MARS - de missies (DEEL 5)

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Op zaterdag 21 mei 2005 22:09 schreef Darklight het volgende:
Wat doen ze dan ook op Mars
Laten ze weer eens wat bemande missies naar de Maan doen ofzo

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Op maandag 23 mei 2005 14:30 schreef Doffy het volgende:
Is Opportunity alweer los, inmiddels?

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Slow Progress in Dune

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity makes slow but steady progress through soft dune material in this movie clip of frames taken by the rover's front hazard identification camera over a period of several days. The sequence starts on Opportunity's 460th martian day, or sol (May 10, 2005) and ends 11 days later. In eight drives during that period, Opportunity advanced a total of 26 centimeters (10 inches) while spinning its wheels enough to have driven 46 meters (151 feet) if there were no slippage. The motion appears to speed up near the end of the clip, but that is an artifact of individual frames being taken less frequently.

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Info van Space.com

BRON: Mars rover freed from sand dune
_{Sunday, June 5, 2005 Posted: 10:35 AM EDT (1435 GMT)}


^{The Mars rover Opportunity leaves wheel tracks
after escaping from a sand trap, Saturday.}

PASADENA, California (AP) -- The Mars rover Opportunity resumed rolling freely across the Martian surface Saturday after scientists freed it from a sand dune where it had been mired for nearly five weeks, NASA officials said.

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the mission, cheered when images beamed back to Earth showed the rover's wheels were free.

"We've got a working rover on Mars that cost $400 million to build and ... keep working," project manager Jim Erickson said. "I'd like to wear it out rather than lose it."

A photograph taken by Opportunity and posted on the laboratory's Web site showed the long tracks of its wheels crossing a featureless dune.

Opportunity's wheels started slipping April 26 during a planned 295-foot trip. While trying to drive over a foot-high sand dune, the robotic explorer stopped moving, its wheels hub-deep in soft soil.

Engineers spent weeks with an Opportunity mock-up figuring out what commands to give the robot to free it, but the maneuvers took time. The rover inched forward less than a foot in a month, losing most of its traction every time it tried to roll.

"It's kind of like we were swimming through it," Erickson said.

But on Saturday morning, data showed that Opportunity was free at last and had moved several feet across the dune.

Erickson said engineers want to be sure the rover will not encounter any more patches that could trap it again. It will be Monday or Tuesday night before a test drive is ordered, he said.

Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, have been exploring opposite sides of Mars since landing in January 2004. Both rovers have long outlasted their primary, three-month missions.
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En de lanceringsdata voor de volgende Marsmissie is ookal bekend
August 2007

BRON: NASA: Phoenix Mars launch in 2007

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Opportunity

Rind-Like Features at a Meridiani Outcrop

After months spent roving across a sea of rippled sands, Opportunity reached an outcrop in August 2005 and began investigating exposures of sedimentary rocks, intriguing rind-like features that appear to cap the rocks, and cobbles that dot the martian surface locally. Opportunity spent several sols analyzing a feature called "Lemon Rind," a thin surface layer covering portions of outcrop rocks poking through the sand north of "Erebus Crater." In images from the panoramic camera, Lemon Rind appears slightly different in color than surrounding rocks. It also appears to be slightly more resistant to wind erosion than the outcrop's interior. To obtain information on how this surface layer (or weathering rind) may have formed and how it compares to previously analyzed outcrops, Opportunity is using the microscopic imager, alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and Moessbauer spectrometer to analyze surfaces that have been brushed and ground with the rock abrasion tool. Scientists will compare these measurements with similar measurements made on the underlying rock material.



This is a false-color composite generated by draping enhanced red-green-blue color from the panoramic camera's 753-nanometer, 535-nanometer and 482-nanometer filters over a high-fidelity violet, 432-nanometer-filter image. The image was acquired on martian day, or sol 552 (Aug. 13, 2005) around 11:55 a.m. local true solar time. In this representation, bright sulfur-bearing sedimentary rocks appear light tan to brown, depending on their degree of dust contamination, and small dark "blueberries" and other much less dusty rock fragments appear as different shades of blue. Draping the color derived from the blue to near-infrared filters over the violet filter image results in a false color view with the sharpest color and morphology contrasts.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell


SPIRIT

Dust Devils at Gusev <<< Klik voor de tekst die bij elk filmpje hoort.

sol 525


sol 532


sol 537


sol 543


sol 559


sol 568

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A Whale of a Panorama
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More than 1.5 years into their exploration of Mars, both of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers continue to send a cornucopia of images to Earth. The results are so spectacular that Deputy Project Manager John Callas recently described them as "an embarrassment of riches." Spirit produced this image mosaic, nicknamed the "Whale Panorama," two-thirds of the way to the summit of "Husband Hill," where the rover investigated martian rocks. On the right side of the panorama is a tilted layer of rocks dubbed "Larry's Outcrop," one of several tilted outcrops that scientists examined in April, 2005. They used spatial information to create geologic maps showing the compass orientation and degree of tilting of rock formations in the vicinity. Such information is key to geologic fieldwork because it helps establish if rock layers have been warped since they formed. In this case, scientists have also been studying the mineral and chemical differences, which show that some rocks have been more highly altered than others.

In the foreground, in the middle of the image mosaic, Spirit is shown with the scientific instruments at the end of its robotic arm positioned on a rock target known as "Ahab." The rover was busy collecting elemental chemistry and mineralogy data on the rock at the same time that it was taking 50 individual snapshots with its five panoramic camera filters to create this stunning view of the martian scenery. The twin tracks of the rover's all-terrain wheels are clearly visible on the left.

This mosaic of images spans about 220 degrees from left to right and is an approximate true-color rendering of the Mars terrain acquired through the panoramic camera's 750-, 530-, and 430-nanometer filters. Spirit collected these images from its 497th martian day, or sol, through its 500th sol (May 27 through May 30, 2005).

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Looking Up from the Deep

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Not long after conducting extensive investigations of tilted martian rock layers along its path, NASA's Spirit rover prepared to resume the trek to the top of the "Columbia Hills" in June. This panorama, nicknamed "Sunset Ridge," shows the terrain that lay ahead of the rover on Spirit's 519th martian day, or sol (June 19, 2005). On the left is the summit of "Husband Hill," Spirit's objective at that time.

This mosaic of images is an approximate true-color rendering of snapshots taken by the rover's panoramic camera using 750-, 530-, and 430-nanometer filters. Spirit took these images at approximately 3 p.m. local true solar time in Gusev Crater on Mars. The rover then continued to climb throughout July, making numerous scientific investigations of martian rocks along the way.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS/Cornell

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'Everest' Panorama; 20-20 Vision

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Animation 1 (7.2 MB) Animation 2 (43.8MB)

If a human with perfect vision donned a spacesuit and stepped onto the martian surface, the view would be as clear as this sweeping panorama taken by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. That's because the rover's panoramic camera has the equivalent of 20-20 vision. Earthlings can take a virtual tour of the scenery by zooming in on their computer screens many times to get a closer look at, say, a rock outcrop or a sand drift, without losing any detail. This level of clarity is unequaled in the history of Mars exploration.

It took Spirit three days, sols 620 to 622 (Oct. 1 to Oct. 3, 2005), to acquire all the images combined into this mosaic, called the "Everest Panorama," looking outward in every direction from the true summit of "Husband Hill." During that period, the sky changed in color and brightness due to atmospheric dust variations, as shown in contrasting sections of this mosaic. Haze occasionally obscured the view of the hills on the distant rim of Gusev Crater 80 kilometers (50 miles) away. As dust devils swooped across the horizon in the upper right portion of the panorama, the robotic explorer changed the filters on the camera from red to green to blue, making the dust devils appear red, green, and blue. In reality, the dust devils are similar in color to the reddish-brown soils of Mars. No attempt was made to "smooth" the sky in this mosaic, as has been done in other panoramic-camera mosaics to simulate the view one would get by taking in the landscape all at once. The result is a sweeping vista that allows viewers to observe weather changes on Mars.

The summit of Husband Hill is a broad plateau of rock outcrops and windblown drifts about 100 meters (300 feet) higher than the surrounding plains of Gusev Crater. In the distance, near the center of the mosaic, is the "South Basin," the destination for the downhill travel Spirit began after exploring the summit region.

This panorama spans 360 degrees and consists of images obtained during 81 individual pointings of the panoramic camera. Four filters were used at each pointing. Images through three of the filters, for wavelengths of 750 nanometers, 530 nanometers and 430 nanometers, were combined for this approximately true-color rendering.


Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

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Op dinsdag 22 november 2005 10:18 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:

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Ongelooflijk he? Ik kan me de nachten nog wel herinneren dat we hier zaten, kijken of het goed ging, eerste plaatje enzo. En nu rijden ze nog!

Techniek is toch een stuk opgeschoten vergeleken met bijv. de Vikinglanders.

Iemand een idee of er verder nog landers of robots op het program staan?

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Op dinsdag 22 november 2005 10:18 schreef NorthernStar het volgende:


Techniek is toch een stuk opgeschoten vergeleken met bijv. de Vikinglanders.

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A far-off record

Despite their accomplishments, Spirit and Opportunity have a long way to go to set an endurance record on Mars. Both mission times pale in comparison with NASA’s twin Viking missions.

Viking 1 and Viking 2, both of which set down on Mars in the summer of 1976, spent several years recording Mars from their stationary landing spots.

Viking 2’s mission ended in April of 1980 about 1,281 Martian days after landing when its batteries failed.
Viking 1, however, continued to function until Nov. 13, 1982, more than four Earth years after arriving on Mars.

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Op vrijdag 2 december 2005 15:57 schreef star_gazer het volgende:

[..]

Hebben ze dat niet al 10x gedaan?

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" By analysis of the two echoes, the scientists were able to draw
the likely scenario of a nearly pure, cold water-ice layer
thicker than 1 km, overlying a deeper layer of basaltic regolith. "