[meteorite-list] Free at last, free at last, thank Mission Control, it's ...

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Jun 4 23:47:23 2005
Message-ID: <1b8.1496f48d.2fd3cfc4_at_aol.com>

Thanks for the post Darren! Ron, being connected to Ithaca and Altadena,
please consider passing out heartfelt congratulations along to the team and
tell them to take a day off at the Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena on gov't
paid overtime. Wake them up with the song "90% Air" by 'John Dillinger Died
for You'.
 
If anyone gets stuck in a sand trap, see how well they do, and then petition
the golf course to unofficially name it the 37-Sol Mars Rover Sand Trap.
They can dump the sandbox the engineers have been playing in for the past 177
virtual meters in one there and bond/commiserate with golfers everywhere. And
after all the commerative names on Mars, it is about time that the drain
backed up in Pasadena. It is only fair to the Martians...Boy I feel good, no
disrespect meant...free at last it is! Golf, anyone?? Saludos, Doug PS I
still think Tiger Woods should have been consulting in engineering on this one,
or at least Arnold Palmer could have given some advice...
 
It's such a beautiful day
I think I'll get out and golf
It's such a beautiful day
Won't rent a cart I will walk
It's such a beautiful day
As I step up on the tee
With my new driver made
Of titanium alloy-e
 
I hit that damn thing straight
I hit that shot like I should
Straight and about 250
Just like I knew I would
But there's a little wind
And I hit a little fade anyway
And watch that ball roll
Right off the fairway
 
FORE!
 
This is no problem really
This is a short par 4
I can go straight for the green
No need for a detour
I bust a 7 iron it's looking like that I'll be on
But then it takes a shitty bounce and I am in the rough again
 
Oh but this shot is different
There's a tree right in front of me
Should be able to go right over
Should be able to get on easy
But my wedge's a little thin
That ball comes back and parts my hair
That's when I hear big Ron say
"Trees are 90% air"
 
FORE!
 
Darren writes:
>Once again, a Mars rover pulls off a frikin' miracle and escapes the sand
trap.

================
 
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0506/04mer/

Mars rover Opportunity finally escapes sandy trap
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: June 4, 2005

A thick extraterrestrial sand dune was no match for an army of engineers and
scientists who worked
for over a month to free NASA's Opportunity rover from its clenching grasp
on the surface of Mars.

"We're out!...all six wheels are on top of the soil," Steve Squyres wrote in
an online status report
Saturday. Squyres is the principal investigator for the Opportunity and
Spirit rovers.


Now over 16 months into a mission originally planned to last for 90 days,
the Opportunity rover has
been exploring a geologically-rich region of Mars known as Meridiani Planum,
where the six-wheeled
robot found conclusive evidence last year of the presence of great amounts
of liquid water long ago.

On its way to visit its third impact crater in late April, the durable rover
entered a treacherous
region known as the "etched terrain" fraught with obstacles such as thick
sand dunes. Opportunity
became stuck in one such ripple on April 26, and engineers controlling the
mission at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory opted to take their time to complete studies of the
situation before making
any subsequent action.

The ground team spent several weeks putting together a "recipe" to create a
similar type of soil in
an Earth laboratory to model the situation Opportunity found itself in on
Mars. Mock-up rovers were
stripped of two-thirds of their weight to simulate the weaker gravity on the
Red Planet. The
testbeds were then placed in the soil to determine the best way to exit the
trap.

After straightening the wheels, the control team began commanding
Opportunity to slowly spin its
wheels each day to begin the process of extracting the bogged-down rover in
a forward direction with
a slight turn to the left. From mid-May until Friday, the craft had spun its
 wheels enough to
normally travel 581 feet, but the actual movement detected was just about
three feet.

But that deliberate movement proved worth it as Opportunity crested the
foot-high dune and its
ten-inch wheels emerged on the surface during Friday's scheduled operation.

"We've been confident all along that this would happen, but still...what a
relief," Squyres said.
"It's been an arduous process, and it feels very good to be free."

During its time stuck, the rover conducted a number of remote atmospheric
science observations and
used its high-resolution panoramic cameras to take pictures of the
surrounding area where other
potentially dangerous dunes are found.

Opportunity has driven 3.32 miles since exiting its lander in January 2004,
vastly further than any
pre-launch estimate could have predicted. Its twin Spirit on the opposite
side of the planet has
traveled almost three miles.

The robot is now about 1,300 feet from its next probable target known as
Erebus crater - a formation
quite a bit larger than earlier impact sites visited.

Normal operations will resume on Monday, but controllers will bide their
time before sending orders
to tell Opportunity to begin moving again.

"Clearly we're going to have to put some additional safeguards in place when
we drive in this kind
of terrain, and those safeguards certainly will reduce our driving speed
somewhat," Squyres told
Spaceflight Now. "But we feel very good about being able to continue
southward at a reasonable
rate."

"When we're actually going to drive away from this place remains to be seen,
but we're in a position
right now to begin studying the dune that we ran into, and we're going to
start that immediately
______________________________________________
Meteorite-list mailing list
Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
 
Received on Sat 04 Jun 2005 11:47:16 PM PDT