardi ? Vabbe' vado a nanna ! :sofico: :p
jumpermax
26-01-2004, 23:36
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
Lo spirit ha sicuramente un Intel come cpu, percio' s'e' bloccato, se avesse avuto un AMD non si sarebbe trovato in queste condizioni. Cosa ? E' tardi ? Vabbe' vado a nanna ! :sofico: :p
a dire il vero monta dei G4...
Originariamente inviato da devis
Un'altra cosa: ci sono novità sulle missioni in cui si preleva del materiale per poi riportarli sulla terra ?
Per quanto riguarda Marte, sono stati già avviati programmi che prevedono il recupero e il ritorno a terra di campioni di roccie, come l'europeo Aurora...
per quanto riguarda gli asteroidi, attualmente sono due le missioni in corso, Stardust della NASA e Rosetta dell'ESA.
La prima è stata lanciata il 7 frebbraio 1999, ha raccolto la prima polvere interstellare tra febbraio e marzo del 2000 e la seconda tra agosto e dicembre del 2002, ha incontrato l'asteroide Annefrank il 2 novembre 2002 e infine ha incontrato finalmente la cometa oggetto primario della missione, Wild 2, il 2 gennaio 2004.
Il ritorno della capsula con il campione di polvere è previsto per il 15 gennaio 2006.
La seconda missione, Rosetta, non prevede di ritornare a terra un campione, ma di depositare un lander sulla cometa 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko e di studiarla con esso e con l'orbiter circa 3 anni.
Verrà lanciata il 26 febbraio 2004, farà il primo "fly-by" della terra nel novembre 2005, il sorvolo di marte nel febbraio 2007, il secondo della terra nel novembre 2007, il terzo nel novembre 2009 e poi verso la cometa con incontro previsto per il gennaio-marggio 2014, discesa del lander nel novembre 2014 e la fine missione per il 2015 (seguendo la cometa attorno al sole).
Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
a dire il vero monta dei G4...
Veramente monta un RAD6000 (32-bit di tipo RISC).
Originariamente inviato da devis
Spero che anche per i MER lo si venga a sapere
E' un RAD6000 RISC a 32-bit della Bae Systems.
http://www.iews.na.baesystems.com/space/rad6000/rad6000_sbsc.html
http://www.iews.na.baesystems.com/space/pdf/rad_6000_users_guide.pdf
jumpermax
27-01-2004, 00:19
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
E' un RAD6000 RISC a 32-bit della Bae Systems.
si hai ragione, volevo dire un powerPC è della stessa famiglia dei processori che usano i mac oggi...
The rovers use a RAD6000 computer produced by BAE systems. This processor is nearly identical in architecture to an old PowerPC processor used in early Macintosh computers. By today's standards, these processors are slow. They run at 20 megahertz, about 1/100th the speed of a typical desktop computer today. They have 128 kilobytes (KB) of RAM, 256 KB of flash memory and some ROM to hold the boot code and operating system. There are no disk drives.
MONDAY, JANUARY 26, 2004
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit appeared to be teetering on the brink of failure last week when ground controllers lost contact with the craft sitting in Gusev Crater, its arm extended to a rock as the scientific adventure was beginning. Now, engineers are cautiously hopeful that Spirit will soon be restored to full working order.
Reconstructing Spirit's hopeful road to recovery
BY SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: January 26, 2004
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit appeared to be teetering on the brink of failure last week when ground controllers lost contact with the craft sitting in Gusev Crater, its arm extended to a rock as the scientific adventure was beginning. Now, engineers are cautiously hopeful that Spirit will soon be restored to full working order.
"Spirit is doing better. It is kind of like we have a patient in re-hab here, and we are nursing her back to health," Jennifer Trosper, rover mission manager, said Monday.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040126trosper.jpg
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040126trosper.jpg
It is now believed that the rover's flash memory had become so full of files that the craft couldn't manage all of the information stored aboard. Spirit bogged down because it didn't have enough random access memory, or RAM, to handle the current amount of files in the flash -- including data recorded during its cruise from Earth to Mars and the 18 days of operations on the red planet's surface.
"I think we just found an issue with the number of files that eventually were on the spacecraft at this time in the mission that we were unaware of because of the accumulation that happened over the course of cruise and the 18 sols on the surface," Trosper said.
Flash memory is used in electronics, such as digital cameras, because it retains stored information even when the power is turned off. The rover also has random access memory, which doesn't keep stored data when the rover goes to sleep each night.
Controllers are preparing to delete hundreds of cruise files in hopes of lessening the burden.
"We don't know yet whether Spirit will be perfect again. Our current theory is one in which software would fix the problem," Trosper said. "There are other health checks that we have to do with the flash, the high-gain antenna, the Pancam Mast Assembly and the motor control board to make sure our current theory fully checks out."
Some triggering event, not yet fully pinpointed, caused the rover's computer brain to begin a continuous series of resets until engineers on Earth were able to regain control of the craft late last week.
"You have to keep in mind that the problem we've had actually is associated with our ability to collect and maintain recorded data (on the rover). So the flash memory where we store this data that would tell us what had happened over the past days actually is part of the problem we are seeing. So we don't have a lot of information," Trosper told reporters at the daily spacecraft status briefing Monday.
"Let me go back to Sol 18 and tell you a little bit about what we think happened -- to try and reconstruct it. As we get more data, I guarantee you that some of these things will change, but let me tell you what we think today," Trosper said, launching into a detailed explanation that begins last Wednesday.
"Sol 18 we had some weather problems at the (Earth communications) station, and about 10 minutes early for the morning antenna pass we lost the signal. It wasn't clear whether that was the result of a spacecraft problem or a station problem.
"We've done some tracking of that, it's still not completely clear, but it's entirely possible that was a spacecraft problem at that time. We believe that was possibly a reset on the spacecraft that would've caused our signal to be lost when...the software would reset and come up and power off all of the loads and put itself into a safe state.
"Due to the reset, we have actually confirmed that the morning activities that we were trying to do that morning did not complete. So if you recall, we were moving the IDD (science arm), getting ready to (use the Rock Abrasion Tool). The IDD, the arm, position is actually in the same position it was on Sol 18 before we attempted to do that move.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040123armrock.jpg
This image from last week shows Spirit probing its first target rock, Adirondack. The rover's arm remains extended while controllers try to restore the craft to normal operations. Credit: NASA/JPL
"Some time the morning, early afternoon of Sol 18 (Wednesday) we encountered the problem. That problem, initially, was most likely a reset. We don't understand exactly where that reset came from but we have some ideas. It caused us to get into this belief that the flash system was corrupted in a way that we got into continuous reset loops.
"Then in the afternoon, we actually sent a command sequence to the vehicle with a little bleep in it to tell us that the sequence got there. We sent that sequence and got the bleep with no problems.
"Twenty minutes after that we expected to see a session from the vehicle on the high-gain antenna communicating with us. We had been on the high-gain antenna since Sol 2. We didn't see that communications session. That, in addition to the 10 minute drop out early in the morning, that was one of the early indications that there was something wrong.
"In the afternoon Odyssey pass we did not see any data from the vehicle. The early Sol 19 (Thursday) morning MGS (Mars Global Surveyor) pass, we only saw two minutes of data from vehicle and it wasn't really data from the vehicle -- it was 'the UHF radio was on and nobody was home' kind of data. And then the morning Odyssey pass we received no data.
"On Sol 20 (Friday) in the morning we attempted to command the rover at the nominal uplink rate where it should be if everything is fine, and we received no data. We have pre-loaded communications windows when the rover should attempt to communicate with us and those windows did not execute on the morning of Sol 20.
"One of the things that the vehicle will do if it encounters a system-level fault is change the rate at it will accept commands, and that is for the vehicle's protection as well as for our knowledge. And so in the afternoon we sent a command at a different rate for the vehicle to send us a beep, and we actually got that beep back. The rate we sent it at was a rate that the software would have autonomously put us in if it had some sort of system-level fault. So we knew at that point that there were about four scenarios that would put us at that rate and we started to go down that path of those four scenarios.
"Then we didn't receive data in the overnight UHF passes that night.
"On Sol 21 (Saturday) we were actually trying to establish the same commandability we had the previous day -- we now knew that there was a system-level fault, we didn't know if it was a power issue, if it was a thermal issue, if it was an X-band communications issue. So we sent, essentially, the same command to get a beep on the morning of Sol 21 and we didn't get the beep.
"Then, as we were getting ready to send the next beep command, the vehicle decided to communicate with us in one of its nominal communications windows at which point we got a little bit of data that had very little information in it. In fact, originally we started to decode it and it was from the year 2053 and we thought 'this is not good!' Eventually we found out the data was corrupted, and we were all cheering at that point because there weren't a lot of scenarios that would put us in 2053 on Mars.
"That signal actually dropped out nine minutes or 10 minutes after we got it. And that was at 10 bits per second, so there was very little data and the data we got was corrupted.
"We sent another command to the spacecraft to give us a 30-minute communications session at 120 bits per second. And that command was received and we got the signal on the ground -- we got one frame of data, which told us that it was sending us data. Then it stopped. And that session then ended about 10 minutes early.
"We tried the same thing again and we modified some of the parameters in the command to try and get a different set of data. That different set of data actually gave us a very limited state of the current state of the vehicle -- some channelized telemetry. It told us how many flight software resets happened over the course of those two nights and that's where the big 77 numbers came from, and we realized we had a reset problem, that certain tasks were failing and it was keeping us from doing the communications that we intended to do.
"As a result of that knowledge, we also realized the vehicle may not have shut down because the reset could be associated with the shutdown of the vehicle. So we attempted to shut the vehicle down, and then we send a beep after shutdown to make sure it has shut down. [The rover would not reply with a beep if it was asleep.]
"It's sort of like feast or famine -- we didn't hear from it for a day-and-a-half and then we shut it down and we send a beep and we get the beep, then we shut it down again and send a beep and we get the beep, and then we shut it down again and send a beep and we get the beep. The vehicle was clearly not able to shut itself down and the reset was causing a problem with the shutdown.
"We knew that the power system was struggling, the battery wasn't charged as much as we expected it to be or wanted it to be. So we deleted our overnight UHF passes in case the vehicle decided to do them -- or attempted to. In the same way the reset cycle had caused those commands not to get in and so we got the first Odyssey UHF pass when we had hoped not to hear from the vehicle because we did want it to be asleep and charge the batteries.
"We asked Odyssey and MGS to turn off their radio beacons so (Spirit) didn't use that energy during the night to transmit because we were getting close to entering our low-power mode. Low-power mode is the mode that will safe the vehicle, take the batteries off-line and sit there, basically, and bask in the sun until the voltage gets high enough for the vehicle to wake up.
"So we woke up the morning of Sol 21 (Saturday) on solar array wake up and saw that we had indeed entered low-power mode and the fault protection had worked exactly as designed. In the low-power mode we don't get our morning communications session until about 11 a.m. because that is when the sun is nice and high, the Earth is nice and high (in the sky) and you can get good data rates and transmit.
"And in that we realized that we had this reset problem. Based on just kind of the hunch of our lead software architect, he believed that the problem was probably associated with the mounting of flash and initialization. There is a hardware command that we can send that bypasses the software where we can actually tell the hardware to not allow us to mount flash on initialization. When we the next day actually sent the command to do that, software initialized normally and was behaving like the software that we had always known. It was a fantastic moment.
"Once we got into the mode where we could command the vehicle to get into a software state that we understood, then we were able to collect data. That is the path that we are on right now.
"Right now, our most likely candidate for the issue has been narrowed down a little bit. It is really an issue with the file system in flash. Essentially, the amount of space required in RAM to manage all of the files we have in flash is apparently more than we initially anticipated.
"We have been collecting data and collecting data thanks to (the science team) and we have lots and lots of files on the spacecraft. That's good -- we intended to have lots and lots of files on the spacecraft. This is a new problem that we encountered based on having many files.
"We are currently in a much more specific debugging activity. Today (Monday), we started to dump out some of flash. We are actually loading a script that we get kind of the task trace on the software and identify exactly where the problem was in the code so we can make sure that our hunch is correct.
"Tomorrow, we are might try to access flash and do a little bit of a health check on it. The next day we might try to delete some files to see if our hunch is correct that it's really due to the number of files that we are trying to manage on the flash file system.
"And in parallel we are trying to work a less likely scenario that something happened with the high-gain antenna and the motor control board when we were doing this engineering checkout of the Mini-TES elevation actuator (Wednesday morning). We are still working that as well to make sure that we can get back on the high-gain antenna in a very cautious way.
"In summary, I would like to say that -- as it has always been -- it's humbling to work with a team of such excellent people. I just want to tell you the folks who are working on the details of this problem are the best of the best in the world that we have. Everyday when I come into work, their innovation, their persistence, their talent and their hard work has almost overwhelmed me and certainly humbles me. But that is what has got us where we are today and that's what is going to get us to having a healthy rover on the surface shortly."
"Then, as we were getting ready to send the next beep command, the vehicle decided to communicate with us in one of its nominal communications windows at which point we got a little bit of data that had very little information in it. In fact, originally we started to decode it and it was from the year 2053 and we thought 'this is not good!' Eventually we found out the data was corrupted, and we were all cheering at that point because there weren't a lot of scenarios that would put us in 2053 on Mars. "
ahahahahah :rotfl: :D
Oaichehai
27-01-2004, 18:52
Originariamente inviato da gpc
ahahahahah :rotfl: :D
se qualcuno (GioFX? :D) mi fa la traduzione di tutto, magari partecipo pure io alle risate :D
Originariamente inviato da Oaichehai
se qualcuno (GioFX? :D) mi fa la traduzione di tutto, magari partecipo pure io alle risate :D
"Then, as we were getting ready to send the next beep command, the vehicle decided to communicate with us in one of its nominal communications windows at which point we got a little bit of data that had very little information in it. In fact, originally we started to decode it and it was from the year 2053 and we thought 'this is not good!' Eventually we found out the data was corrupted, and we were all cheering at that point because there weren't a lot of scenarios that would put us in 2053 on Mars. "
Quindi, quando eravamo pronti a mandare il successimo comando "beep", il veicolo ha deciso di comunicare con noi in una delle sue finestre nominali di comunicazione, e a quel punto abbiamo ricevuto qualche bit di informazione con veramente poche informazioni all'interno. In effetti, all'inizio abbiamo iniziato a decodificarle ed e' risultato che arrivavano dall'anno 2053 e abbiamo pensato "questo non e' buono" ( :rotfl: NdT). Sucessivamente abbiamo determinato che i dati erano corrotti, e stavamo tutti sorridendo a quel punto, perche' non c'erano molti scenari (di guasti possibili, intendo io) che ci avrebbe fatto stare nel 2053 su marte ( ri :rotfl: NdT)"
Oaichehai
27-01-2004, 19:17
grazie, ora posso ridere pure io
:D:D:D:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
Martian landmarks dedicated to Apollo 1 crew
NASA ANNOUNCEMENT
Posted: January 27, 2004
NASA memorialized the Apollo 1 crew -- Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee -- by dedicating the hills surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's landing site to the astronauts. The crew of Apollo 1 perished in flash fire during a launch pad test of their Apollo spacecraft 37 years ago today.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040127chaffeegrissom.jpg
The hills named for Chaffee and Grissom as seen by Spirit's panoramic camera. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
"Through recorded history explorers have had both the honor and responsibility of naming significant landmarks," said NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe. "Gus, Ed and Roger's contributions, as much as their sacrifice, helped make our giant leap for mankind possible. Today, as America strides towards our next giant leap, NASA and the Mars Exploration Rover team created a fitting tribute to these brave explorers and their legacy."
Newly christened "Grissom Hill" is located 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) to the southwest of Spirit's position. "White Hill" is 11.2 kilometers (7 miles) northwest of its position and "Chaffee Hill" is 14.3 kilometers (8.9 miles) south-southwest of rover's position.
Lt. Colonel Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom was a U.S. Air Force test pilot when he was selected in 1959 as one of NASA's Original Seven Mercury Astronauts. On July 21, 1961, Grissom became the second American and third human in space when he piloted Liberty Bell 7 on a 15 minute sub-orbital flight. On March 23, 1965 he became the first human to make the voyage to space twice when he commanded the first manned flight of the Gemini space program, Gemini 3. Selected as commander of the first manned Apollo mission, Grissom perished along with White and Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Va.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040127white.jpg
The hill dedicated to White as seen by Spirit's panoramic camera. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Captain Edward White was a US Air Force test pilot when selected in 1962 as a member of the "Next Nine," NASA's second astronaut selection. On June 3, 1965, White became the first American to walk in space during the flight of Gemini 4. Selected as senior pilot for the first manned Apollo mission, White perished along with Grissom and Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire. He is buried at his alma mater, the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y.
Selected in 1963 as a member of NASA's third astronaut class, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Roger Chaffee worked as a Gemini capsule communicator. He also researched flight control communications systems, instrumentation systems, and attitude and translation control systems for the Apollo Branch of the Astronaut office. On March 21, 1966, he was selected as pilot for the first 3-man Apollo flight. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Va.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040127apollohills.jpg
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040127apollohills.jpg
Ma hai postato uguale nei due thread? :wtf:
Ci sono notizie sullo stato dello Spirit? Io non ne ho trovate...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Ma hai postato uguale nei due thread?
ehm, si... :fagiano:
Ci sono notizie sullo stato dello Spirit? Io non ne ho trovate...
Niente novità per ora... aspettiamo il briefing alle 6 pm...
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
ehm, si... :fagiano:
:rotfl: 'sta faccia mi fa sempre spataccare... :D
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2004
Working as space-age surgeons 100 million miles away, ground controllers are trying to precisely pinpoint the software glitch that halted the Mars rover Spirit's mission to explore Gusev Crater last Wednesday. If successful, officials say the robot geologist could be out of recovery and back at work early next week. Read our full story below...
Photo received from recovering Spirit rover
BY JUSTIN RAY
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: January 28, 2004
Working as space-age surgeons 100 million miles away, ground controllers are trying to precisely pinpoint the software glitch that halted the Mars rover Spirit's mission to explore Gusev Crater last Wednesday. If successful, officials say the robot geologist could be out of recovery and back at work early next week.
In a promising development late today, Mission Control released the first photograph taken by Spirit since the rover's computer problems began. It shows the rover's science arm reaching out to examine a pyramid-shaped rock nicknamed Adirondack.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040128spirit.jpg
Spirit took this image on January 28 and relayed it to Earth, the first picture from the rover since problems began a week earlier. Credit: NASA/JPL
As seen by the rover's front-facing hazard-avoidance camera, the arm remains where it was on the morning of Sol 18 when things began to go awry. The German Mossbauer Spectrometer instrument is seated over the rock in a search for iron-bearing minerals.
After finishing the Mossbauer investigations, the arm was supposed to use the Rock Abrasion Tool to scratch away part of Adirondack's exterior to create a window inside. But that never occurred.
Spirit's computer system, its flash memory bogged down by too many data files, began a continuous series of resets. Contact with Earth was lost for a time.
Now, controllers have managed to get a better handle on their $400 million spacecraft to find the exact source of the problem and delete old files that aren't needed.
"We are attempting to get a trace from the flight software of the problem and compare that to what we believe it to be, what we have seen in the testbed, make sure we are correct and then move forward in deleting some of the files from our flash file system as a result of understanding the problem," mission manager Jennifer Trosper said Wednesday.
"We are extremely careful because we want to make sure that we don't make an error in deleting files. The we have done file deletes on the spacecraft before, so we've shown that does work. The file directories have all different names and you can convince yourself that you are actually deleting the right thing."
Controllers are trying to run a computer script in the rover to track down the bug. But as of mid-day Wednesday, Trosper said things had not gone according to plan.
"Over the past two days we have had some difficulty getting the script to run on the vehicle. So we are continuing to work that problem.
"The method we are using right now in running this script -- it's kind of a back door into the flight software -- is a fairly surgical technique to identify the exact problem and deal with that little problem.
"If we are not able to successfully complete our surgical technique, we have larger hammers, we like to say, that we can use in order to solve this problem."
By strategically going after the bug, officials hope to preserve useful data still stored in the flash memory for later playback to Earth.
"The intent of the last few days has been to maintain the state of the flash memory. We actually think that the flash is not corrupt. We would like keep the data that's in the flash memory. If we can't do that based on the technique we're trying to use then the next step we have is to actually delete the data that is in the flash memory. We've talked to the science team. Almost all of the data is replaceable."
Science information waiting in the flash memory includes the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer and Mossbauer Spectrometer data collected during studies of the Adirondack and earlier collaborative observations between Spirit and the European Mars Express orbiter.
The preview-like thumbnail images of the joint rover/orbiter research have already been received from Spirit, giving scientists some data to use if the rest can't be recovered.
"Most of the science that was desired to be done can be done from the thumbnail images. The science team has agreed that is adequate for the focus of the experiment we had with Mars Express. Clearly, they would like to get the rest of it down. But in order to get all the data down it would take many sols and we have make a risk trade here and a time trade," Trospher said.
"We will attempt the surgical technique about one more day. If that doesn't work, we will move forward to the less-surgical techniques. And hopefully if we are on the right track we would hope at the earliest be back doing science early next week. If we're not on the right track, it could take longer than that."
A specialized group of engineers were brought together to revive Spirit last week and coax the rover back into action. The control team will be returning to its full size in the coming days, if all goes well.
"The anomaly team right now is probably 15 to 20 people because it is a focused effort on solving this flight software problem. Last night, we went to adding probably another 10 people to move towards doing our nominal timeline. And in a few nights, we will go to the full overnight timeline of staffing with the science and engineering teams in preparation for getting Spirit back on its feet for the science mission."
Bene bene bene, speriamo... :sperem:
Oaichehai
30-01-2004, 12:04
io proporrei GioFX come moderatore della sottosezione di Off Topic, denominata "Missioni Spaziali" :D
Spirit on the Mend: But Despite Delicate Surgery, Far From Fixed
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 03:00 pm ET
29 January 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- The glitch-struck Spirit Mars Exploration Rover is on the mend as computer experts consider delicate electronic surgery on the robot’s software smarts. The hope is fixing the rover and returning it to science-gathering tasks at Gusev Crater by early next week.
There remain nagging worries, however, that what ails Spirit can’t be fully understood. If that’s the case, engineers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are taking slow steps in certifying that Spirit’s twin – Opportunity that now rests halfway around Mars -- won’t run into the same problems.
Engineers have found a way to halt Spirit's computer from resetting itself by putting the spacecraft into a mode that avoids use of flash memory. Flash memory is a type common in many electronic products, such as digital cameras, for storing information even when the power is off.
The Mars Exploration Rovers have random-access memory. But the robots cannot hold onto information during overnight sleep sessions.
Surgery or heavy hammer?
One of the next steps planned for Spirit is to erase from flash memory the files stored there from the spacecraft's cruise to Mars from Earth. That is intended to lessen the task of managing the flash memory files.
This requires care in abstracting the correct files, said JPL's Jennifer Trosper, Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project.
"If we are not able to successfully complete our surgical technique…we have larger hammers that we can use in order to solve this problem," Trosper said yesterday at a morning press briefing here at JPL.
Trosper said that the intent of the last few days has been to maintain the state of the flash memory. "We actually think that the flash is not corrupted. We would like to keep the data that’s in the flash memory," she said.
But if that proves unsuccessful, the next step is to actually delete the data that’s in the flash memory. This heavy hammer approach would wipe out science data collected by Spirit before it ran into trouble on the 18th day of Mars operations.
Risk trade, time trade
Trosper said that, in talks with science teams, almost all of the onboard science data is replaceable.
Of the scientific information that would be lost, however, a coordinated, data-gathering session with Europe’s Mars Express is the most unique, she said. This activity involved Spirit’s instruments looking up while Mars Express science equipment peered down at Gusev Crater.
Trosper said that Spirit did relay thumbnail images from that coordinated look-up/look-down session with Mars Express. "So most of the science that was desired to be done can be done from the thumbnail images," she said.
The science team has agreed that smaller, thumbnail images should prove adequate to glean data that was the focus of the coordinated experiment.
"Clearly they would like to get the rest of it down. But in order to get all of the data down it will take many sols [martian days] We have to make a risk trade and time trade. The science team, I believe, would prefer to have more sols to do new things," Trosper told SPACE.com .
Scene of the crime
Teams of troubleshooting software and hardware experts remain perplexed in trying to find "the scene of the crime" that led to Spirit’s predicament.
If surgical removal of files in flash memory doesn’t solve the problem, reformatting that memory is the next phase, in order to move forward and get back to the science of the mission.
"We can muck around with this thing for a while, clearly. There’s something that we don’t understanding about the problem," Trosper said. It’s also entirely possible that the "heavy hammer" approach of reformatting won’t do exactly what is expected.
By going down the pathway of reformatting the flash memory, all evidence of what happened onboard Spirit would be destroyed.
On the other hand, all that evidence may have already been destroyed after the initial reset, Trosper said. "We just need to weigh the risks against the time it would take to do some of these things and get back on track."
Don’t go there mode
Trosper said that there is a suspicion as to where Spirit’s self-thinking problems occur. "We believe that the flash memory is fine. But it might be that the only way we can get beyond this is just to wipe that flash memory clean," she said.
The good news, Trosper said, is that Spirit’s mission can be done in the state the robot is in right now.
The rover could be hardwired in a "don’t go there" mode of thinking. The outcome of this approach would be that Spirit carries out a more restrictive start-stop type of mission, but still yield a wealth of science during long-distance roving.
"We’re still very mindful of the fact that Spirit is out there and many of us on the team want to get back into that investigation and try and solve the puzzles of Gusev," said Jim Bell, Payload Element Lead for the Panoramic Camera from Cornell University.
Spirit Rover Regains Science Capability
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 10:45 pm ET
30 January 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- Software engineers here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have been successful in restoring Spirit’s ability to conduct science. Work is still underway to fully characterize the computer hiccups that the robot experienced over a week ago.
The plan now is to delete from the rover’s flash memory loads of information stored before its landing in Gusev Crater. Once that task is done, engineers reported here today that Spirit should then resume its day-to-day workload in normal mode and make use of flash memory.
Computer experts remain unsure of exactly why the robot went into its computerized tantrum. However, at the same time, they are now confident they are on target to identify and rid the robot of the malady.
Still tinkering with software
Mark Adler, JPL Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) program said team members are hopeful to resume normal operations of Spirit. Part of that process is reformatting the robot’s flash memory.
"The seats in mission control are never cold," Adler said during a press briefing today here at JPL.
And while engineers continue to tinker with Spirit’s software, the rover sent back its first new science data since being crippled by computer troubles.
On Thursday, it took and transmitted panoramic camera images at Gusev Crater, including snapshots of two light-colored rocks, nicknamed Cake and Blanco. Scientists are considering those rocks as possible targets for up-close examination after Spirit finishes examination of the rock called Adirondack over the next few days.
Adirondack: volcanic basalt
Bodo Bernhardt, MER Science Team Member from the University of Mainz, Germany, proudly displayed the first spectrum ever taken of a rock on another planet.
The data was accumulated prior to the rover’s computer problems using the German-provided Mössbauer spectrometer. Twelve hours and twenty-nine minutes of data was collected in studying the martian rock nicknamed Adirondack, Bernhardt told SPACE.com .
"There is no doubt what we see here," Bernhardt said.
Dick Morris, MER Science Team member from the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas said the mineral makeup of Adirondack include olivine, pyroxene and magnetite. That composition is common in volcanic basalt rocks on Earth.
"On Earth, olivine-bearing basalt is one of the most common kinds of rock that we find," Morris said. On Mars, what that type of rock will tell or not explain about the history of Gusev Crater remains to be seen.
If I had a hammer
Spirit also returned microscopic images of the football-sized rock.
Ray Arvidson, MER Deputy Principal Investigator from Washington University in St. Louis said those images suggest Adirondack is a hard, very fine-grain crystalline rock.
"If you were a geologist on Mars…and had a hammer and whacked that rock, it would ring," Arvidson explained.
Given Spirit’s overall health, scientists want to pick up where they left off due to onboard software glitches. They’ll use the robot’s Rock Abrasion Tool – the RAT -- to grind the weathered surface off of a small area on Adirondack and inspect its interior with microscope and spectrometers.
"There’s a lot of unfinished business with Adirondack," JPL’s Adler told SPACE.com . "Then we’ll start to move out."
Head for the hills
Later plans include the rover wheeling toward a crater now tagged Bonneville -- roughly 820 feet (250 meters) away.
Once at Bonneville, scientists operating Spirit are prepared to search for rocks that may have been excavated from below the surface and tossed outward by the impact that dug the crater.
If Spirit can rove up to the crater’s rim, outcrops in the crater walls can be scanned by the robot’s Panoramic Camera and its Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES), an instrument that sees infrared radiation emitted by objects.
Spirit would then "turn and head for the hills" to the southeast, Arvidson said. "We may not get there, but we’ll get more and more high-resolution views with the Panoramic Camera and the Mini-TES in terms of trying to understand the mineralogy," he said.
"I think the science for spirit is just beginning," Arvidson concluded.
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_update_040130.html
Dov'era quello che diceva "ecco, alla fine dello spirit non resteranno altro che delle belle foto e niente piu'"? Aspettavo tanto per fargli un :ciapet: :D
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2004
A week-and-a-half after falling ill to computer woes, NASA on Sunday declared its Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was healthy again.
"We have confirmed that Spirit is booting up normally. Tomorrow we'll be doing some preventive maintenance," mission manager Mark Adler said.
Thousands of files deleted on Spirit to fix computer trouble
BY SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 1, 2004
A week-and-a-half after falling ill to computer woes, NASA on Sunday declared its Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was healthy again.
"We have confirmed that Spirit is booting up normally. Tomorrow we'll be doing some preventive maintenance," mission manager Mark Adler reported Sunday.
Controllers worked to fix the computer ailment afflicting Spirit by purging thousands of data files from its flash memory. The no-longer-needed files piled up on the rover and prevented its computer system from successfully accessing the flash memory, triggering Spirit's computer to reset itself over and over again.
The flash memory stores engineering and scientific data even when the power is turned off, similar to electronic products like digital cameras.
Many of the tossed files were left over from the spacecraft's cruise to Mars.
A scan of the flash memory was performed late last week, providing engineers important diagnostic information, Adler said.
"We are now able to tell that when we mount the flash memory, it does in fact take a lot of the system RAM in the process. In fact, more system RAM than is available. So that's helping confirm the theory we had that the reason the restarts were hanging up was because we were running out of memory when we are trying to mount the flash memory," he explained during a news conference Friday.
Contact with Spirit was lost after the trouble began on Wednesday, January 21. Wrestling to regain control of the craft, engineers developed a plan to put the rover into a "cripple" operating mode that didn't use the flash memory.
With the file deletions completed, Spirit's computer has been "stable" while working in the standard mode with access to the flash memory.
"To be safe, we want to reformat the flash and start again with a clean slate," Adler said Sunday.
Monday's reformatting will erase everything stored in the flash file system and install a clean version of the flight software.
In preparation for that reformatting, Spirit was expected on Sunday to transmit priority data remaining in the flash memory. The information included data from atmospheric observations made in mid-January when the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter flew overhead.
Engineers say the flash may need to be reformatted every one-to-two weeks to prevent further trouble. Similar measures are likely for sister-rover Opportunity.
In the upcoming days, Spirit will finish the study of its first rock, nicknamed Adirondack. The Rock Abrasion Tool will be used to scrub off the rock's surface to give the science instruments a window into Adirondack's interior.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040201microscopic.jpg
This close-up look at Adirondack was captured by Spirit's microscopic imager. This is the first-ever microscopic image of a rock on another planet. Credit: NASA/JPL/US Geological Survey
Spirit's Mossbauer Spectrometer made readings of the pyramid-shaped, football-sized rock's composition and the microscopic imager snapped extremely close-up views prior to the computer problems. That data was finally transmitted to Earth late last week.
"If you had a hammer and whacked that rock, it would ring," said Ray Arvidson, rover deputy principal investigator.
Adirondack is a hard, crystalline rock that contains olivine, pyroxene and magnetite minerals. Researchers say that composition is common in Earth's volcanic basalt rocks. It isn't the proof of past water on Mars that the rovers were sent to find.
"Adirondack seems to be a good, hard volcanic rock," Arvidson said. "That suggests to us that we may be looking at material either excavated from below by craters, or broken out lava flows or transported in. It's not the kind of smoking gun evidence that we are looking for in terms of climatic history."
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040201cakeblanco.jpg
Two of Spirit's potential target rocks, which are near the rock called Adirondack, are seen here. The rock on the left has been named "Cake," and the white rock on the right has been named "Blanco." Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Next, Spirit will drive to a nearby light-colored rock for study. Future plans call for the rover to head toward a crater, nicknamed Bonneville, about 820 feet away to study rocks thrown outward by the crater-forming impact.
"I suspect what we will do is take a look at some of these so-called white rocks that might be dusted basaltic rocks. If they don't look interesting, as quickly as possible do a traverse up to Bonneville Crater," Arvidson said.
Nearing the one-month mark of its planned three-month mission on Mars, Spirit is just beginning its science work. Officials are quick to point out the rover's wheels won't fall off when the 90-day primary mission period ends, giving hope that the craft will continue to explore in an extended life.
"We have gone through a third of our warranty, I guess, on the mission. But we think we have quite a few more months to go. I expect once we get the vehicle back in operation we will make pretty rapid progress in getting through the science objectives that we have in sight," Adler told reporters.
ma insomma che era successo in parole povere allo spirit ?
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
ma insomma che era successo in parole povere allo spirit ?
La memoria flash si era riempita e il computer era andato in fault mode perchè non riusciva più a scriverci. Adesso l'hanno cancellata e dovranno rifarlo ogni due settimane per evitare che si riempia.
Originariamente inviato da gpc
La memoria flash si era riempita e il computer era andato in fault mode perchè non riusciva più a scriverci. Adesso l'hanno cancellata e dovranno rifarlo ogni due settimane per evitare che si riempia.
In realtà quando scrive sulla flash (ricordo che vi è gran parte del software di volo) si è scoperto che tende a saturare la RAM, e per questo motivo in condizione di flash piena rebootava senza motivo.
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
In realtà quando scrive sulla flash (ricordo che vi è gran parte del software di volo) si è scoperto che tende a saturare la RAM, e per questo motivo in condizione di flash piena rebootava senza motivo.
:wtf: io ho capito diversamente... cioè, ho letto anche io che centrava in qualche modo la RAM, ma mi pareva di aver capito che quando la Flash si riempiva si saturava anche la ram... boh... dopo me lo rileggo meglio...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
:wtf: io ho capito diversamente... cioè, ho letto anche io che centrava in qualche modo la RAM, ma mi pareva di aver capito che quando la Flash si riempiva si saturava anche la ram... boh... dopo me lo rileggo meglio...
Esatto, in condizione di flash in saturazione veniva usata troppa RAM, che costringeva il computer a riavviarsi perchè considerava il problema ciritico e quindi impostava automaticamnte il "fault mode".
NASA Works on Mars Spirit Rover Computer Problem
By Andrew Bridges
Associated Press Science Writer
posted: 07:30 am ET
04 February 2004
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- The Mars rover Spirit briefly resumed science operations before NASA once again halted the work to finish correcting a computer memory problem that has stymied the wheeled robot's mission.
Mission officials had hoped the rover would brush off and examine a rock that it has faced since Jan. 18, but ongoing software problems forced engineers to delay gathering the data until Thursday, a day after they planned to reformat the rover's flash memory.
"We decided it would be better to not try new things until we got the flash reformatted," deputy project manager Richard Cook told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, followed three weeks later by its twin, Opportunity, on the opposite side of the Red Planet. In the meantime Spirit was suddenly crippled by a problem with its flash memory.
"We're just trying to get Spirit back to nominal operations, so we can have two missions operating in parallel," project manager Pete Theisinger said.
Opportunity was continuing to work well, taking microscopic photographs of soil that scientists believe could contain evidence the dry planet once was a wetter world capable of sustaining life.
The pictures, released Tuesday, show a coin-sized patch of grainy soil, peppered with what look like minute pebbles. Opportunity captured the images with its microscopic imager, one of four instruments at the end of its robotic arm.
Opportunity also began a 24-hour analysis of the tiny patch of soil, this time using its Mossbauer spectrometer. The German-built instrument measures the composition and abundance of iron-bearing minerals.
Scientists hope the spectrometer can provide the second eureka moment of Opportunity's mission. Within days of landing, Opportunity used another instrument, its mini-thermal emissions spectrometer, to discover an iron-rich mineral called gray hematite at its landing site. Preliminary measurements suggest the mineral is of a variety that forms in liquid water, providing the first hint that the site once was wet.
NASA launched the $820 million pair of rovers to find geological evidence of past water activity on Mars.
Scientists are now eager to learn if the Mossbauer can reveal the presence of either of two other iron-bearing minerals, goethite and magnetite. Finding one or the other should confirm or deny their hypothesis.
Finding goethite, named for the German poet Goethe, would point to a watery origin for both it and the previously discovered hematite.
Otherwise, if Opportunity discovers magnetite in the soil, that would suggest that it and the hematite formed from iron-rich volcanic lava. The process does not require water.
NASA expected the Mossbauer results early Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the space agency would release them to the public.
"I'm waiting for it, too, because I want to know it says," Theisinger said of the Mossbauer results.
NASA plans to continue hammering away at Mars throughout the decade.
La politica ti fa male... hai postato lo stesso articolo :D
Originariamente inviato da gpc
La politica ti fa male... hai postato lo stesso articolo :D
No, è che da qualche giorno a questa parte HU si è trasformato in una vecchia caffettiera (grazie davide :muro: )... avevo visto il tuo articolo e così o fermato l'inserimento, ma si vede che se l'è magnato lo stesso... :D
Certo che noto un buon rallentamento delle notizie e delle foto dai primi giorni, eh... :(
.......anche perchè ho bisogno di un nuovo sfondo per windows e le foto finora non sono quelle che voglio :sofico: ...
...a proposito, non mi ricordo in quale dei 7435 thread che hai aperto sulle missioni spaziali :D qualcuno, Jumper se non mi sbaglio, aveva postato una foto "colorata" seguendo delle istruzioni trovate da qualche parte... dov'erano che mi sarebbero molto utili? C'è una foto che mi piace ma è in bianco e nero e la vorrei a colori... almeno per provare... ho paciugato un po' con i filtri RGB ma il risultato non mi ha soddisfatto...
Spirit Rover Status: Spirit's Surgery Successful!
Spirit woke up earlier than normal today at 6 a.m. local Mars time to the tune of Surfari's "Wipe Out" in order to prepare for its memory "surgery." Engineers ended the memory overload problem today by erasing and reformatting the flash file system. The operation was a success, and the patient is doing very well. Spirit is scheduled to brush off any loose dust on the rock Adirondack tomorrow to prepare for the first exciting grinding event with the rock abrasion tool this weekend, which may reveal historical clues about the rock's formation and the past environment on Mars.
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Certo che noto un buon rallentamento delle notizie e delle foto dai primi giorni, eh... :(
Si appunto :confused:
Perchè sento puzza di flop ? :rolleyes:
Certo che vedere spesi tali somme di denaro per far fare 10 metri ad un robot su un pianeta fa impressione, con tutta la gente che non ha manco una casa ... :O
Originariamente inviato da Maury
Si appunto :confused:
Perchè sento puzza di flop ? :rolleyes:
Certo che vedere spesi tali somme di denaro per far fare 10 metri ad un robot su un pianeta fa impressione, con tutta la gente che non ha manco una casa ... :O
Oddio ho pronunciato la frase sbagliata, adesso inizieranno tutti a sentire odore di "flop", appunto, di cospirazione, di macchinazioni per nascondere la realtà scomoda... :nono: :muro:
Allora mi rispondo da solo: lo Spirit è sotto manutenzione, con Opportunity ci vanno piano per evitare gli stessi problemi dello Spirit, e se leggi quello che ho postato stanno lavorando entrambi e ci sono anche i progetti per i giorni successivi.
E per favore risparmiamoci lo squallido pietismo del "tanti soldi nello spazio, così pochi sulla terra" quando solo in Italia dietro una cazzata come il calcio circolano cifre da manovra economica. PER FAVORE...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Oddio ho pronunciato la frase sbagliata, adesso inizieranno tutti a sentire odore di "flop", appunto, di cospirazione, di macchinazioni per nascondere la realtà scomoda... :nono: :muro:
Allora mi rispondo da solo: lo Spirit è sotto manutenzione, con Opportunity ci vanno piano per evitare gli stessi problemi dello Spirit, e se leggi quello che ho postato stanno lavorando entrambi e ci sono anche i progetti per i giorni successivi.
E per favore risparmiamoci lo squallido pietismo del "tanti soldi nello spazio, così pochi sulla terra" quando solo in Italia dietro una cazzata come il calcio circolano cifre da manovra economica. PER FAVORE...
Che sia un mezzo flop mi balena in mente già da qualche giorno, siamo passati dai brindisi in diretta al silenzio più assoluto, manutenzione si manutenzione no.
Di che pietismo stai parlando ? Con tutto il rispetto per la scienza e le scoperte ... ma chi se ne frega se su marte c'è l'acqua ? Su Marte non c'è un caz@@ ;)
Viviamo sulla terra no ? e ci resteremo per l'eternità, altro che basi spaziali alla Star Trek, spendiamo i miliardi di dollari in modo costruttivo, magari cominicamo a dare le case alle persone che da anni vivono in container causa calamità. :cool:
Se tu vivessi la loro esperienza t'incazzeresti davanti a questi sprechi.
Originariamente inviato da Maury
Che sia un mezzo flop mi balena in mente già da qualche giorno, siamo passati dai brindisi in diretta al silenzio più assoluto, manutenzione si manutenzione no.
E allora di che vuoi discutere? Le tue conclusioni le hai già raggiunte...
Di che pietismo stai parlando ? Con tutto il rispetto per la scienza e le scoperte ... ma chi se ne frega se su marte c'è l'acqua ? Su Marte non c'è un caz@@ ;)
Viviamo sulla terra no ? e ci resteremo per l'eternità, altro che basi spaziali alla Star Trek, spendiamo i miliardi di dollari in modo costruttivo, magari cominicamo a dare le case alle persone che da anni vivono in container causa calamità. :cool:
Allora piantiamola di pagare miliardi ad un coglione che non sa nemmeno parlare per correre dietro ad una palla e usiamo questi soldi per far andare a scuola la gente. O non spendiamo i soldi di Tele+ per guardare della gente strapagata per correre dietro ad un pallone e diamoli in beneficienza.
Se tu vivessi la loro esperienza t'incazzeresti davanti a questi sprechi.
Io m'incazzo di questa superficialità: la ricerca scientifica porta frutti nella vita di tutti i giorni, anche quella spaziale, e rappresenta il futuro dell'umanità, e mentre ci sono fior fiore di soldi bruciati ogni giorni in cazzate che non servono proprio a nulla, si viene a fare la morale sulla ricerca spaziale... ma per favore... :nono:
Originariamente inviato da gpc
...a proposito, non mi ricordo in quale dei 7435 thread che hai aperto sulle missioni spaziali :D qualcuno, Jumper se non mi sbaglio, aveva postato una foto "colorata" seguendo delle istruzioni trovate da qualche parte... dov'erano che mi sarebbero molto utili? C'è una foto che mi piace ma è in bianco e nero e la vorrei a colori... almeno per provare... ho paciugato un po' con i filtri RGB ma il risultato non mi ha soddisfatto...
http://www.atsnn.com/story/30048.html
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
http://www.atsnn.com/story/30048.html
Mazza che papiro...
Maury, se ne parla poco per due motivi: primo perchè stanno ancora lavorando su Spirit per evitare che si ripeta lo stesso serio problema, e lo stesso faranno con il secondo rover, secondo perchè ai media interessano le cose eccitanti dei primi giorni, le notizie sensazionali, poco gliene frega del resto della missione (come tutte le altre) e delle notizie sulle attività scientifiche...
X gpc
L'esempio che fai sul calciatore è totalmente fuori luogo, i soldi per pagarlo non li tiri fuori te ma gli sponsor e la società. I soldi investiti dall'America per questa missione sono finanziamenti dello stato e questi soldi arrivano dritti dritti dalle tasche dei contribuenti.
Dopo i primi risultati positivi il Sig. r Bush ha pensato bene di cavalcare l'onda in vista delle prossime elezioni, ed ecco spuntare dal nulla un'altra valanga di miliardi. La concquista dello spazio ha dietro ragioni plitiche, questo da sempre...
La ricerca scientifica è importante, ma siamo sicuri che a noi terresti interessi sapere se su marte ci sia o ci sia stata l'acqua ?
E' vero che ci sono tante altre perdite economiche nella ns società, ma in questo caso raggiunge delle cifre quasi mostruose, e per cosa ?
Originariamente inviato da Maury
X gpc
L'esempio che fai sul calciatore è totalmente fuori luogo, i soldi per pagarlo non li tiri fuori te ma gli sponsor e la società.
E loro che fanno? Li stampano? No, glieli danno indirettamente sempre i cittadini, che vanno a vedere le partite, pagano gli abbonamenti alle squadre, alle TV, etc.
Comodo far sembrare che tutto dipenda sempre dagli altri...
I soldi investiti dall'America per questa missione sono finanziamenti dello stato e questi soldi arrivano dritti dritti dalle tasche dei contribuenti.
Come dicevo, come gli altri.
Dopo i primi risultati positivi il Sig. r Bush ha pensato bene di cavalcare l'onda in vista delle prossime elezioni, ed ecco spuntare dal nulla un'altra valanga di miliardi. La concquista dello spazio ha dietro ragioni plitiche, questo da sempre...
E allora?
La ricerca scientifica è importante, ma siamo sicuri che a noi terresti interessi sapere se su marte ci sia o ci sia stata l'acqua ?
E' vero che ci sono tante altre perdite economiche nella ns società, ma in questo caso raggiunge delle cifre quasi mostruose, e per cosa ?
Guarda che la cifra spesa per questa missione è minore dello stipendio di un calciatore... :nono:
Comunque a me e a chi ha a cuore il futuro della ricerca spaziale interessa eccome sapere com'è marte.
Ognuno si tiene la sua idea, no prob :)
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2004
1605 GMT (11:05 a.m. EST)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that yesterday's erasing and reformatting of Spirit's flash file system was successfully completed. The rover will get back into its science game plan today, brushing the dust off its first rock and using the science instruments for further investigation.
jumpermax
06-02-2004, 00:28
Originariamente inviato da gpc
.......anche perchè ho bisogno di un nuovo sfondo per windows e le foto finora non sono quelle che voglio :sofico: ...
...a proposito, non mi ricordo in quale dei 7435 thread che hai aperto sulle missioni spaziali :D qualcuno, Jumper se non mi sbaglio, aveva postato una foto "colorata" seguendo delle istruzioni trovate da qualche parte... dov'erano che mi sarebbero molto utili? C'è una foto che mi piace ma è in bianco e nero e la vorrei a colori... almeno per provare... ho paciugato un po' con i filtri RGB ma il risultato non mi ha soddisfatto...
In estrema sintesi se non hai voglia di leggerti il papiro: non basta avere una foto, ce ne vogliono almeno 3. Le immagini infatti vengono riprese con vari filtri, il rosso se non rocordo male è L2 od L4 il verde è L5 il blu è L6. In questo modo hai l'immagine nei tre colori fondamentali. Il difficile è capire come funziona fotoshop coi canali... io ci ho perso un sacco di tempo non è così facile!
duchetto
06-02-2004, 00:31
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2004
1605 GMT (11:05 a.m. EST)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that yesterday's erasing and reformatting of Spirit's flash file system was successfully completed. The rover will get back into its science game plan today, brushing the dust off its first rock and using the science instruments for further investigation.
finalmente:)
jumpermax
06-02-2004, 00:41
Originariamente inviato da Maury
Che sia un mezzo flop mi balena in mente già da qualche giorno, siamo passati dai brindisi in diretta al silenzio più assoluto, manutenzione si manutenzione no.
Di che pietismo stai parlando ? Con tutto il rispetto per la scienza e le scoperte ... ma chi se ne frega se su marte c'è l'acqua ? Su Marte non c'è un caz@@ ;)
Viviamo sulla terra no ? e ci resteremo per l'eternità, altro che basi spaziali alla Star Trek, spendiamo i miliardi di dollari in modo costruttivo, magari cominicamo a dare le case alle persone che da anni vivono in container causa calamità. :cool:
Se tu vivessi la loro esperienza t'incazzeresti davanti a questi sprechi.
Sono proprio ragionamenti demagogici e totalmente antiscientifici i tuoi.
Primo nessuno sa mai quando si scopre qualcosa di nuovo se ci saranno applicazioni pratiche o meno. La storia è piena seppa di bellissime scoperte perfettamente inutili che si rivelano cruciali dopo qualche anno o qualche secolo. Secondo la scienza se permetti guarda anche un tantino oltre. L'uomo da millenni scruta il cielo cercando di capire dove si trova, siamo passati dalla terra al centro dell'universo e la perfezione dei cieli alle teorie sul big bang in meno di 5 secoli. E' questa scintilla che ci distingue dal resto del regno animale, "fatti non fummo per viver come bruti ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza" come diceva Dante. Quindi direi che di tutti gli sprechi che la nostra società produce, venirsela a prendere con quel po' che si investe in ricerca mi sembra miope, quasi medioevale come concetto.
Sulla Terra certo, con mentalità come questa ci resteremo, certamente non per l'eternità... è vero qualche miliardo di anni il sole dovrebbe durare (chi ce lo dice? quegli inutili soldi spesi per la ricerca spaziale) ma ci sono tantissimi altri fenomeni totalmente distruttivi che potrebbero cancellarci dal pianeta. Giusto per dirne uno basta un asteroide delle giuste dimensioni... ma che ci importa di questo no? Soldi buttati immagino... :rolleyes:
Negadrive
06-02-2004, 01:49
jumper dice bene e poi i satelliti artificiali servono già adesso, no?
Riguardo alle spese, sono spiccioli, rispetto alle spese militari USA (attualmente 400 miliardi di $ all'anno).
Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
In estrema sintesi se non hai voglia di leggerti il papiro: non basta avere una foto, ce ne vogliono almeno 3. Le immagini infatti vengono riprese con vari filtri, il rosso se non rocordo male è L2 od L4 il verde è L5 il blu è L6. In questo modo hai l'immagine nei tre colori fondamentali. Il difficile è capire come funziona fotoshop coi canali... io ci ho perso un sacco di tempo non è così facile!
Sì sì, grazie, ho letto... e ovviamente della foto che mi interessa non ci sono le tre immagini... :muro:
Comunque se ti interessa io uso Paint Shop Pro, efficacissimo e molto semplice da usare (la funzione per creare immagini partendo dai layer RGB o altri l'ho trovata subito, tra l'altro...). ;)
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2004
1820 GMT (1:20 p.m. EST)
Spirit's five-minute brushing of the rock Adirondack has yielded interesting results. The brush can be seen here (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/feb-06-2004/RAT_on_Adirondack_color-med.jpg).
A before-brushing image of the rock is here (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/feb-06-2004/ppm_p2_byte-A034R1-med.jpg) and this is the post-brushing view (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/feb-06-2004/ppm_ppm_byte-A034R1-med.jpg).
A microscopic view of the brushed area is also available (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/feb-06-2004/MI_Adiron_Sol33_full-med.jpg).
Meanwhile, Opportunity completed another drive today. It didn't quite reach the rock outcrop, so a 30-40 centimeter drive is scheduled for tomorrow before science investigations can begin this weekend, mission manager Matt Wallace says.
Spirit readies for long drive after rock cleaning, grinding
BY SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 6, 2004
Whipping half-inch stainless steel bristles against a pyramid-shaped rock, the Spirit rover has performed "the greatest interplanetary brushing of all time," a scientist joked Friday with the unveiling the latest images from Mars.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040206brush.jpg
The brush on Spirit's instrument arm is shown in this image with Adirondack as backdrop. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
The rock, nicknamed Adirondack, is the first rock that Spirit has examined since landing on Mars a month ago. Sidelined by computer memory trouble that is now fully resolved, the rover has resumed its science activities.
"I think I can say this morning, with as much certainty as we can say anything here, that our patient is healed. We are very excited about that!" mission manager Jennifer Trosper told reporters at Friday's rover status briefing.
On Wednesday, controllers spent about three hours erasing the flash memory and an hour reformatting and resetting the vehicle.
"All indications were that worked extremely well. Of course it was nerve-racking...In the end, the spacecraft did what we wanted it to do and it performed perfectly. It's in great health right now," Trosper said.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040206postbrush.jpg
This image taken by the panoramic camera shows the post-brushing view of Adirondack. The cleaned patch is clearly visible. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
The brush in the rover's Rock Abrasion Tool, or RAT, was used for five minutes Thursday to remove dust from the outer surface of Adirondack.
Scientists weren't expecting to see much change in the rock's appearance since it seemed clean. Instead, the brushing created a dark blotch on Adirondack.
"I didn't expect much of a difference. This is a big surprise," said Stephen Gorevan of Honeybee Robotics, lead scientist for the RATs. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the greatest interplanetary brushing of all time."
"To our surprise, there was quite a bit of dust on the surface," said Ken Herkenhoff, lead scientist for the rovers' Microscopic Imagers. "Remember, we selected this rock target because it looked relatively dust-free."
"The material on the surface posed literally no resistance," Gorevan said. "We saw almost no effort in the motor telemetry that said this material offered any resistance whatsoever."
The close-up images show "a bunch of details in here we are just beginning to understand," Herkenhoff said.
"We are seeing...mineral crystals on the rock surface. Of course as we continue to abrade the surface with the RAT, we are very excited to see what that will show us."
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040206mirock.jpg
This microscopic image shows a cleaned off portion of the rock dubbed Adirondack. The observed area is 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS
Late Friday, Spirit was expected to use the RAT to grind into Adirondack, which is a hard, volcanic rock. The device's diamond teeth will carve out a hole so the rover's science instruments can examine the minerals and elemental composition of the rock's interior.
Once finished with Adirondack, Spirit could begin driving Saturday, bound for a large crater in the distance.
"We are kind of on the west-southwest side of the lander. We are going to drive around the lander and head northeast for Bonneville Crater. We do believe we will be able to get there," Trosper said.
"We're having strategy discussions now on how we would use the capabilities of the vehicle in terms of traversing and auto-navigation in order to get us there.
"Our initial thinking is we will start with being able to just designate traverses from the imaging. So we will tell the rover exactly were to drive, but at the end of that traverse we will turn on our auto-navigation software and allow the rover, for a meter or so just to check out the auto-navigation software, to determine how to get to the next way point."
As Spirit continues to journey across Gusev Crater, controllers expect to expand the distance it can travel in each increment.
"We will start in those baby steps and each sol (day) that we are driving, we will probably expand the numbers," Trosper said. "There is going to be a lot of driving on Spirit."
Over the course of the long trip, the rover will make a few extended stops to perform science investigations along the route.
"We have worked with the science team and we've talked about four or five different places that we might stop and do some specific science with the (arm) as we go. That's our plan, long-term."
Imagery indicates that there will be a path for the rover to actually reach the crater rim.
"Of course we will know that better as we move closer," Trosper said.
Un'interessante articolo del JPL sulle immagini di Spirit e Opportunity:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/spirit/a12_20040128.html
Wallpapers:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/mer/
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Wallpapers:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/mer/
Hm, no, queste non mi piacciono.
Io cerco qualcosa come questa (che era quella che avevo cercato di colorare):
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040128a/sol25-flhaz.jpg
dove si veda qualcosa anche del rover... è un peccato che non abbiano dotato anche la base fissa di una macchina fotografica come con il Pathfinder, le foto dove si vedeva il macchinozzo appoggiato al sasso per me erano fantastiche...
Originariamente inviato da gpc
dove si veda qualcosa anche del rover... è un peccato che non abbiano dotato anche la base fissa di una macchina fotografica come con il Pathfinder
sarebbe stato molto più complesso e costoso, e una ridondanza senza molto senso... altri pannelli solari, un altro computer, pancam, radio, ecc...
le foto dove si vedeva il macchinozzo appoggiato al sasso per me erano fantastiche...
tipo questa?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/rover.cfm
Wallpapers:
JPL (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/)
ESA Science (http://www.google.it/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMXC1T1VED_index_0.html&e=747)
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
sarebbe stato molto più complesso e costoso, e una ridondanza senza molto senso... altri pannelli solari, un altro computer, pancam, radio, ecc...
Sì sì, dicevo per dire...
tipo questa?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper/rover.cfm
Fuochino :D
La mia preferita era questa, che era tra l'altro il mio sfondo...
http://gpaolo79.interfree.it/pathfinder.jpg
Frank1962
07-02-2004, 18:57
si... veramente carina! :D
ninja750
07-02-2004, 19:49
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2004
1605 GMT (11:05 a.m. EST)
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory reports that yesterday's erasing and reformatting of Spirit's flash file system was successfully completed. The rover will get back into its science game plan today, brushing the dust off its first rock and using the science instruments for further investigation.
Aaahh lo dico sempre io che per rimuovere tutti i mali da un sistema non c'è metodo migliore che un bel formattone !!:D :D :D
jumpermax
07-02-2004, 21:17
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Hm, no, queste non mi piacciono.
Io cerco qualcosa come questa (che era quella che avevo cercato di colorare):
dove si veda qualcosa anche del rover... è un peccato che non abbiano dotato anche la base fissa di una macchina fotografica come con il Pathfinder, le foto dove si vedeva il macchinozzo appoggiato al sasso per me erano fantastiche...
devi andare nella sezione RAW images
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/
Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
devi andare nella sezione RAW images
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/
Si' si', ma non ci sono le tre immagini di quella che cerco io.
Ho fatto la prova del procedimento con le tre foto invece, ed e' venuto bene. Strano, ma bene :D
Adesso non sono col mio computer e non posso mandarla, lo faccio domani, ma probabilmente non ho preso i colori giusti... cioe', la sabbia e' del colore di sempre, ma la roccia ha una sfumatura violetta e ci sono un sacco di sassolini gialli. Boh :D
Comunque domani vedrete... :O
Come promesso:
http://gpaolo79.interfree.it/Marte1RGB.jpg
Che ve ne pare?
Secondo voi i colori sono sbagliati?
'sto sasso comunque mi piace :D
Azzo, guardatevi questa animazione... pare che Spirit abbia problemi con il RAT:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Azzo, guardatevi questa animazione... pare che Spirit abbia problemi con il RAT:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov
Uh? Non ho letto niente riguardo a questo nè sul sito della nasa nè su space.com... :confused:
Adesso guardo il video...
..... :D :D :rotfl: imbroglione :D
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
Azzo, guardatevi questa animazione... pare che Spirit abbia problemi con il RAT:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov
http://www.spammers.it/loll/6.gifhttp://www.spammers.it/loll/6.gif
:D
PS: E' sempre del tipo che cura le animazioni della missione MER per la NASA... chissà quanti soldi ha fatto! :eek: :)
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Come promesso:
Che ve ne pare?
Secondo voi i colori sono sbagliati?
'mazza, han rovato l'oro?
evvai, marte come il klondike...:D
...strano giallo...
Originariamente inviato da ni.jo
'mazza, han rovato l'oro?
evvai, marte come il klondike...:D
...strano giallo...
Ho visto una foto a colori della zona in c'e' il sasso che ho "colorato" io... ehm... devo aver sbagliato qualcosina... :ops2:
:D
How 3-D Works: Mars Revealed by Human-Like Eyes
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
10 February 2004
When geologists first saw pictures of rock outcroppings at the Opportunity landing site on Mars, they thought the mini-cliff was perhaps as tall as a person. Some started calling it the "Great Wall." Then the robot's 3-D cameras, a pair of eyes standing as tall as a person, showed it was all a bluff.
Seen in stereo, the stack of rocks shrunk to the height of a house cat and the public never heard the catchy nickname.
At a time when digital cameras are fueling a renaissance of three-dimensional picture taking on Earth, scientists are using the technology to estimate distances to Martian science targets and size them up from afar. The capability is crucial to making decisions on what objects the rover should visit, how long each would take to reach, and whether the path contains oversized obstacles to avoid.
With two eyes atop its camera mast, the rover's 3-D vision overcomes limits of depth perception that would plague a single-camera setup
No secret
"There’s no secret about making 3-D photographs," wrote Joe Farace in the December issue of Shutterbug magazine. "You make an image as seen by the left eye, then one by the right eye, and then -- here’s the hard part -- use some kind of system to put them together."
Hard or simple, a lot of people don't understand 3-D. Back in June of 2002, Sam Ramada didn't have an answer when his 8-year-old son asked how it worked.
"I'm supposed to have all the answers," Ramada said in a telephone interview last week. "I'm Dad, you know. But I really had no idea."
Two months of research later, he'd figured it out and started Mission 3D (www.mission3-d.com), which makes its own version of glasses as well as kits designed to help any owner of a digital camera do 3-D magic at home.
Ramada's timing could not have been better. Several industry analysts say amateur 3-D photography experienced a comeback last year, spurred both by the availability of inexpensive digital cameras and the summer blockbuster Spy Kids 3-D , said to be the first popular 3-D feature film in decades.
There are various methods for making and viewing 3-D images. In essence, it takes advantage of the separation between two cameras, or one camera that has been moved to take a second picture of a given scene. A triangle of determinable size can be gleaned using as points the two cameras and an object in the distance. When the cameras are our eyes, our brains use the geometry of these triangles to calculate depth, height, or both.
Ramada said human eyes can't judge depth accurately beyond about 30 to 50 feet (9-15 meters) without familiar cues -- objects of known size.
No cues on Mars
"If you are looking at a person in the distance, you can judge how far they are by their size in your field of view," explained Cornell University's Jonathan Joseph, leader of a team that developed the software that interprets 3-D images from the Mars rover's panoramic cameras.
The brain can pick up another clue when some head movement reveals the extent to which an object in the field of view moves -- things farther away move less.
Geologists don't have the innate sense of heights for anything at a Martian landing site they're seeing for the first time. There are no houses, cars or trees. "If we're looking at rocks on Mars, we can't judge," Joseph said.
That led to some misinterpretation when Opportunity first photographed the intriguing rock outcropping at its landing site. At first, scientists thought it was 3 to 6 feet (1-2 meters) tall.
Then with the help of 3-D data they were able to better determine the distance from the rover to the ledge, and the feature's true height became clear. "Instead of a meter or two, it's 10 or 20 centimeters," he said. That's just 4 to 8 inches.
How it works
The panoramic camera, or Pancam, is two devices in one. A pair of digital eyes sits atop a mast that's about the height of a human. Only the left camera is equipped with the filters required to make true-color, "normal" photographs in visible light. (The right camera has the filters needed for multi-color infrared imaging, but it can't make true-color pictures in visible light.)
Both cameras are employed for 3-D images, which are gathered in black-and-white. Joseph explained what's then done back here on Earth to produce the 3-D photos, also called stereoscopic images or anaglyphs.
The image from the left camera is put into the red channel of a software program like Photoshop, which can read the standard red-green-blue (RGB) color scheme known to digital photography experts and printing companies. An image of the same scene from the right camera is put into both the blue and green channels, which together make cyan (a light blue). The two images -- left and right -- are then blended together into one.
The result is a picture that looks largely gray and rather fuzzy, often with a few obvious red and cyan patches jutting this way and that.
A viewer must wear special 3-D glasses to see the glory of the image's depth.
A red filter on the left eye lets only the red light in, absorbing all the other colors of the spectrum. A cyan filter on the right eye lets the cyan in. Two views of one scene are sent to the brain, which processes the result as though it has been viewing the scene with two eyes.
"The brain mixes all the colors," said Ramada of Mission 3D. "It's one of the wonders of the brain."
There's a big difference, though.
A giant's perspective
Instead of the human-eye separation of about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) center-to-center, the Pancam's digital wonders are 11.8 inches (30 centimeters) apart.
Joseph explained that the separation allows researchers to examine the images and, importantly, do simple geometry with the image data, to calculate the distance to objects and their heights, such as the rock ledge studied by Opportunity.
"Just making a stereo anaglyph and looking at it with 3-D glasses, you can still be fooled about the actual size and distance," he said.
In fact because the cameras are farther apart than the human eye, the brain can be quite deceived.
"It either makes you feel like you are a giant person on Mars," Ramada said, "or it makes Mars seem like a small model."
Spirit rover establishes new Mars driving record
BY JUSTIN RAY
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 10, 2004
The rover Spirit drove into the Martian history books Monday night by making the longest single-day traverse on the Red Planet, eclipsing the mark set by Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover in 1997.
Spirit cruised 69.6 feet (21.2 meters), shattering Sojourner's record of 23 feet (7 meters).
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040210spiritdrive.jpg
From Spirit's rear-looking camera, the rover's wheel tracks and lander base are visible during driving on Monday night. Credit: NASA/JPL
"The basic goal was drive as far as they could and see how things went in the time they had. They did very well," mission manager Jim Erickson said of the Spirit rover controllers.
"They used two different types of drives. A blind drive -- a pre-planned with no hazardous avoidance turned on -- for 13 meters. And then they performed a drive with a go-to waypoint."
That second drive instructed the rover to drive from one point to another on its own, making a turn autonomously.
"Everything seemed to go fine there," Erickson said.
Spirit is headed for a large crater in the distance called Bonneville. Exactly how long it will take to reach the target isn't known, but engineers hope the amount of driving will increase each day.
"Tomorrow's plan is further driving. The day after that is driving even further," Erickson said.
"I expect we are going to start out kind of slow -- although 21.2 meters is not that slow -- and built up as we get more experience in long-term driving."
Spirit began roving late Sunday, leaving behind the first rock it examined. The craft moved 21 feet (6.4 meters), and simply drove over the pyramid-shaped Adirondack.
The rover spent several weeks parked in front of Adirondack as the science instruments examined the rock, determining the mineral and elemental composition. The Rock Abrasion Tool then carved a small hole into Adirondack to remove the outer surface.
"It's really opened up a window into the interior of this (rock) that we can use to understand this rock really well," lead scientist Steve Squyres said.
With the cutting complete, the Microscopic Imager, Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer and Mossbauer Spectrometer instruments then examined the RAT hole.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040210spiritmi.jpg
This close-up image taken by the Microscopic Imager onboard Spirit shows Adirondack after a portion of its surface was ground off by the rover's Rock Abrasion Tool. The observed area is 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS
"What you are seeing there is a beautifully cut, almost polished rock surface," Squyres said, referring to the microscopic image. "It looks very, very much like -- in the image -- a volcanic rock, a basalt. And, in fact, when we look at this with the APXS and Mossbauer, we find compelling compositional evidence that, in fact, what we are looking at is a volcanic basaltic rock.
"So the RAT has revealed the interior of this rock. We know what it is -- a piece of volcanic stuff. And it is time to move on."
Cold motor causes Spirit to remain parked for a day
BY JUSTIN RAY
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 11, 2004
A missed communications window caused by a cold antenna motor on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit prevented the robot from racking up any additional distance on its odometer Tuesday night.
"Yesterday was an operational issue day with Spirit. We did not get the morning high-gain antenna pass. As a result of that, we did not get sequences loaded up (into the rover)," project manager Pete Theisinger told reporters in a teleconference today.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040211spiritfront.jpg
Spirit has remained parked since its Monday night workday. It will examine the dune features to its left before continuing to the Bonneville Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL
As the Sun rose for the start of Spirit's 38th workday on Mars, the Pancam Mast Assembly was creating a shadow on the high-gain antenna gimbal motors. The motors have heaters to ensure they are warm enough to move. But the cold temperatures in the shadow were too great for the heaters to overcome, causing the motors to stall when trying to point the lollipop-shaped antenna to face Earth.
"The colder you get, the more current you have put into the motors to get it to move. So we set those limits. Because we were in the shade, we did not set high enough current limits for the motors," Theisinger explained.
"When we first started to do the high-gain antenna session yesterday, we started out by going to a (calibration), which goes to a hard-stop. The way the motor knows it has gone to the hard-stop is it stalls against the hard-stop. Because we had set the current limits so low, it stalled immediately, thought it was at the hard-stop. Then when it continued on with its high-gain antenna session, it was pointed off in a different direction than we expected. So we got no data down.
"We did a high-gain antenna session later in the day when things had warmed up. That went just fine. We looked at all of the telemetry, and everything is just perfect. It was just this failure to understand that we are going to run cold in the morning and we need to either wait till later in the day when the shadow left the actuators or apply more heat with the heater we have.
"We've taken steps to fix that operationally now so we don't have those issues in the future."
Without having the high-gain antenna session in the morning, controllers weren't able to load the day's driving commands into the rover.
"That situation plus diagnosing what situation we had and making sure we were really okay took all of the day. So they chose not to drive yesterday," Theisinger said.
Once the communications trouble began, controllers began troubleshooting to narrow the possible cause.
"You really don't try and prejudge until you get to the end of the story," Theisinger said.
"They got a beep from the low-gain (antenna) and that told them the sequence didn't get in, and it also told them that at least at the time of the beep the telecommunications channel was working just fine. And so they thought maybe they had a high-gain antenna pointing problem.
"They commanded a low-gain session and they got that, and so they knew once again the telecommunications was fine. And that comes down with a whole bunch of fault information, which said we were not in fault protection and there were not fault responses running. So that was a whole bunch of good news. The question then became why did the high-gain antenna session not happen?"
Engineers determined the problem had to be a mis-pointing of the high-gain antenna. Since the rover was not in X-band fault, Spirit didn't know the antenna was facing the wrong direction. In addition, controllers determined that Spirit had marked all of the telemetry as sent, meaning the craft thought it had completed a communications session with Earth using the antenna.
"That got them pretty much focusing on thermal pretty quickly. So I don't think they were too alarmed as they walked through the possible scenarios. They got on the trail pretty quickly."
On the upcoming Sol 39 workday at begins Wednesday evening (U.S. time), Spirit will snap microscopic imaging of tiny dunes to its left and then drive upwards of 25 meters on its continuing trek to Bonneville Crater.
Meanwhile, the Opportunity rover remains healthy as it drives along the bedrock outcropping, taking imagery and science data.
http://www.hinet.hr/funny/clips/1532.zip
:sofico:
Commercial Software Aided Reboot on Mars
By MATTHEW FORDAHL
ALAMEDA, Calif. - It's a PC user's nightmare: You're almost done with a lengthy e-mail, or about to finish a report at the office, and the computer crashes for no apparent reason. It tries to restart but never quite finishes booting. Then it crashes again. And again.
Getting caught in such a loop is frustrating enough on Earth. But imagine what it's like when the computer is more than 100 million miles away on Mars. That's what mission controllers faced when the Mars rover Spirit stopped communicating last month.
Ultimately, the fix that saved Spirit wasn't that different from how a PC would be repaired on Earth. It's just that the folks who have their hardware on Mars _ and the eyes of the world on them _ are better prepared for disaster.
Tech support for an $820 million mission is a cautious affair. Tools to recover from and fix any problem must be built into the system before launch. The systems' behaviors need to be completely understood and predictable.
"Luckily, during the design period, we anticipated that we might get into a situation like this," said Glenn Reeves, who oversees the software aboard the Mars rovers Sprit and Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
For stability, reliability and predictability, mission designers did not bust the budget and design the hardware or software from scratch. Instead, they turned to hardware and software that's been used in space before and has a proven track record on Earth as well.
"The advantage of using commercial software is it's well-known, and it's well deployed," said Mike Deliman, an engineer at Alameda-based Wind River Systems Inc., which made the rovers' operating system. "It has been used throughout the world in hundreds of thousands of applications."
The operating system, VxWorks, has its roots in software developed to help Francis Ford Coppola gain more control over a film editing system. But the developers, David Wilner and Jerry Fiddler, saw a greater potential and eventually formed Wind River, named for the mountains in Wyoming. VxWorks became a formal product in 1987.
The operating system is embedded in systems that control jetliners and atomic colliders, anti-lock braking systems in cars and even heart pacemakers. It's also been used successfully in the Mars Pathfinder lander, Mars Odyssey orbiter and Stardust comet probe.
"These are all things that can't afford to fail," Deliman said.
A key advantage VxWorks has over Microsoft Corp.'s Windows or the Unix operating system is that it is nimble enough to react quickly to any scenario that might crop up.
"If your heart beat goes irregular, you don't want it to take five minutes to figure out that your heartbeat has gone irregular," Deliman said in his office filled with computers, an empty fish tank and a few dog toys. "You want to be able to catch it right off the bat."
That's simply not available yet in Windows or Unix.
"I'm sure you've done things with Windows and perhaps gone off to go get a drink in the fridge, made a sandwich and come back and it's still waiting," Deliman said. "It's similar to Unix. Unix can take its sweet time about getting back to you what you want it to do."
VxWorks operates within only 32 megabytes of random access memory, and parts of it can be modified remotely without having to restart the entire system. (Windows users also can have fixes automatically sent, but restarts are very often required.)
VxWorks also can be tweaked to accommodate different hardware, said Deliman, who started working with JPL while Pathfinder was under development in 1994.
In the rovers, the hardware is a single-board computer called the RAD6000. It was originally developed in the early 1990s by a division of IBM Corp., Air Force Research Labs and NASA's JPL. It's now owned by BAE Systems Inc., of Manassas, Va.
The RAD6000, except for its protection from radiation, is similar to IBM's RS6000 server, which was popular among businesses in the 1990s. Its processor is a predecessor of the PowerPC, used in Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh computers since 1994.
Today, there are 145 RAD6000s running on 77 satellites in space, said Vic Scuderi, manager of space programs at BAE Systems. It's so reliable, there's only one running on each rover. Like VxWorks, it was used aboard Mars Pathfinder and Stardust.
The computer, which costs up to $300,000, runs at a fraction of the speed of today's desktop computers. It also has other limits, such as just 128 megabytes of random access memory.
But Spirit and Opportunity carry more flash memory _ the same type used in digital cameras to store pictures _ than any other spacecraft.
That turned out to be part of the problem that temporarily halted Sprit in its tracks.
All computers, through the operating system, need to keep track of their files, whether they're on a hard disk or, as in the case of the rovers, in flash memory. And each file requires a little bit of memory.
After seven months of cruising between Earth and Mars as well as a couple weeks on the ground, thousands of files accumulated in flash memory, quickly gobbling up the 32 megabytes allocated for the operating system.
After more than two weeks on the ground, Spirit's computer reset itself. Over and over again. From the perspective of controllers on Earth, the device just stopped communicating.
Each time it tried to load its software, it maxed out the available memory, triggering an alarm and another reset. Eventually, the batteries drained, a scenario that activated a setting similar to "Safe Mode" on Windows PCs, where only essential files are loaded at startup.
"When it came up in this diagnostic mode, we started bringing back data, and that's when we figured out what really happened," Deliman said.
Engineers acknowledged that the problem could have been caught in preflight testing, though that would have slowed development of a program already on a tight schedule.
"Consuming all the memory in this vehicle is what we consider to be a very severe error," JPL's Reeves acknowledged. "The software actually behaved exactly as we expected it to."
Molto interessante...
Mi chiedevo una cosa: quanto è previsto che sia il tempo di durata della missione?
Frank1962
16-02-2004, 10:57
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Molto interessante...
Mi chiedevo una cosa: quanto è previsto che sia il tempo di durata della missione?
3 mesi mi pare
Originariamente inviato da gpc
quanto è previsto che sia il tempo di durata della missione?
La missione ha una durata garantita di 90 Sols (giorni marziani), poco più di 3 mesi sulla Terra. Tuttavia è prevedibile che possa estendersi per alcune settimane/mesi (2 o 3), al di là di questa data...
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
La missione ha una durata garantita di 90 Sols (giorni marziani), poco più di 3 mesi sulla Terra. Tuttavia è prevedibile che possa estendersi per alcune settimane/mesi (2 o 3), al di là di questa data...
Speriamo... perchè comunque, a parte una eventuale rottura di qualcosa, l'unico limite dovrebbe essere dato dal fatto che i pannelli solari si riempiono di polvere, no?
duchetto
16-02-2004, 12:24
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Speriamo... perchè comunque, a parte una eventuale rottura di qualcosa, l'unico limite dovrebbe essere dato dal fatto che i pannelli solari si riempiono di polvere, no?
non mi dire che un robot così sofisticato non è provvisto di un semplice tergicristallo per i pannelli solari :mbe:
:sofico:
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Speriamo... perchè comunque, a parte una eventuale rottura di qualcosa, l'unico limite dovrebbe essere dato dal fatto che i pannelli solari si riempiono di polvere, no?
beh, il problema principale è il decadimento delle batterie... dopo il 90 giorno la capacità di carica comincerà a calare progressivamente. A quel punto il WEB (warm electronic box) non sarà più in grado di garantire un adeguato riscaldamento e le componenti smetteranno di funzionare una dopo l'altra, nel momento in cui si superano le soglie minime di funzionamento progettate per il l'hardware.
Originariamente inviato da duchetto
non mi dire che un robot così sofisticato non è provvisto di un semplice tergicristallo per i pannelli solari :mbe:
:sofico:
E' che era programmata una sosta al semaforo con il marziano marocchino per pulire i vetri, ma a quanto pare è stato reimpatriato... :O
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
beh, il problema principale è il decadimento delle batterie... dopo il 90 giorno la capacità di carica comincerà a calare progressivamente. Quando questo accade il WEB (warm electronic box) non garantirà più l'adeguato riscaldamento e le componenti smetteranno di funzionare una dopo l'altra, nel momento in cui si superano le soglie minime di funzionamento progettate per il l'hardware.
orca, non pensavo che il problema fosse delle batterie... ma che batterie usano? E dopo 90 giorni già iniziano a perdere? Che strano... beh però di giorno almeno dovrebbe funzionare lo stesso, no?
Originariamente inviato da gpc
orca, non pensavo che il problema fosse delle batterie... ma che batterie usano? E dopo 90 giorni già iniziano a perdere? Che strano... beh però di giorno almeno dovrebbe funzionare lo stesso, no?
Non ci sono batterie al Li-Mn in grado di lavorare a simili temperature per troppo tempo, senza contare il livello di radiazioni gamma assai meno tollerabile che sulla Terra, altrimenti occorre andare su motori tipo RTG o simili...
Il problema non è il funzionamento di notte, di notte non viene fatto lavorare il rover.. il problema è che se le batterie non hanno la carica entro una soglia minima, il sistema di riscaldamento non riesce a mantenere la temperatura interna del WEB entro le soglie di funzionamento dei componenti elettronici.
2245 GMT (5:45 p.m. EST)
Latest report from Mission Control:
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has scooped a trench with one of its wheels to reveal what is below the surface of a selected patch of soil.
"Yesterday we dug a nice big hole on Mars," said Jeffrey Biesiadecki, a rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The rover alternately pushed soil forward and backward out of the trench with its right front wheel while other wheels held the rover in place. The rover turned slightly between bouts of digging to widen the hole. "We took a patient, gentle approach to digging," Biesiadecki said. The process lasted 22 minutes.
The resulting trench -- the first dug by either Mars Exploration Rover -- is about 50 centimeters (20 inches) long and 10 centimeters (4 inches) deep. "It came out deeper than I expected," said Dr. Rob Sullivan of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., a science-team member who worked closely with engineers to plan the digging.
Two features that caught scientists' attention were the clotty texture of soil in the upper wall of the trench and the brightness of soil on the trench floor, Sullivan said. Researchers look forward to getting more information from observations of the trench planned during the next two or three days using the rover's full set of science instruments.
Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, drove 21.6 meters closer to its target destination of a crater nicknamed "Bonneville" overnight Monday to Tuesday. It has now rolled a total of 108 meters (354 feet) since leaving its lander 34 days ago, surpassing the total distance driven by the Mars Pathfinder mission's Sojourner rover in 1997.
Spirit has also begun using a transmission rate of 256 kilobits per second, double its previous best, said JPL's Richard Cook. Cook became project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project today when the former manager, Peter Theisinger, switched to manage NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, in development for a 2009 launch.
Spirit's drive toward "Bonneville" is based on expectations that the impact that created the crater "would have overturned the stratigraphy and exposed it for our viewing pleasure," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments. That stratigraphy, or arrangement of rock layers, could hold clues to the mission's overriding question -- whether the past environment in the region of Mars where Spirit landed was ever persistently wet and possibly suitable for sustaining life.
Both rovers have returned striking new pictures in recent days. Microscope images of soil along Spirit's path reveal smoothly rounded pebbles. Views from both rovers' navigation cameras looking back toward their now-empty landers show the wheel tracks of the roversÕ travels since leaving the landers.
Each martian day, or "sol" lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. Opportunity begins its 25th sol on Mars at 10:59 p.m. Tuesday, PST. Spirit begins its 46th sol on Mars at 11:17 a.m. Wednesday, Pacific Standard Time. The two rovers are halfway around Mars from each other.
Road trip to Bonneville Crater continues for Spirit
BY JUSTIN RAY
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: February 17, 2004
Proving to be a real Mars hotrod, the Spirit rover has become the most traveled vehicle on the Red Planet, surpassing the distance accumulated by the Pathfinder rover nearly seven years ago.
"We certainly knew that was likely to occur, but it is good to see that it did after about 45 days on the surface," Richard Cook, the newly named Mars Exploration Rover project manager, said Tuesday.
Pete Theisinger, project chief for the past few years, has been selected to manage NASA's nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory mission scheduled for launch in 2009.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040216lander.jpg
Spirit looking behind as its empty lander base and the tracks across the Martian surface. Credit: NASA/JPL
Spirit drove 21.6 meters (70.9 feet) to the north-northeast on Monday night (U.S. time), pushing its odometer to 108 meters (354 feet). The tiny Sojourner rover racked up 102 meters during its mission in 1997.
Spirit is heading to the impact crater nicknamed by scientists as Bonneville. Along the way, the rover is stopping to collect science data on rocks, tiny dunes and soil samples across the wind-swept Martian surface.
"We are doing robotic field geology," says Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator. "We are in the middle of a long set of drives with traverse science where we have started at the landing site and we are moving up to the rim of Bonneville Crater."
Mission officials elected to dispatch Spirit to the crater with the goal of studying rock layers and obtaining information about the planet's history, including the potential of a watery past.
"The idea is the impact crater would have overturned the stratigraphy and exposed it for our viewing pleasure," Arvidson said.
http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040216bonneville.jpg
This mosaic image from Spirit's panoramic camera shows a forward-looking view. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Spirit is expected to reach Bonneville in a couple of weeks, but the exact timeline depends on the amount of science activities performed en route.
"It depends on what we find between where we are now and where we are going. We are looking for new materials to stop and to make detailed measurements of," Arvidson said.
"The focus is on the traverse science and getting to the rim of Bonneville over the next dozen or so sols (Martian days). We should get there expeditiously. The rate at which we get there depends on what we discover in terms of new materials. Then once we are on the rim and finish making measurements, then the issue becomes can we get into the crater? What are the slopes of the walls? Or should we head for the Southeast Hills?"
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040217a/01-ra-1-back-A041R1_br2.jpg
Spirit Keeps Rollin'
This 360-degree mosaic panorama image, taken by the navigation camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, includes a view of the lander. The lander is located to the south-southwest of the rover, which is moving toward a crater nicknamed "Bonneville. Sleepy Hollow can be seen to the right of the lander. As of Sol 44, which ended on February 17, 2004, the rover had moved a total of 106.6 meters (350 feet) since leaving the lander on January 15, 2004. This image was taken on Sol 39 (February 11, 2004).
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040217a/02-ra-2-forward-A044R1_br2.jpg
Spirit Spies "Bonneville"
This mosaic image from the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the area in front of the rover after its record 27.5 meters (90.2 feet) drive on Sol 43, which ended February 16, 2004. Spirit is looking toward one of its future targets, the rim of a crater nicknamed "Bonneville."
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040217a/03-ra-3-nose-A044R1_br.jpg
Mark of the Moessbauer
This image, taken by an instrument called the microscopic imager on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, reveals an imprint left by another instrument, the Moessbauer spectrometer. The imprint is at a location within the rover wheel track named “Middle of Road.” Both instruments are located on the rover’s instrument deployment device, or “arm.”
Not only was the Moessbauer spectrometer able to gain important mineralogical information about this site, it also aided in the placement of the microscopic imager. On hard rocks, the microscopic imager uses its tiny metal sensor to determine proper placement for best possible focus. However, on the soft martian soil this guide would sink, prohibiting proper placement of the microscopic imager. After the Moessbauer spectrometer's much larger, donut-shaped plate touches the surface, Spirit can correctly calculate where to position the microscopic imager.
Scientists find this image particularly interesting because of the compacted nature of the soil that was underneath the Moessbauer spectrometer plate. Also of interest are the embedded, round grains and the fractured appearance of the material disturbed within the hole. The material appears to be slightly cohesive. The field of view in this image, taken on Sol 43 (February 16, 2004), measures approximately 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across.
Le metto più piccole le immagini?
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Le metto più piccole le immagini?
:eekk:
direi... :D
no dai, per me è lo stesso... :p
Vabbè il grande capo qui non risponde, per cui io le metto ancora di questa dimensione...
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040218a/xpe_1M130314030EFF0400P2939M2M1-B025R1_br.jpg
The Trench Throws a Dirt Clod at Scientists
This picture, obtained by the microscopic imager on NASA's Opportunity rover during sol 24, February 17 PST, shows soil clods exposed in the upper wall of the trench dug by Opportunity's right front wheel on sol 23.
The clods were not exposed until the trench was made. The presence of soil clods implies weak bonding between individual soil grains. The chemical agent or mineral that causes the dirt to bind together into a clod, which scientists call the "bonding agent," is currently unknown. Moessbauer and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer measurements of this spot, planned for sol 25, might help explain the bonding, which would ultimately help the rover team understand how geological processes vary across the red planet. In any case, the bonds between soil grains here cannot be very strong because the wheel dug down through this layer with little trouble.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040218a/2F130364136EFF08AMP1201L0M1_br.jpg
Spirit Does a "Jig" at Laguna Hollow
This front hazard-avoidance image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit on sol 45 shows Spirit in its new location after a drive totaling about 20 meters (65.6 feet).
The circular depression that Spirit is in, dubbed "Laguna Hollow," was most likely formed by a small impact.
Scientists were interested in reaching Laguna Hollow because of the location's abundance of very fine, dust-like soil. The fine material could be atmospheric dust that has settled into the depression, or a salt-based material that causes crusts in the soils and coating on rocks. Either way, scientists hope to be able to characterize the material and broaden their understanding of this foreign world.
To help scientists get a better look at the variations in the fine-grained dust at different depths, controllers commanded Spirit to "jiggle" its wheels in the soil before backing away to a distance that allows the area to be reached with the robotic arm. Spirit will likely spend part of sol 46 analyzing this area with the instruments on its robotic arm.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040218a/xpe_sol45_map-A045R1_br.jpg
Spirit's Path to Bonneville
Scientists created this overlay map by laying navigation and panoramic camera images taken from the surface of Mars on top of one of Spirit's descent images taken as the spacecraft descended to the martian surface. The map was created to help track the path that Spirit has traveled through sol 44 and to put into perspective the distance left to travel before reaching the edge of the large crater nicknamed "Bonneville."
The area boxed in yellow contains the ground images that have been matched to and layered on top of the descent image. The yellow line shows the path that Spirit has traveled and the red dashed line shows the intended path for future sols. The blue circles highlight hollowed areas on the surface, such as Sleepy Hollow, near the lander, and Laguna Hollow, the sol 45 drive destination. Scientists use these hollowed areas - which can be seen in both the ground images and the descent image - to correctly match up the overlay.
Field geologists on Earth create maps like this to assist them in tracking their observations.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
:eekk:
direi... :D
no dai, per me è lo stesso... :p
Adesso rispondi... :nono:
Vabbè allora metto quelle piccolette... :D
Originariamente inviato da gpc
Vabbè il grande capo qui non risponde, per cui io le metto ancora di questa dimensione...
:mad:... se mi si da il tempo di rispondere... :O :D
certo che se danno un nome ad ogni pezzettino ti marte, mi sa che non gli bastano... :D
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040219a/03-SS-1-front-A046R1_br.jpg
Wiggling Its Way to Discovery
This image shows the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's view from its new location inside the shallow depression dubbed "Laguna Hollow." To get a better look at the soil making up the hollow, Spirit drove forward a bit, wiggled its wheels, then turned and backed up. The result - a scrape on the floor and a clod of dirt stuck on one of Spirit's wheels - told scientists that the soil is sticky and reminiscent of that observed at the airbag drag mark nicknamed "Magic Carpet." Spirit will further investigate this disturbed patch of soil with its robotic arm beginning today (Feb. 19, 2004). It will also dig a trench at "Laguna Hollow" with one of its wheels. This fish-eye image was taken by the rover's hazard-avoidance camera.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040219a/12-DD-2-depress-A044R1_br.jpg
Sampling the Varying Textures of Mars
This image shows the shallow depression dubbed "Laguna Hollow" before the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit drove into it to sample its bed of fine sediments on the 45th sol or day, of its mission (Feb. 18, 2004). The hollow provides scientists with a laboratory for studying the atmospheric processes that shaped Mars because, in contrast to surrounding rocky terrain, it contains windblown dust and possibly salty clumps of soil. Spirit is scheduled to dig a trench at the bottom of "Laguna Hollow" on sol 47. The image was taken by the rover's panoramic camera.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040219a/13-DD-4-pancam-A046R1_br.jpg
'Laguna Hollow' Undisturbed
This image shows the patch of soil at the bottom of the shallow depression dubbed "Laguna Hollow" where the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit will soon begin trenching. Scientists are intrigued by the clustering of small pebbles and the crack-like fine lines, which indicate a coherent surface that expands and contracts. A number of processes can cause materials to expand and contract, including cycles of heating and cooling; freezing and thawing; and rising and falling of salty liquids within a substance. This false-color image was created using the blue, green and infrared filters of the rover's panoramic camera. Scientists chose this particular combination of filters to enhance the heterogeneity of the martian soil.
bella la laguna... c'erto non è blu, ma insomma... ;)
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
:mad:... se mi si da il tempo di rispondere... :O :D
certo che se danno un nome ad ogni pezzettino ti marte, mi sa che non gli bastano... :D
Ma se sei lento mica è colpa mia! :O :D
Comunque in effetti dare un nome ad ogni sasso e ad ogni buco mi pare... utopico :D
Originariamente inviato da GioFX
bella la laguna... c'erto non è blu, ma insomma... ;)
Eh... se non ci fossi io a sistemare i thread che TU apri... :O :D
Qui ci stiamo dimenticando dello Spiritello che continua a lavorare... :D
Long and Winding Road
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/03-ra-2-back-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi (articoli sempre più completi grazie al vostro gpc! Altro che GioFX... :O ):
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/03-ra-2-back-A053R1_br2.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/03-ra-2-back-A053R1.jpg
This image shows the path the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has traveled since it landed 53 martian days, or sols, ago. "Laguna Hollow," the shallow depression where Spirit dug a trench, can be seen to the right of center. Spirit stayed at "Laguna Hollow" for 3 sols, investigating the fine-grained soil contained there and the trench it dug with one of its wheels. The rover is headed northeast toward a large crater nicknamed "Bonneville." This panoramic camera image was taken from the rover's new location, a region dubbed "Middle Ground" located 98 meters (322 feet) away from "Bonneville."
-----------------
The Bumpy Road Ahead
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/02-jt-2-ra-1-forward-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/02-jt-2-ra-1-forward-A053R1_br2.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/02-jt-2-ra-1-forward-A053R1.jpg
This image shows the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's view of the rocky terrain that lies between it and its intended target, the large crater dubbed "Bonneville." The landscape here is roughly two times as bumpy and more difficult to traverse than that crossed so far. Spirit has currently stopped to examine the soil and rocks at a region nicknamed "Middle Ground." The rover is 98 meters (322 feet) away from "Bonneville" and facing northeast. The large rock called "Humphries" can be seen in the lower right corner. The image was taken on the 53rd martian day, or sol, of Spirit's mission by the rover's panoramic camera.
--------------
Getting Closer
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/01-jt-1-map-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/01-jt-1-map-A053R1_br2.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/01-jt-1-map-A053R1.jpg
This map shows the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's travels since arriving on the red planet Jan. 3, 2004 PST. Spirit is on its way to a large crater nicknamed "Bonneville." On the 52nd day, or sol, of its mission (Feb. 25, 2004), it stopped off at a region nicknamed "Middle Ground" to investigate rocks and soil. The rover is facing northeast and is 98 meters (322 feet) away from the rim of "Bonneville." Data within the yellow box represent a digital map made of images taken by the rover's panoramic and navigation cameras. Data outside this box are a composite of images from the rover's descent image motion estimation system camera and NASA's orbiter Mars Global Surveyor.
---------------
Ripples or Dunes?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/05-st-1-drifts-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/05-st-1-drifts-A053R1.jpg
This approximate true-color image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows the windblown waves of soil that characterize the rocky surface of Gusev Crater, Mars. Scientists were puzzled about whether these geologic features were "ripples" or "dunes." Ripples are shaped by gentle winds that deposit coarse grains on the tops or crests of the waves. Dunes are carved by faster winds and contain a more uniform distribution of material. Images taken of these features by the rover's microscopic imager on the 41st martian sol, or day, of the rover's mission revealed their identity to be ripples. This information helps scientists better understand the winds that shape the landscape of Mars. This image was taken early in Spirit's mission.
---------------
Are They Telltale Ripples?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/06-st-2-ripple-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/06-st-2-ripple-A053R1.jpg
This false-color image from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's panoramic camera shows peak-like formations on the martian terrain at Gusev Crater. Scientists have been analyzing these formations, which have coarse particles accumulating on their tops, or crests. This characteristic classifies them as ripples instead of dunes, which have a more uniform distribution of particle sizes. Scientists are looking further into such formations, which can give insight to the wind direction and velocity on Mars, as well as the material that is being moved by the wind. This image was taken on the 40th martian day, or sol, of Spirit's mission.
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Blowing in the Wind
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/07-st-3-winds-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/07-st-3-winds-A053R1.jpg
This diagram illustrates how windblown sediments travel. There are three basic types of particles that undergo different motions depending on their size. These particles are dust, sand and coarse sand, and their sizes approximate flour, sugar, and ball bearings, respectively. Sand particles move along the "saltation" path, hitting the surface downwind. When the sand hits the surface, it sends dust into the atmosphere and gives coarse sand a little shove. Mars Exploration Rover scientists are studying the distribution of material on the surface of Mars to better understand how winds shape the landscape.
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The Answer is in the Crests and Troughs
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/08-st-4-trough-A053R1_br.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/09-st-5-crest-A053R1_br.jpg
Link alle immagini più grandi:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/08-st-4-trough-A053R1.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040226a/09-st-5-crest-A053R1.jpg
This microscopic image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the troughs between the waves of windblown soil that characterize the surface of Gusev Crater, Mars. The fine-grained soil in the troughs, combined with the coarse grains observed in a similar microscopic image taken of the waves' crests, indicate that the waves are geologic features known as ripples, and not dunes. Dunes contain a more uniform distribution of material. This information helps scientists better understand the winds that shape the landscape of Mars. The image was taken on the 41st martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission by its microscopic imager. The observed area is 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across.
SPIRIT UPDATE: Eyeing Martian Dust Devils - sol 53, Feb 26, 2004
On sol 53, which ends at 4:34 p.m. PST on February 26, Spirit woke up to the 70s ballad "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, with the anticipation of possibly capturing dust devils spinning across the martian surface. The rear hazard avoidance camera was commanded to "roll tape" from 12:00 to 12:30 local solar time to record these so-called "mini-tornadoes." The behavior of dust devils helps scientists track the transfer of dust on the red planet.
A final, .85-meter (about 2.8 feet) drive brought Spirit to its exact target at the "Middle Ground" site. The rover also conducted an examination, using its microscopic imager and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, of the magnet arrays that are collecting airborne dust.
In the coming sols Spirit will inspect the soil at its current position with the tools on its arm. Following that, the plans call for the rover to approach the rock called "Humphrey." After a thorough assessment of "Humphrey," the rock abrasion tool will be used to brush and then grind.
Volcanic rock in Mars' Gusev Crater hints at past water
MISSION CONTROL REPORT
Posted: March 5, 2004
NASA's Spirit has found hints of a water history in a rock at Mars' Gusev Crater, but it is a very different type of rock than those in which NASA's Opportunity found clues to a wet past on the opposite side of the planet.
A dark volcanic rock dubbed "Humphrey," about 60 centimeters (2 feet) tall, shows bright material in interior crevices and cracks that looks like minerals crystallized out of water, Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, reported at a NASA news briefing today at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. He is the deputy principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/images/040305humphrey.jpg
This image taken by the navigation camera onboard the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows a hole drilled by the rover in the rock dubbed "Humphrey." Spirit ground into the rock with the rock abrasion tool located on its robotic arm on the 60th martian day, or sol, of its mission. Credit: NASA/JPL
"If we found this rock on Earth, we would say it is a volcanic rock that had a little fluid moving through it," Arvidson said. If this interpretation is correct, the fluid -- water with minerals dissolved in it -- may have been carried in the original magma that formed the rock or may have interacted with the rock later, he said.
The clues appear in an interior exposure of "Humphrey" where Spirit's rock abrasion tool scraped away the rock's surface to a depth of 2 millimeters (.08 inch). To gain more confidence that the bright material seen in cracks and pores is not dust that has intruded from the surface over the millenia, scientists intend to have Spirit grind more deeply into another dark rock, not yet selected. The bright material is not debris from the grinding process, said Stephen Gorevan of Honeybee Robotics, New York, lead scientist for the abrasion tool.
The amount of water suggested by the possible crystals in "Humphrey" is far less than what is indicated by the minerals and structures that Opportunity has revealed in rocks at Meridiani. Rover scientists announced the Opportunity findings earlier this week. "Mars is a diverse planet," Arvidson said today.
Spirit is headed toward a crater nicknamed "Bonneville," about 150 meters (500 feet) in diameter, where scientists hope to see rocks from beneath the region's surface volcanic layer. Those rocks may tell yet a different story from an earlier era of Gusev Crater's past.
At Meridiani Planum, Opportunity has finished taking a set of 114 microscope images of a rock called "Last Chance" to examine details of the rock's layering structure. The sequence required more than 400 commands and more than 200 positions of Opportunity's robotic arm, said Opportunity Mission Manager Matt Wallace of JPL. "Our activities are getting increasingly complex," he noted.
Spirit completed its 60th martian day, or sol, at Gusev late Thursday. Opportunity completed its 40th sol at Meridiani at 9:32 a.m. Friday, PST. "Between the two rovers, we've had a terrific 100 days on Mars. This last week has been particularly exciting," Wallace said.
A new color view, combining several frames from Opportunity's panoramic camera, adds information about the rover's likely destination after finishing work in and around the small crater where it landed. From partway up the inner slope of that 22-meter-diameter (72-foot-diameter) crater, the rover has an improved view of a crater nicknamed "Endurance," about 10 times as big and about 700 meters (2,300 feet) to the east. "We can see features in the rim, maybe streaks, maybe layers," said Dr. Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., lead scientist for both rovers' panoramic cameras.
The same new view across the flat plain of Meridiani also shows Opportunity's jettisoned heat shield, a trail of marks left by the airbag bounces and a solitary dark rock about 40 centimeters (16 inches) across. Bell said, "Not only did we get incredibly lucky to get this hole-in-one in the crater, but on the way into the crater we hit with the airbags the only rock around."
Both rovers carry magnets supplied by Denmark for experiments to analyze martian dust. Dust covers much of Mars' surface and hangs in the atmosphere, occasionally rising into giant dust storms. One of the magnets is designed to exclude any magnetic dust particles from landing in the center of a target area. During Spirit's time on Mars, dust has accumulated on other parts of the target while the center has remained "probably the cleanest area anywhere on the surface of the rover," said Dr. Morten Madsen, science team member from the Center for Planetary Science, Copenhagen, Denmark.
"Most, if not all of the dust particles in the martian atmosphere are magnetic," Madsen said. Another of the magnets is within reach of the rover's robotic arm. Examination of dust on the target by instruments on the end of the arm will soon yield further information about the composition of the dust, he said.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Quanto odio sto' copia/incolla in inglese :uh: :uh:
Originariamente inviato da gegeg
Quanto odio sto' copia/incolla in inglese :uh: :uh:
ci si aspetta che ci sia qualcuno, specie se interessanto in astronomia e nel campo aerospaziale che conosca un minimo di inglese, e poi, mica pretenderai che traduca tutto... :O
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