[meteorite-list] Opportunity Mars Rover Stuck in Sand

From: Art <blurtheline_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue May 17 14:00:55 2005
Message-ID: <998a6e0f050517110023007dfe_at_mail.gmail.com>

Hi Everyone;

After reading this artice late last month I checked out some photos on
the Mars Rover web site
(http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html) that were taken
during this period.

The image below is interesting as it reminds me of many daydreams I've
had while hiking the Algodones area in Southern California ...
rounding a dune and seeing a small impact crater with a fresh
Shergottite at the bottom! I wonder what Opportunity would find in
this small crater?

Tiny Crater on Meridiani Planum: http://makeashorterlink.com/?B38F2271B


Best regards, Art

On 4/29/05, Ron Baalke <baalke_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050428_rover_update.html
>
> Opportunity Mars Rover Stuck in Sand
> By Leonard David
> space.com
> 28 April 2005
>
> NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has run into a sandy snag. All of its six
> wheels have sunk in deep into a large ripple of soil.
>
> Rover operators are optimistic they can extricate the robot from its
> jam, having gotten dug in before. But ground controllers will need time
> to wheel back on top of the soil again.
>
> Time will also be spent figuring out what's different about the soil
> that has bogged down Opportunity, hoping to keep this problem from
> occurring down the road.
>
> The Mars machinery had been cruising southward across the open parking
> lot-like landscape of Meridiani Planum, full of larger and larger
> ripples of soil. Opportunity has been en route to its next stopover,
> Erebus crater, nestled inside an even larger crater known as Terra Nova.
>
> Be very, very patient
>
> "A note to all you Opportunity fans: Get used to the current scenery,
> because we're going to be here awhile," said Steve Squyres, lead
> scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover effort at Cornell University in
> Ithaca, New York. "We are very optimistic that we'll be able to get out
> of here, but we're really going to take our time doing it."
>
> Squyres said the first rule in this case is "do no harm" - and that
> means don't rush anything.
>
> "We're going to take lots of pictures of all the terrain around the
> vehicle, to get a very complete picture of the situation. We're going to
> do lots of testing with the rovers that we have on the ground to
> simulate the situation on Mars. This testing will be aimed not just at
> finding a plan that will work, but at finding the very best plan that
> will work," Squyres explained in a Cornell rover web site.
>
> One possibility is trying a number of small maneuvers with the robot at
> first. That information-gathering could then lead to even more testing.
>
> "All of this is going to take a lot of time. But this is a very precious
> vehicle up there, in excellent health, and there's no reason to rush
> anything," Squyres said. The main message now, he added, "is to be very,
> very patient."
>
> Tiny craters discovered
>
> Prior to the rover run-a-muck, Mars rover scientists noted that
> Opportunity had made yet a new discovery. Two small craters were found
> on the plains of Meridiani - both less than half an inch deep and
> clearly visible in snapshots taken by the rover's navigation cameras.
>
> The two tiny craters were a surprise find, said Matt Golombek, a
> principal scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover mission at NASA's Jet
> Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "These are the
> smallest craters yet seen on Mars," he explained in a JPL-released
> statement.
>
> "Given that these two craters haven't been covered by sand even though
> they are surrounded by sand ripples on a flat plain lends support to the
> idea that they're fairly recent," Golombek said. "Of course, recent
> might mean any time from yesterday to 100 million years ago."
>
> Cause of the impact craters? They could have been created by an object
> from space that was large enough to make it through the martian
> atmosphere without burning up. Alternatively, the tiny craters could be
> the result of falling rock fragments ejected from a larger crater that
> formed when something crashed into the martian surface.
>
> While engineers wrestle with Opportunity's show-stopping sand trap,
> sistership Spirit is busy at work on the other side of the planet
> surveying the Columbia Hills within Gusev Crater.
>
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-- 
Bye for now!  Art

Received on Tue 17 May 2005 02:00:53 PM PDT