[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Just finished reading the excellent Sojourner book - and it mentioned the rover taking images of its laser stripes - which I'd never seen - so I went and hunted for them

http://pdsimg.jpl.nasa.gov/data/mpfr-m-rvr...ft/r7377913.htm



How cool

Doug

[djellison]

Most likely a dead lander battery.

Yup - Sojourner was still working perfectly well - and they had plans to send if off on quite a long drive.

Sojourner would, after a few sols of no comms, gone back to its previous position to see if it had gone somewhere that blocked the radio waves and waited for instructions there.

If that hadnt worked - it would then have started attempting to circle the lander at about a 5m radius.

How or when Sojourner died is probably never going to be known, unless someone can actually pick the thing up, and inspect the contents of the memory

If and how-much it started to circle Pathfinder might POSSIBLY be visible by MRO in 18 months time.

To me - Sojourner still is the most amazing little contraption that man has ever made. Given the scales of time/money/volume/mass - it's a greater feat than the MER's imho.

There's something about being able to see it in motion that makes it more emotive than MER....



Doug