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Post by jandl100 on Feb 17, 2021 6:54:14 GMT
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Post by MartinT on Feb 17, 2021 7:54:30 GMT
Good luck, Perseverance! Live up to your name.
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Post by MikeMusic on Feb 17, 2021 14:02:56 GMT
Bit like decorating your hall with a very long stick through the letterbox from out on the road - but more !
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Post by jandl100 on Feb 18, 2021 4:32:03 GMT
'Along with characterizing the planet’s geology and climate, and paving the way for human exploration beyond the Moon, the rover is focused on astrobiology, or the study of life throughout the universe. Perseverance is tasked with searching for telltale signs that microbial life may have lived on Mars billions of years ago" This article takes a closer look at the range of instruments available for the search for evidence of past life on Mars, and the thinking behind them. www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/searching-for-life-in-nasas-perseverance-mars-samples?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nasajpl&utm_content=daily20210217-1The landing site, Jezero crater, now a dessicated and barren frozen wasteland, is known to have been a large lake of water 3.5 billion years ago. And the hope is that this would be a strong candidate for the support of ancient Martian microbial life, if any. "Any hunt for biosignatures will include the rover’s suite of cameras, especially Mastcam-Z (located on the rover’s mast), which can zoom in to inspect scientifically interesting targets. The mission’s science team can task Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument – also on the mast – to fire a laser at a promising target, generating a small plasma cloud that can be analyzed to help determine its chemical composition. If those data are intriguing enough, the team could command the rover’s robotic arm to go in for a closer look. To do that, Perseverance will rely on one of two instruments on the turret at the end of its arm. PIXL the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry) will employ its tiny but powerful X-ray beam to search for potential chemical fingerprints of past life. The SHERLOC (the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals) instrument has its own laser and can detect concentrations of organic molecules and minerals that have been formed in watery environments. Together, SHERLOC and PIXL will provide high-resolution maps of elements, minerals, and molecules in Martian rocks and sediments, enabling astrobiologists to assess their composition and determine the most promising cores to collect. An enduring hope of the science team is to find a surface feature that couldn’t be attributed to anything other than ancient microbial life. One such feature could be something like a stromatolite. On Earth, stromatolites are wavy, rocky mounds formed long ago by microbial life along ancient shorelines and in other environments where metabolic energy and water were plentiful. Such a conspicuous feature would be difficult to chalk up to geologic processes.' |
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Post by jandl100 on Feb 18, 2021 6:47:54 GMT
So here we are near the beginning of our exploration of a new world.... zapping the place with lasers and X-rays and blowing up rocks.
And littering up the place with techno junk.
Humans will be humans, I guess!
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Post by MartinT on Feb 18, 2021 7:52:25 GMT
More worryingly: so few people seem interested in our continued exploration.
Perhaps Marco Polo didn't get great press, either.
Mundanity rules.
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Post by Pinch on Feb 18, 2021 17:41:25 GMT
I've picked up some popcorn for my daughter to have while we watch it together. She's very excited. Her name is on it somewhere.
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Post by jandl100 on Feb 18, 2021 19:54:14 GMT
I'm very excited, too!
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Post by Slinger on Feb 18, 2021 20:13:14 GMT
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Post by user211 on Feb 18, 2021 20:45:51 GMT
It's gonna crash... zee way of zee Beagle 2. Why? Stuff made in the UK on it. Jinxed.  |
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Post by Slinger on Feb 18, 2021 20:58:37 GMT
Perseverance is alive on the surface of Mars.
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Post by user211 on Feb 18, 2021 20:59:12 GMT
And I was expecting 4K real time video:(
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Post by julesd68 on Feb 18, 2021 21:00:54 GMT
Yeah just ones and zeros with some poxy Sinclair ZX-81 simulations - what a rip-off!
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Post by jandl100 on Feb 18, 2021 21:35:30 GMT
Fabulous.
It was weird watching it "live" knowing that the outcome had already happened 8 minutes before.
The speed of light is so slooooow!
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Post by user211 on Feb 18, 2021 21:37:29 GMT
I do find it hard not to take the piss. I have a bit of a problem with NASA. Especially the ridiculously touched up images and total lack of real progress since the moon landings.
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Post by jandl100 on Feb 18, 2021 21:39:39 GMT
That's just PR crap.
The technological achievement seen this evening is staggering.
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Post by user211 on Feb 18, 2021 21:48:41 GMT
I don't agree.
I'd shut NASA down, and get SpaceX to filter out the crap that works there taking on only the best. Then gift SpaceX the money NASA has been wasting.
There's quite a few people who think NASA are under achievers and have been for a very long while.
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Post by MartinT on Feb 18, 2021 21:58:15 GMT
Fantastic achievement. The semi-autonomous nature of an 8-minute delay takes some overcoming when programming the robotics.
I take my hat off to the team. I'll bet they're bloody relieved, too.
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Post by julesd68 on Feb 18, 2021 22:04:57 GMT
I'm looking forward to seeing what their little helicopter can do.
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Post by Clive on Feb 18, 2021 22:23:02 GMT
Fantastic achievement. It really is a pity it’s not “fashionable” nowadays.
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