How Mars Rover Really Looks Like

Is this for real? lol



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No wonder they were so worried about the landing...it was made from old Laundry machines and recycled microwaves from Goodwill. I think i saw parts of a toaster there too....I wonder if it was secretly designed to make waffles?

reply to post by Hydrawolf


Tie-wraps & ducktape? WTF? Looks like sand will be blown into the sensitive instruments trough the seams.
Is that thing really driving around on mars of is it another nasa lie all over again?
Nice find.

Here's a pic from NASA.

Curiosity recently did a "self portrait"

reply to post by ahamarlin


Not quite tie wraps and duct tape... This is from Opportunity, but Curiosity no doubt utilizes the same materials.

These high-tech materials provide the same solutions so that today’s rovers have more space for additional scientific payload.

The Mars rovers currently in space include almost 70 yards each of flexible cable circuits made of thin DuPont™ Pyralux® laminates and composites. By replacing bulky round wires and cables, these materials can provide a volume savings of between 60 percent and 70 percent. Stacked, they would total less than 1.5 inches. Pyralux® flexible circuits connect the “brain” of the rovers to their parts – the robotic arm, cameras, high gain antenna, wheels and sensors.

Pressure-sensitive tape made of DuPont™ Kapton® polyimide film is used throughout the rovers to control vibration. Pyralux® flexible cables secured with Kapton® tape offer durable, lightweight environmental resistance for the temperatures on Mars, ranging from minus 120° Centigrade (minus 184° Farenheit) to 22° C (72° F).

Source

I'm pretty familiar with Kapton tape. It's pretty remarkable stuff.

reply to post by Hydrawolf


pure parody. Pretty sophisticated materials are used to build those machines dude

Looks like horrible craftsmanship.

Are you telling me that this sucker's nuclear?

Originally posted by boncho
Here's a pic from NASA.

Curiosity recently did a "self portrait"

I saw this the other day, and I still can't quite figure out how it took the picture since there's no arms extending out of the image, do you know?

Originally posted by earthalien50
Looks like horrible craftsmanship.

Are you telling me that this sucker's nuclear?

edit on 11/5/2012 by earthalien50 because: (no reason given)

It certainly isn't horrible craftsmanship...

And yes it uses Plutonium to power itself.

It was the same guy that took the pictures of the Apollo take off from the moon.

I don't mean to insult anyone, but I believe what I see. It was not supposed to look like it came off of the showroom floor, but I don't know any electricians or metal workers that would not question the quality of work.

reply to post by earthalien50


It's not a nuclear reactor, but a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. It uses heat from nuclear decay to generate electricity, not fission as in a nuclear reactor. They're pretty safe and have all sorts of applications.

I don't know but there's a whole lot of uncovered wires and cables.
I would have thought they'd have had some sort of cover over them.

reply to post by boncho


I heard it exteneded some kind of arm for that picture, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it was able to take this at all.

I was almost expecting to see footprints

Good lord, I have a phone in my pocket that I can make calls, take pictures, surf the web, scan barcodes...it has a dual processor and is made to higher tollerances than this thing. WTF

Edit: Oh, and I can talk back and forth with my iPhone. Can you talk back and forth with this thing and ask it how the conditions on Mars are? I think that would be super cool...put an AI like Chatbot or A.L.I.C.E on it and let people chat with it. I'm sure the bandwith would cost a lot though.

Originally posted by MystikMushroom
reply to post by boncho

 

I heard it exteneded some kind of arm for that picture, but I'm having a hard time seeing how it was able to take this at all.

I was almost expecting to see footprints

Good lord, I have a phone in my pocket that I can make calls, take pictures, surf the web, scan barcodes...it has a dual processor and is made to higher tollerances than this thing. WTF

Edit: Oh, and I can talk back and forth with my iPhone. Can you talk back and forth with this thing and ask it how the conditions on Mars are? I think that would be super cool...put an AI like Chatbot or A.L.I.C.E on it and let people chat with it. I'm sure the bandwith would cost a lot though.

edit on 5-11-2012 by MystikMushroom because: (no reason given)

Can your iPhone go to Mars and still be fully functional when it lands?

Originally posted by SpearMint
I saw this the other day, and I still can't quite figure out how it took the picture since there's no arms extending out of the image, do you know?

The "self-portrait" was made from 55 different images. When making an image like that (a panorama) several photos are taken of the same area, so the best parts of any photo can be chosen to make the final image, making it possible to remove part of the robotic arm where the camera was, for example.

I don't know what point this armchair engineer is trying to prove.


So he is pointing out all the "pathetic and shoddy work"...but ignoring that the rover obviously made it to Mars successfully...working fine in the most extreme conditions one can even imagine?

I am pretty sure there are reasons why some things had to be done as they were done....eg. for one I can see a simple rope-tie being "better" for holding wires together, other materials like ordinary plastic etc. might corrode from the UV rays and extreme temperatures. I really don't think it's a matter of "neat appearance" but more of what's really useful and lasts in such conditions on Mars.

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by SpearMint
I saw this the other day, and I still can't quite figure out how it took the picture since there's no arms extending out of the image, do you know?

The "self-portrait" was made from 55 different images. When making an image like that (a panorama) several photos are taken of the same area, so the best parts of any photo can be chosen to make the final image, making it possible to remove part of the robotic arm where the camera was, for example.

Ah, thank you. I assumed it was a single image.

Originally posted by SpearMint

Originally posted by boncho
Here's a pic from NASA.

Curiosity recently did a "self portrait"

I saw this the other day, and I still can't quite figure out how it took the picture since there's no arms extending out of the image, do you know?

My thoughts exactly, they are saying it's 55 images being stitched together, but that means you would still see an arm somewhere,

upload.wikimedia.org...

does the link work? it's supposed to be a bigger picture, i personally do not see the arm at all, or any stitching for that matter.

here are the separate images.
mars.jpl.nasa.gov...

Originally posted by XaniMatriX
My thoughts exactly, they are saying it's 55 images being stitched together, but that means you would still see an arm somewhere,

Not if you took more than one photo of each area and could choose which parts of a photo to use when making the panorama.

You can see in the image below where the arm was. By not choosing that part of that photo they removed the arm from the photo.



If you look closely at the area where the arm should be you can see several flaws in the stitching of the photos.