Here’s the latest weekly video report on what the Mars rover “Curoisity” is up to. It’s moving slowly—apparently 30 meters per day—is analyzing the Martian atmosphere, and will soon take soil samples:
h/t: Michael
Curiosity update
September 7, 2012 • 2:44 am
Of course what the Mars geologists (can we say geologists or is there a ‘space’ term?) really want is to bring samples back to Earth. The “Mars sample return mission” – “would be beneficial to science by allowing more extensive analysis to be undertaken of the samples than could be done by instruments painstakingly transferred to Mars. Also, the presence of the samples on Earth would allow scientific equipment to be used on stored samples, even years and decades after the sample return mission.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_sample_return_mission
Areologist in the specific, planetologist in the general?
Planetary scientist in the general case. Ones who come to it from geology would be comfortable being called geologists, though.
So basically it landed 400 meters from where its going after traveling 150 MILLION TIMES that distance to get there.
Not really, the landing ellipses have axes of several km and there was little likelihood for it to get close to the sediment mountain that is the target.
In fact, the tighter landing ellipse nearly made it miss the alluvial flow that is part of Glenelg. I hear the palindrome was chosen to signify that Curiosity will go-there-and-back-out.
Glenelg is a point where 3 terrains comes together, a younger, less cratered where Curiosity landed, an alluvial flow to the north, and an older terrain that is presumably the basement of the Gale sediments. The geologists take the opportunity to check out for the basement, because it helps with analyzing the sediment and their history. The alluvial flow is interesting from an astrobiology perspective, so that makes me happy.
The real goal is the mid crater sediment mountain, Aeolis Mons. It will take Curiosity a year or more to get there. And the entrance to the sediment base lies behind some high dunes that it will pass on the west. Glenelg is east, so it is a slight detour.
But oh yeah, a ~ 10^-7 precision in that sense. You don’t want to have a gun fight with NASA! (Of course, if they take 5 years to raise the gun and fire it…)
Sorry to show my ignorance of maathematical notation – what does the upward pointing symbol indicate after the 10? If I once knew I have forgotten!
It indicates that the -7 should be read as a superscript.
There are some fancy HTML scripts to do real superscripts, but they come and go on Disqus sites, so I have stopped trying.
Btw, I used Anders’ data, I don’t know how good an estimate it is. They do course corrections of course, so the gun metaphor isn’t really apt as much as fun.
Google, Wolfram Alpha, and most other modern free-form calculators, all support both ^ and ** for exponentiation, so it’s reasonable to use them.
However, for examples such as the one you gave above, I personally prefer scientific “e” notation — 1.0e-7 in your example (either case is acceptable). It’s got a longer history and is somewhat more readily recognizable and less prone to confusion. Not much, though….
Sometimes it’s also good to go ahead and write out all those zeroes: 0.0000001 looks more impressive.
Cheers,
b&
In the same vein as “where’s my flying car I was promised?”, I can’t help but feel “where’s my 100 kph fully autonomous rover I was promised?”
I understand that the tasks involved to achieve that level of function are complex and the power demands very high. And that the program is very expensive, the equipment is one of a kind custom built, and that the painstakingly methodical procedures are necessary to minimize the probability of debilitating or fatal error or mischance that would result in the loss of so much time and resources.
But still, I want my 100 kph fully autonomous rover NOW! So hurry up.
There is a band called “we were promised jetpacks”! You were born too soon darelle!
Thanks! Now I feel old AND petulant.
Curiosity sets personal speed record :-
Plus the design life of the internal power source is around 14 years ~ no solar panels nonsense for this baby it can operate independently of the position of Sol & any annoyances such as two week sand storms
Science heaven
Those 125 watts, if I’m not mistraken, aren’t even all available to the wheels — they’ve also got to be shared amongst the computers, navigational cameras, and everything else.
Considering lots of modern desktop CPUs pull more than 125 W, that’s damned impressive.
(And, by “CPU,” I mean just the thumbnail-sized IC on the motherboard. The rest of the motherboard, including fans and RAM and what-not, will draw power of its own…and some video cards are drawing that much power these days…and then there’s the disks, network equipment, and more — even the power supply itself will have a fan in addition to its own inefficiencies. Of course, lots of computers, especially laptops and netbooks, are much more efficient and such efficiencies have worked their ways into desktop models, but still….)
Cheers,
b&
But it seems they have batteries and will do power hungry analyses during the nights when they aren’t driving. (They forgot the headlights. And the blinkers.)
Dunno about the practical lifetime of the batteries, but they should take several thousand load cycles.
They may have access to more than 125 W if they need to traverse uphill.
The main reason they will start out a speed lower than Opportunity’s speed is that they will use much the same algorithms to begin with.
They may improve the hazard avoidance algorithms as they go, the MERs speed was doubled or so during the years IIRC, but I think they may be cautious for a long time.
So..Curiosity has a TURBO button? But how does NASA press it? It’s not like you can just reach under the desk or kick it with your toe….
b&
DARPA Grand Challenge 2011:
“The course involved a 96 km (60 mi) urban area course”. “1st Place; averaged approximately 14 mph (22.53 km/h)”.
6 of 11 cars finished the course, only 4 with competitive times.
And that is on Earth. (But negotiating traffic and traffic rules, so a bit more advanced hazard course.)
But on the other hand, you can go there and compete!
Yes, I always make a point of checking out this annual challenge. I can’t remember what year exactly, but sometime in the not too distant past a team entered a motorcycle in this challenge.
They didn’t do well at all, but I thought they showed great chutzpah in attempting a more difficult challenge. I remember thinking at the time, after reading some articles about the team and listening to some interviews, that they did not seem to have a very good grasp of how a motorcycle steers. Steering a two wheeled tandem vehicle is fundamentally different than steering a 4 wheeled vehicle. Even though it is not particularly difficult to understand how it works most people have only a vague idea at best and almost no serious scientific studies have been done on it.