Yup - hats off to that one

You could make up a million different statistics all pretty much as meaningless as the next. Distance travelled vs average distance from earth. Distance travelled per KG of vehicle mass. Number of individual drives. Number of locations visited. Total longevity etc etc etc

Seemingly we're not done yet. Insert heavy to industrial strength 'sigh' here.

Further than the rover will ever drive. Period.

Wonder who took those.

And the wheels got a lot worse than that before they were replaced. A LOT worse.

Worst one at that point looks to be the middle right - rips and tears all over it

That's exactly what I've heard from the team - and what it looks like having held a few spare wheels.

These planets are not going anywhere. I'm sure the science team will want to get the data processed quickly - but unlike finding and asteroid or comet for the first time ....we know where these planets are. Unlike an asteroid or comet discovery - these planets do not have to be 'found' again once disocvered. We know where they are.

It is. That 'hole' is a dent, the stress of the dent has popped the anodized coating off the inside of the wheel and we have bare aluminum reflecting the sun. That dent isn't in shadow. Those that are can reflect the bright martian sky off them. Just because something is in shadow - it doesn't mean it can't 'see the sky'.

Look at it - it's not even the same color as the terrain behind it.

And even if it IS punctured - it doesn't matter.

Once of the test-bed rovers at JPL had flight like wheels whilst dealing with 3x the effective weight of a real rover. The wheels were punctured, dent ridden, ripped, torn, dinged, bashed, smashed, crunched. You could put your finger thru the holes in places - you could see clean thru them.

And they still worked absolutely fine.

That testbed now has tougher wheels simply to deal with terrestrial gravity. The lightweight scarecrow rover has flightlike wheels.

I'm not sure how long it's going to take until saying 'the wheels are fine' before it gets boring. Infact, I think it might already have passed.

As well it might - they preload with quite a force.

COROT, WASP, OGLE, SWEEPS, even the amateur built HATNet all proved that the concept works long before Kepler was launched.

Kepler has discovered many Exoplanets....but it certainly didn't 'prove' the concept - we already knew it worked - Kepler would never have been funded if we hadn't have already known that.

If the rover is still roving, such reassurance is utterly redundant.

Actually - given that primary means something specific in spaceflight - it's important to note that it's primary planet hunting mission was 3.5 years - it exceeded that and was already in an extended mission.

If you look at the Descanso website I linked to above, you will find all the details you could want regarding DSN protocols.

However- even error checking/correction does not solve the problem. You radiate a command load - the spacecraft identifies it as 'bad'. That command load could have been very important - it could have been something to prevent the spacecraft doing something to harm itself in someway . If the spacecraft doesn't accept it - you are quite probably in a worse situation. You radiate commands because you want the spacecraft to do something. Imagine the MSL side-B swop, or MER-B flash anomaly - but with the added complexity of unreliable communications.

There is a less obvious benefit of this strategy - conjunction offers up an opportunity for spacecraft operations teams to have a little down time. It's very very hard for a lot of flight-ops people to find time for vacations etc. Projects also can not afford enough personel to staff up enough to have redundancy for every job required on the mission. Conjunction offers a chance for people to catch up on other responsibilities, or take a well earned break.

Millions and millions of people do, all over the world - and they believe what they read.

It's simply a case of reliability. You do not want to uplink commands only for the vehicle to not receive them properly and thus throw itself into an X-Band fault or other safe mode.

This document on MRO : http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/MRO_092106.pdf : states

"An X-band link using BPSK begins to degrade near a 2-deg SEP angle."


On DS1 : http://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/DPSummary/All_Article2.pdf

"For DS1, X-band up- and downlink, we considered an angle of 5 deg as the minimum at which to expect no degradation, and 3 deg as the minimum at which reliable communications could be planned. From October 20 to December 3, 2000, the angle was less than 5 deg, and from October 29 to November 25 it was less than 3 deg. The minimum angle was less than 0.5 deg during a scheduled pass on November 14, 2000. The 11-year solar cycle was near its maximum"

Isn't this exactly what would have been imagined? Isn't this exactly why Kepler was built? To find these planets?

Looks like very ordinary, regular flat-field maneuvers. They've done them many many times in the past.

Confirmed...


https://twitter.com/NASA_SDO/status/324554290259709953

The rover was tiny - absolutely tiny. Sojourner was 65 x 48cm and its location is debatable in HiRISE imagery. PropM 21 x 16cm - less than 1/8th the 'surface area' seen from above.

I think using the word 'probable' on locating something <1/2 the size of a HiRISE pixel is a stretch, at best.

It's more than plausible. Consider the original Cassini-Huygens plan. 4 minutes of relay after touchdown. Read the rest of the Mars 3 plan - they were expecting the orbiter to be back relaying a few hours later.....just like, say MGS -> Odyssey after the MER landings.

Good point - I was only inspired to mentioned it because the paper you linked to does use the phrases "The solar arrays were enlarged to allow a “gull-wing” design..." before going on to talk about CP/CG etc.

They have hinges. Fitting isn't a problem. Indeed - having them at the angle they are means they must be BIGGER to provide equivilent power margin compared to entirely 'flat' arrays.



The very first hit for a Google image search of 'MAVEN solar panel' (and indeed every artists impression of MAVEN ever released) shows that there are indeed solar cells on the angled panel

http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/maven/files/...solar_panel.jpg

Yes it is. Not all spacecraft can, should or must carry cameras. Would it be nice to take a more modern imaging suite to the surface of Venus? Obviously.

There is still huge quantities of science to be done without one, however.

It has a few LED's on it's microscope.....not headlamps.

And Fredk rightly stated - communication would be a problem ( as would the thermal environment )

If only someone had already animated it

http://twitpic.com/c5eytt

Spirit's parachute has also moved in the past. Sadly, not enough observations at Meridiani to see if that's moved as well

To put MAHLI close enough for the LED's to help, would be to obstruct the hole from ChemCam

But - I'm sure they'll MAHLI with LED it before we leave