February 07, 2004
Healthy Spirit Cleans a Mars Rock; Opportunity Rolls
"Our patient is healed, and we're very excited about that," said Jennifer Trosper of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., mission manager for Spirit.
Spirit temporarily stopped communicating Jan. 22; the problem was later diagnosed as a memory-management issue. Engineers regained partial control of the spacecraft within days and reformatted Spirit's flash memory Wednesday to prevent recurrence of the problem.
JPL's Glenn Reeves, flight software architect for the Mars Exploration Rovers, said Friday, "We're confident we know what the problem is, and we have a procedure in place we believe can work around this problem indefinitely."
Spirit's first day of science operations after the memory reformatting featured the first brushing of a rock on a foreign planet to remove dust and allow inspection of the rock's cleaned surface. Steel bristles on the rover's rock abrasion tool cleaned a circular patch on the rock unofficially named Adirondack. The tool's main function is to grind off the weathered surface of rocks with diamond teeth, but the brush for removing the grinder's cuttings can also be used to sweep dust off the intact surface.
The brushing on Thursday was the first use of a rock abrasion tool by either Spirit or its twin rover, Opportunity. The brush swirled for five minutes, said Stephen Gorevan of Honeybee Robotics, New York, lead scientist for the rock abrasion tools on both rovers.
"I didn't expect much of a difference. This is a big surprise," Gorevan said about a picture showing the brushed area is much darker than the rest of the rock's surface. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the greatest interplanetary brushing of all time."
Full Story @ SpaceRef - Your Space Reference
This is such utter garbage, why are we spending millions if not billions of dollars to send golf carts to Mars?! We should be paying off the national debt, building social security back up or something useful, not playing on meaningless planets with overpriced toys.
Posted by: muddy at February 7, 2004 10:31 PMHey, baby....though I understand what your saying, and you DO have a good point, I'm going to have to disagree w/you. I don't believe this is "meaningless"...It can very well teach us ALOT. Not only about Mars but possibly teach us more about our own planet as well. Not to mention teaching us more about the universe we live in. Obviously, I find this extremely fascinating.
Could this wait until we have better finances as a nation. Sure. Could this wait until our own national debt is payed off. Sure....but by *that* time, our *grand* children (if not our great-grand children) will be dead and buried themselves.
Besides, it's nice to learn about something new and exciting for a change instead of hearing about all the utter CRAP going on in the world and nation today of things we'll probably never be able to change anyway.
Posted by: mrs. muddy at February 7, 2004 11:16 PM