SCI/TECH: NASA's Spirit to Land on Mars Tonight!

NASA's ambitious Spirit exploratory rover is set to set down on the Red Planet tonight at about 8:35 pm PST, the first of two rovers landing on Mars this month from NASA. Will the little robot make it, or will it share the fate of so many lost probes that the death planet has taken, the latest being Britain's Beagle 2?



To read about the harrowing descent Spirit will make check this link out marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...

There is even a link on the page so that you can watch the NASA mission control center live via NASA tv.

Check out this link to learn more about the little rovers mission: marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov...

damn, you beat me to it.

Well here we go again anyway, I wonder what the chances are of this one landing safely and working. Actually it's probably high seeing as how it is NASA, and if they found anything they wouldn't even tell us anyway.


[Edited on 4-1-2004 by John Nada]

good luck is all i can say

I know many of you have laughed at such stories over conspiracy of Beagle 2 and other probes, and I wouldn't for one second be able to keep my self respect and say that aliens shot them down. However, I find it strange that we never had problems with landers on Venus, even though we were using much older technology and also that Venus is a far more hostile environment. Oddly tough every probe that countries have landed succeeded.

Could it be that they found something, that was deemed not worthy and to important a find and kept secret from the public?

I do hope we recieve some pictures, and samples from this landing.

Anything will do for me.

I cant wait.

Deep

Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated Saturday night after receiving confirmation that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit had landed successfully on Mars. Signals from the spacecraft's UHF antenna indicated the spacecraft had rolled to a stop right side up, simplifying the deployment procedures.

This is really wonderful news when so many missions to Mars have failed. I am very hopeful the rover finds the signs of life it is designed to look for!

www.NASA.gov

Originally posted by William One Sac

Controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated Saturday night after receiving confirmation that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit had landed successfully on Mars. Signals from the spacecraft's UHF antenna indicated the spacecraft had rolled to a stop right side up, simplifying the deployment procedures.

This is really wonderful news when so many missions to Mars have failed. I am very hopeful the rover finds the signs of life it is designed to look for!

www.NASA.gov

Indeed it is William, due to the high failure rate it is unlikely many more will be sent.

Its going to fail though

I would not be so quick to jump to that conclusion. As Kano pointed out in another thread, when NASA thought they had discovered proof of life in the Mars meteorite they stepped all over themselves to display their evidence. I think there is an enormous difference between proof of microbial life and proof of evolved, perhaps intelligent lifeforms.

I sincerely hope it does work and does well, i'd rather beagle worked as it would have got smaller nations into the grand find, perhaps it was sabotage ;-)

It is VERY unlikely that it will find "intelligent" life as most would think, i think theres a chance of microbes and single celled organisms though.

Anyone watching NASA TV on the NASA internet site?
Seems that the Mars Exploration Rover is transmitting data and NASA is in the midst of recieving it.

Heres a link to JPL webcast:
www.planetary.org...


This is certainly great news.


regards
seekerof

No way! This is great!

Originally posted by Valhall
No way! This is great!

it sure is, i hope to get some rocky pics soon

I was watching it...


I'll wait for the pics to be on the net...

CNN already has one of the B&W images, but the JPL site is still
behind.

The Real Audio feed from Nasa TV was awful. Very blurry video and
overmodulated sound. Odd that we can send things to Mars but
we can't get the AV right.

The JPL images should show up eventually at
www.jpl.nasa.gov...

just some FYI - The rover is not designed to detect signs of life. It is designed for environmental science.

Beagle 2 was designed to find signs of life.

Here's the picture:
www.cnn.com...

I don't see why they couldn't design these two rovers to detect life as well, like Beagle 2 was supposed to. It's going to look at rocks.....gee wow.

The existence of water has already been confirmed by orbiting probes. NASA's wasting this opportunity (no pun intended). They're putting off the question of current life on Mars for some reason. Maybe they find rocks more interesting than the confirmation of extraterrestrial life.

This just really pisses me off. Why did Beagle, the one that is look for ALIEN LIFE, have to fail? But these expensive rovers are going to land perfectly, yet not tell us anything of consequence.


[Edited on 1/4/2004 by Flinx]

Just rocks Flinx?
Where Beagle 2 was indeed designed to detect life at a mere cost of 45 million, the Spirit was also designed to detect more than rocks at a mere cost of 220 million.

".....Engineering-wise, Spirit is a far more complex animal than Beagle 2, which was designed to carry out experiments at one spot.

In contrast the six-wheeled American vehicle, which is about the size of a golf cart, is free to roam, observing its surroundings through a pair of cameras perched on the end of a long �neck�.

As well as stereoscopic vision, the rover has an extendable arm fitted with tools for grinding out and examining rock samples.

The rovers have �brains� that allow them to make some of their own decisions when, for instance, assessing hazards in their path. They are also able to carry out their own �health checks�.

Within a shell-like body no bigger than a motorcycle wheel, Beagle 2 carries an incredible array of instruments, including an on-board laboratory for analysing samples, a rock drill and a burrowing mole.

But while Nasa�s spacecraft are crammed with back-up systems, Beagle 2, the brainchild of Professor Colin Pillinger, has no built-in redundancy.

Unlike Beagle 2, Spirit is not designed to look for direct signs of life. Instead, it will search for the most likely places where life may have existed in the past.

The projects also differ in background and underlying general spirit...."

"Spirit 'Far More Complex' Than Beagle 2"
Link:
www.news.scotsman.com...


The inherent possible problem of complexity is that there is greater chance of things going wrong.
Lets look on a more humorous note though....maybe the Spirit landed somewhere close to the Beagle 2?


(found it to be kind of funny...sorry)



regards
seekerof

Just incase this wasn't seen in the other post in the Science section. I'll just copy and paste my post...

A neat program for those space exploration types: mars.telascience.org...

Here is what the Maestro Team says about it:

"NASA has released Maestro, a public version of the primary software tool used by scientists to operate the Mars Exploration Rovers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Anyone can download Maestro for free from mars.telascience.org and use it to follow along with the rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro containing the latest images from Mars."

I have been playing around with it already. Very neat. No pics from Mars quite yet of course, but there are images from the tests they did with it on Earth, but i'm guessing they will start getting images from Spirit this coming week i think.

oh and to also add. Here's a link to a site with updates by the minute with new info: spaceflightnow.com...

And here is the first image of the landing site: spaceflightnow.com...

The first colour one should be this evening.

"Just rocks Flinx?
Where Beagle 2 was indeed designed to detect life at a mere cost of 45 million, the Spirit was also designed to detect more than rocks at a mere cost of 220 million."

I admit Spirit is neat and all.....very high-tech. They spent alot of money on it and seem to be getting away from their idiotic Faster, Cheaper, Better philosophy. But the fact is it's still looking at freaking rocks. It might find where life MIGHT have existed in the past....oh gee. I thought we've gotten past that point.

(sigh) Oh well, I suppose I'll have to take what I can get. Either that or join NASA and try to influence things my way...

I'm curious though, is it possible that Rock Sniffer 2004 (aka Sprit) could detect fosslized remains? Fossils are, for all purposes, rocks right?

Of course, some NASA scientists say we've already found life on Mars....

news.bbc.co.uk...