Thanks for the link
A sol is a solar day on Mars - it’s 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds.
So on the 5th Martian day (which is just over 5 days on Earth) they’ll start the science. They’ll be using two Martian days to do computer checkouts on the primary computer and two on the secondary.
I remember that the time shift was an issue for the other Rovers, which only ran during the day on Mars (solar powered). So after every day the “work shift” shifted by about a half an hour. Made the work schedule rather interesting for the folks running the rovers. I think this one can function day and night, but I’m sure daytime (on Mars) is better for a lot of reasons.
Is it outside the realm of possibility to send something up there that can come back? With, say, a few kilograms of Martian rocks?
Sent from my SGH-i677 using Board Express
It’s not out of the realm of possibility, and several sample return missions have been proposed. It’s just so far been too expensive to be picked when missions were selected. Might happen in the next decade, depending on how much budget planetary explanation gets.
Oh, about 8 months ago.
Dunno about any murdering, but I assume that the sodomy angle will explored as part of next year’s mission: Bi-Curiosity.
I dunno, I hear Mars’ bigger moon is real homophobus.
So, I get why the Wolf trap didn’t make the cut for the very first rover, but it seems like a pretty easy, cheap, and effective test to have gotten around to including. Why hasn’t it?
what was or is the wolf trap? googling wolf trap mars rover isn’t finding anything
Basically a super culture medium that things love to grow in. I believe it was used in Antartica to discover previously unknown and hard to find microorganisms.
I was expecting an article on a court case.
Now that makes sense. I assume you just keep sprinkling dust or samples over time on it and see what happens. The concept has been around since Viking 1, why hasn’t this been on any of the rovers or landers yet?
The primary focus for Curiosity is repeatable geology and geochemistry, focussing on “following the water”. The instruments on Curiosity are designed with this goal in mind. Tests like the Wolf trap are one-shots, and can produce ambiguous results (as Viking 1 showed). There just is not the payback in terms of experiment mass. Some of the analysis equipment can detect complex carbon compound that may indicate life, and the Isotope analysis experiment will determine Carbon Isotope ratios (which vary on earth due to the presence of life). These results will give pointers, but not definitive results.
Also, if NASA equipped Curiosity with specific “search for life” experiments, then the whole mission becomes about that one goal (is there life on Mars?) - and the consequences of not detecting anything (or an ambiguous result) would be the immediate association of the mission with failure in the public mind, and the inevitable loss of funding for the ongoing geological research, which Curiosity can hopefully sustain for many years.
Far better for Curiosity to create a picture of the geohistory of Mars, identify the hydrological environment, maybe point out the features that could indicate life or the remains thereof, and still be successful with it’s primary mission in the ongoing public perception.
Si
I don’t think Curiosity needs to try to do too much, but it seems like it’s been a long time since we had a Mars probe really focus on the issue.
One of the lessons from Viking is that attempting a ‘life detector’ experiment without first have a really good understanding of the soil chemistry can give you inconclusive results. Thus, Curiosity has a set of tools for getting a really good idea of exactly what the surface of mars is made of. Once we have a better idea of exactly what the surface chemistry is, we can design a better experiment for detecting life in it.
Curiosity has transmitted the first song from Mars (will.i.am’s “Reach for the Stars”).
As well, BBC TV just reported that Curiosity has already transmitted back more information than all the other probes combined.
BBC is not being quite correct. Curiosity has transmitted more data than all previous probes had after being on the surface for the same amount of time. It hasn’t yet transmitted more data than all previous probes has during their entire time on mars.