Robots

New NASA Video

nobody@vox.com(Nick) — Thu, 31 May 2007 10:13:25 -0700

There's a fancy new NASA video out which shows some love for the next-next mars lander (the mars science laboratory - new name, plz). Most notably, we're not just dropping a ballon-coverered lander and hoping for a right-side-up landing this time but this will surely contain it's own set of difficult engineering. Although I hate to be pessimistic about the entire thing, my failure-bet would be on detaching those little wires from the top of the actual rover after the lander places it gently on the surface of mars. Anyway, watch it yourself:

Mars Science Laboratory

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We Like Tha Moon

nobody@vox.com(Nick) — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:41:03 -0700

I forgot to post this yesterday after it was done uploading... We're going back to the moon 'cuz George says so! It's a promotional NASA trailer for returning to the moon.

Lunar Exploration Trailer

(but seriously, what's with the Raiders of the Lost Ark music they've got going on in the beginning?)

Somewhat similarly, a ton of blogs reported today that an extrasolar planet has been found which may roughly match the temperature of Earth and it's only ~20 lightyears away. The process by which extrasolar planets are found seems pretty solid to me (measuring star wobble and whatnot) but no one has explained any process that explains how they're able to tell that it's potentially hospitable. Seems to me like it's just as possible that it's like Venus and pretty inhospitable. NewScientist has an article on the subject.

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Help find the Beagle 2!

nobody@vox.com(Nick) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:30:56 -0800

The Planetary Society Weblog wants you to help find the Beagle 2!
They're cutting up some estimated landing sites from the HiRISE imager aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and you might want to take a look to see if you can spot anything. Unfortunately, the landing spots are only guesses and there's no guarantee that the lander is in those images at all. Maybe HiRISE will get a chance to look closer at other areas downrange from the expected landing zone in the future.

Here's an image (stolen right from that blog) that shows some estimated images of what the lander and it's parts might look like to an observer flipping through the HiRISE images:

Finding the Beagle 2 from HiRISE

But here's the question that I have: do they really know exactly when the beagle failed? Sure, it was chalked up to a backwards accelerometer which means parachutes would have been deployed already so we're looking for those. Who knows what happened after that though? Do the parachutes cut away after the rockets fire that were supposed to ease the lander down?

Crashed Genesis Spacecraft

Are we looking for something looking more like the Genesis module looked like when it slammed in to the Utah desert? Essentially, I think we need more information about what happened or may have happened to the Beagle 2 before we start pouring over HiRISE images. And even then, let's get images for the entire region that we're looking at, not just two tiny splotches that might contain the spacecraft.

Edit: I got the beagle 2 and genesis loss causes backwards! The genesis was the craft with the backwards accelerometer. At any rate, they STILL don't know why the beagle 2 was lost and so we're still in the same position with definite idea of what we should be looking for.

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