Mars Rover Anniversary Program, JPL (Special Program) |
Mars Rover Anniversary Program, JPL (Special Program) |
Jan 24 2006, 06:27 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 578 Joined: 5-November 04 From: Denmark Member No.: 107 |
Just a reminder to tell people that NASA TV (finally) shows something to celebrate 2 years on Mars
Eastern U.S. time. January 24, Tuesday 2:45 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. - Mars Rover Anniversary Program - JPL (Special Program) http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html -------------------- "I want to make as many people as possible feel like they are part of this adventure. We are going to give everybody a sense of what exploring the surface of another world is really like"
- Steven Squyres |
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Jan 25 2006, 05:54 PM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 89 Joined: 25-January 06 Member No.: 661 |
I posted this on Mars Rover Blog. I thought you also might be interested. (I do not post often)....
What a difference two years makes! Two years ago last night I was at the edge of my seat and nearly bouncing off the walls. I had woken up at 6 am to join the EDL gang for breakfast at Burger Continental. We tried to be relaxed but Spirit's Sol 18 anomaly had really thrown us for a loop. We were beginning to think that we may have a dead rover on Mars and with Opportunity headed into the remains of a dust storm (one that elevated the atmosphere pressure and hence lowered the air density where it is needed most during entry) and knowing full well that Meridiani was at the upper edge of the elevation we could get to, our confidence was ebbing fast. Our only consolation was that Meridiani was believed to be pretty safe from a rock and slope perspective (we did not know for sure). Regardless we started that day with a lot of trepidation and knots in our guts. I could not finish my breakfast so instead I raced to the lab to hear news of the late night commanding to try to get Spirit out of her endless reset loop. When I got to the 8th floor the first people I saw were Richard and Jennifer. They looked tired but the beaming grins from their faces told me all I needed to know, Spirit was not dead and in fact was very likely to live. I was still unsettled that day, but we did not have the near panicked debates on what to do about pyro electronics or parachutes as we had 3 weeks earlier. We even got a signal during the airbag bouncing at landing on the LCP or left circularly polarized channel. (We lost the signal near the first bounce on Spirit and had to wait an interminable 15 minutes or so for the rover to squirt a signal out on its lander base petal patch antenna that was pointed to Earth.) It was so much easier, but for some reason I was far more nervous and far more relieved when it landed safely. After talking to politicians and cheering in the press conference, I was so tired I did not wait for those great first images to come down a few hours later. Instead I went home to my family and cheered with them over a glass of wine and watched the images come down on TV with the rest of the world. It was a great glass. Today my blood pressure is much lower. Cheers, Rob Manning Former MER Engineer PS we are all still shocked at how long these beasties have lasted. I joked with Mark Adler yesterday that being off by a factor of 8 in lifetime and a factor of 10 in distance that maybe we had made some sort of systematic error somewhere during the design. **************** Comments made here are the express opinion of the author and do not represent the views of JPL, Caltech nor NASA. |
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Jan 25 2006, 06:41 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
QUOTE (MarsEngineer @ Jan 25 2006, 11:54 AM) PS we are all still shocked at how long these beasties have lasted. I joked with Mark Adler yesterday that being off by a factor of 8 in lifetime and a factor of 10 in distance that maybe we had made some sort of systematic error somewhere during the design. Gee, Rob, you guys better stop making such systematic errors, or the next time y'all need to ask NASA for an extra $80 million or so to get your babies off the ground, they'll just take you to task for designing and building the things *too* well in the first place! -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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