Very interesting guys
Voyager 1 and 2 still alive!!!! 38,000 mph!
- Thread starter Turboomni
- Start date
This shot from a camera on Perservance's "jetpack" captures the rover in midair, just before its wheels touched down. Talk about excessive tow in or out depending which direction it is supposed to travel lol. Guess they don't want it to roll after touchdown.
LocuMob
Fluid Technician with a hat
I just spent the last hour reading about this Perseverance and Ingenuity, very interesting stuff!
Last night the National Geographic Channel had a documentary on building and testing the rover. They said the small tubes to hold the soil samples are likely the cleanest and most sterile items in the world. They don’t want any earth germs on Mars, nor do they want to “discover” Earth like organisms on Mars that actually originated on Earth.
LocuMob
Fluid Technician with a hat
Wish I would have caught that.
cool stuff.
I find the Ingenuity helicopter fascinating as I build and fly radio control FPV drones, helicopters and airplanes as a hobby. First time in history I believe an aircraft has been flown on another planet.
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
What I find extraordinary is that the Martian atmosphere is only 1% the density of earth's and this helicopter can actually get off the ground.
Now let's not get too excited! The mini helicopter hasn't flown yet according to this update:
"There's huge interest in the mini-helicopter that travelled with the rover. The 2kg device will perform the first powered flight on another world.
But first Perseverance needs to find the right place to put this aircraft down to conduct its experiments. Mission planners said on Friday it would be a few weeks yet before the robot reached this chosen location, meaning it's probably going to be April before Ingenuity, as the little chopper is known, takes to the skies."
The pictures above with the mini-helicopter on the surface are all artwork. At the moment JPL is still in the process of uploading the software needed for Perseverance to carry out its post-touchdown mission, including using its equipment. That will take the better part of this week.
Interesting info on the Ingenuity Helicopter. Flying near the surface of Mars the pressure of the atmosphere on the surface is the equivalent to 100,000 feet altitude here on Earth. No helicopter on earth has gone higher than 40,000 feet. No airplane has gone over 80,000 [SR71] I guess any higher were rocket powered. Some construction info and stuff here too.
I’m very happy for this thread being here, coexisting with all the car threads.
Great diversity making this such a fun and interesting forum.
Great diversity making this such a fun and interesting forum.
Perseverance 360 view of Mars. NASA reports Mars is 93M miles away (same as distance to the Sun) from Earth, and its a balmy -4 degrees F, with a low of -98 degrees F.
Could be Earth -- no conspiracy theories here as it isn't -- as some desolate places look today. A whole planet ... remarkably like this one .. but ain't nobody gonna be there in my lifetime.
Could be Earth -- no conspiracy theories here as it isn't -- as some desolate places look today. A whole planet ... remarkably like this one .. but ain't nobody gonna be there in my lifetime.
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
Not sure how old you are but I wouldn't bet against Elon.
Elon Musk says SpaceX will land rockets on Mars 'well before 2030' and his European rivals are 'aiming too low'
Ill be hangin' around age 70 in 2030, well within my life expectancy. I am not betting against Elon (I am really impressed with Space X for stuff on/around Earth).. i am betting on laws of physics.
While anything is possible, I don't see the political and technical "resolve" to put men on Mars. Not like a galvanized national mandate to put men on the moon (thats a topic for a different thread
)Mars is a hard place to land. Take a look at the video (its short, 2 mins). You gotta slow down from multi-thousands of MPH, plus have enough structure for heatshielding and deceleration management, plus enough "flexibility" built into the lander to deal with space weather (wind, temperature, etc.) that you wont know until you get there.
I just think it'll take more time to figure all that out .. and even Elon ain't got the lettuce -- without a couple of governments ready to help fund the whole thing.. and i dont think they are gonna show up for it
Fratzog
Old Man with a Hat
Thanks for posting the video since it certainly puts the daunting challenges of landing safely on Mars is perspective. I can still remember my jaw dropping when Space X was able to flip over their first stages and recover them by landing on their feet. This accomplishment astonished me so much that when he now talks about building propellant plants to produce methane and liquid oxygen to be sourced directly from sub-surface Martian resources I'm far less sceptical. Time will tell but I will be watching with interest.
patrick66
Old Man with a Hat
I'm still amazed by the fact that Mars is populated only by robots. Moving, functioning, operating robots. Cool.
It takes so much patience to know for sure:
"Several hours after the first flight has occurred, Perseverance [= the rover] will downlink Ingenuity’s [= the heli] first set of engineering data and, possibly, images and video from the rover’s Navigation Cameras and Mastcam-Z. From the data downlinked that first evening after the flight, the Mars Helicopter team expect to be able to determine if their first attempt to fly at Mars was a success.
On the following sol [= Martian day], all the remaining engineering data collected during the flight, as well as some low-resolution black-and-white imagery from the helicopter’s own Navigation Camera, could be downlinked to JPL. The third sol of this phase, the two images taken by the helicopter’s high-resolution color camera should arrive. The Mars Helicopter team will use all information available to determine when and how to move forward with their next test."
"Several hours after the first flight has occurred, Perseverance [= the rover] will downlink Ingenuity’s [= the heli] first set of engineering data and, possibly, images and video from the rover’s Navigation Cameras and Mastcam-Z. From the data downlinked that first evening after the flight, the Mars Helicopter team expect to be able to determine if their first attempt to fly at Mars was a success.
On the following sol [= Martian day], all the remaining engineering data collected during the flight, as well as some low-resolution black-and-white imagery from the helicopter’s own Navigation Camera, could be downlinked to JPL. The third sol of this phase, the two images taken by the helicopter’s high-resolution color camera should arrive. The Mars Helicopter team will use all information available to determine when and how to move forward with their next test."
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