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Happy Birthday, Mars Rover
Posted on 8/5/18 at 8:37 am
Posted on 8/5/18 at 8:37 am
LINK
quote:
On August 5, 2012, NASA's Curiosity Rover touched down on the Martian surface for the first time. To mark this big-deal occasion, NASA engineers put a recurring annual celebration on the calendar. But it's a party of one, and the venue is Mars.
Curiosity, a huge accomplishment in interstellar exploration, is the largest and most capable rover ever delivered to the surface of a planet. After launching from Earth on November 26, 2011 and entering the Martian atmosphere at a break-neck speed of 13,000 mph, the rover broke ground on Mars at the Gale Crater on August 5, 2012. Curiosity was sent to the Red Planet to answer the question: Did Mars ever have the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes?
When the anniversary of this rover's monumental landing rolls around, it's especially sentimental. On this day, the lonely rover performs a special task: it sings "Happy Birthday" to itself all alone. Adorable, scientifically impressive, or just... a little sad?
5
Posted on 8/5/18 at 8:47 am to FenrirTheBeard
At a party a couple of months ago I met a guy who plans what Curiosity will do each day (plus a couple of astronauts, most of the people there were NASA folks). He said that because transmissions take so long to get there (it can be as long as a 20 minute round trip) they have to tell it to go only a short distance at a time and then stop. That way they can tell if the rover is wandering into trouble.
He said once they overdid it and had a very scary moment. The return transmission came back and showed the rover was trying to climb over a boulder ... and it stopped when it got part way up the side. If it had continued on it probably would have flipped over and ended the mission.
I can only imagine a bunch of engineers watching it unfold on a monitor like a train wreck they can't stop.
He said once they overdid it and had a very scary moment. The return transmission came back and showed the rover was trying to climb over a boulder ... and it stopped when it got part way up the side. If it had continued on it probably would have flipped over and ended the mission.
I can only imagine a bunch of engineers watching it unfold on a monitor like a train wreck they can't stop.
This post was edited on 8/5/18 at 8:49 am
Posted on 8/5/18 at 9:17 am to FenrirTheBeard
HBD I will shotgun a beer in its honor
Posted on 8/5/18 at 9:57 am to FenrirTheBeard
That is kind of cool....I like shite like that!
Posted on 8/5/18 at 11:03 am to FenrirTheBeard
I had thought the Curiosity Rover was the first craft we sent to Mars, or maybe the second with the first one launched sometime in the late 90’s or early 200’s. I recently learned however we sent two landers to Mars in the 70’s, called the Viking Program. That sorta blew my mind.
Posted on 8/5/18 at 11:51 am to FenrirTheBeard
This is how we explore Mars, coupled with orbiting satellites. Not some trillion dollar attempt to put humans there.
This post was edited on 8/5/18 at 12:56 pm
Posted on 8/5/18 at 12:18 pm to Jon Ham
The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.
Posted on 8/5/18 at 12:22 pm to Jon Ham
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