Author Topic: Space exploration thread - Unexpected Rapid Disassembly in the launch area.  (Read 310702 times)

Offline Zeb

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2000 on: August 31, 2018, 07:11:38 pm »
Been following the Opportunity story on Mars via space force twitter.



NASA/JPL are giving it 45 days more of actively trying to contact the rover, which got covered by a huge dust storm, before switching to passive listening. Some of the former staff members/engineers etc. are a little grumpy with how short a time is being given, saying that continuing on to January would give a better chance of picking things back up.

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The rover’s last communication with Earth was received June 10, and Opportunity’s current health is unknown. Opportunity engineers are relying on the expertise of Mars scientists analyzing data from the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to estimate the tau near the rover’s position.

“The dust haze produced by the Martian global dust storm of 2018 is one of the most extensive on record, but all indications are it is finally coming to a close,” said MRO Project Scientist Rich Zurek at JPL. “MARCI images of the Opportunity site have shown no active dust storms for some time within 3,000 kilometers [about 1,900 miles] of the rover site.”

With skies clearing, mission managers are hopeful the rover will attempt to call home, but they are also prepared for an extended period of silence. “If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the Sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover,” said Callas. “At that point our active phase of reaching out to Opportunity will be at an end. However, in the unlikely chance that there is a large amount of dust sitting on the solar arrays that is blocking the Sun’s energy, we will continue passive listening efforts for several months.”

The additional several months for passive listening are an allowance for the possibility that a Red Planet dust devil could come along and literally dust off Opportunity’s solar arrays. Such “cleaning events” were first discovered by Mars rover teams in 2004 when, on several occasions, battery power levels aboard both Spirit and Opportunity increased by several percent during a single Martian night, when the logical expectation was that they would continue to decrease.

Wasn't Opportunity designed to last just 90 days? Fantastic tribute to the engineering skills which have seen it through more than 14 years.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2018, 07:13:09 pm by Zeb »
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2001 on: August 31, 2018, 09:39:32 pm »
It will be very sad to see Opportunity expire in such a manner.  Hope it bounces back.  I've literally being following it every since it landed. Has to easily be in the top five robotic space explorations.  It's unexpected longevity gave us a vital glance into the Martian surface.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2002 on: August 31, 2018, 11:20:39 pm »
It will be very sad to see Opportunity expire in such a manner.  Hope it bounces back.  I've literally being following it every since it landed. Has to easily be in the top five robotic space explorations.  It's unexpected longevity gave us a vital glance into the Martian surface.
Never fully liked that project, to be honest. So many compromises went in different decisions, the management was disjointed; we are capable of so much better quality work. Goddard had no oversight and messed up the SAM instrument, it would have been 1000 times more sensitive per design... Driving became an event when the wheels started breaking, so the geologists declared victory before even reaching the mountain; we should have been up there on the rocky slopes by plan.

And if you think that's bad enough, the next rover (Mars 2020) is even worse... SHERLOC, PIXL, SuperCam, sample cahce tubes, all have issues that shouldn't exist in the first place. The schedule has already slipped almost to the max and we jokingly call it Mars 2022 now.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2003 on: September 1, 2018, 04:41:44 pm »
Never fully liked that project, to be honest. So many compromises went in different decisions, the management was disjointed; we are capable of so much better quality work. Goddard had no oversight and messed up the SAM instrument, it would have been 1000 times more sensitive per design... Driving became an event when the wheels started breaking, so the geologists declared victory before even reaching the mountain; we should have been up there on the rocky slopes by plan.

And if you think that's bad enough, the next rover (Mars 2020) is even worse... SHERLOC, PIXL, SuperCam, sample cahce tubes, all have issues that shouldn't exist in the first place. The schedule has already slipped almost to the max and we jokingly call it Mars 2022 now.

I'm assuming you're talking about Curiosity there?  We were discussing Opportunity.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2004 on: September 1, 2018, 04:55:59 pm »
I'm assuming you're talking about Curiosity there?  We were discussing Opportunity.
You're right, my bad... We still call them MER, MSL, etc.; those public names are not too popular here.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2005 on: September 21, 2018, 03:57:58 pm »
https://www.sciencealert.com/star-trek-vulcan-exoplanet-40-eridani-a-hd-26965-super-earth-dharma-planet-survey

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Astronomers Just Found a Planet Where Star Trek's Vulcan Was Predicted to Exist
It might even be habitable.

MICHELLE STARR 19 SEP 2018
So far, astronomers have identified thousands of exoplanets out there beyond the reaches of the Solar System, but only a rare few are the stuff of legend. Such is the case with an Earth-like exoplanet, found orbiting a star called 40 Eridani A - Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's preferred location for Vulcan, the home planet of Mr Spock.

Located around 16 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Eridanus, 40 Eridani A is part of a triple-star system. Although it was never mentioned in the original TV series of Star Trek, it had been put forward as a proposed location for the planet by related literature.

In 1991, Roddenberry and three astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics wrote a letter to Sky & Telescope magazine laying out their choice for Vulcan's location, and why.

"Star Trek 2 by James Blish and Star Trek Maps by Jeff Maynard and others name the star 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun. The Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stan and Fred Goldstein cites Epsilon Eridani instead," they wrote in their letter.

"We prefer the identification of 40 Eridani as Vulcan's sun because of what we have learned about both stars at Mount Wilson … The HK observations suggest that 40 Eridani is 4 billion years old, about the same age as the Sun. In contrast, Epsilon Eridani is barely 1 billion years old.

"Based on the history of life on Earth, life on any planet around Epsilon Eridani would not have had time to evolve beyond the level of bacteria. On the other hand, an intelligent civilisation could have evolved over the aeons on a planet circling 40 Eridani. So the latter is the more likely Vulcan sun."

Epsilon Eridani does have one planet - an uninhabitable gas giant. Now astronomers on the University of Florida-led Dharma Planet Survey have found something that seems a bit more habitable orbiting 40 Eridani A.

More precisely, it's an object known as a super-Earth - a rocky planet around twice the size of Earth, orbiting 40 Eridani A just inside the system's habitable zone - not too hot and not too cold. It completes one orbit every 42 (Earth) days.

So life on the planet isn't unfeasible.

"The orange-tinted HD 26965 [40 Eridani A] is only slightly cooler and slightly less massive than our Sun, is approximately the same age as our Sun, and has a 10.1-year magnetic cycle nearly identical to the Sun's 11.6-year sunspot cycle," said astronomer Matthew Muterspaugh of Tennessee State University.

"Therefore HD 26965 may be an ideal host star for an advanced civilisation."

The aim of the Dharma Planet Survey, using the 50-inch Dharma Endowment Foundation Telescope (DEFT) on Mount Lemmon in Arizona, is a dedicated survey to find low-mass planets orbiting bright, nearby stars.

It uses the radial velocity method - detecting the very slight wobble in a star's position due to the gravitational pull of an exoplanet. The candidate exoplanet, named HD 26965b (but we'll probably call it Vulcan, obviously), is the first super-Earth found in the survey.

And if you're in the southern hemisphere, you can even go outside and look for it.

"This star can be seen with the naked eye, unlike the host stars of most of the known planets discovered to date," said astronomer Bo Ma of the University of Florida.

"Now anyone can see 40 Eridani on a clear night and be proud to point out Spock's home."


Offline Zeb

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2006 on: September 22, 2018, 02:02:23 pm »
Jaxa have landed two rovers on asteroid Ryugu successfully. Picture from the English twitter feed taken by one of the rovers as it started its final descent onto the surface.





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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2007 on: September 28, 2018, 06:27:24 pm »
Just a bit more on those Japanese Landers.  These wont be the only ones.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/l0zKdl7vdZM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/l0zKdl7vdZM</a>
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Offline CornerFlag

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2008 on: October 8, 2018, 08:41:57 pm »
Hubble's lost full function of one of its gyros, meaning it's slipped into 'Safe Mode'.

https://www.space.com/42057-hubble-space-telescope-safe-mode-gyroscope-failure.html
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2009 on: October 8, 2018, 09:08:03 pm »
Ohhh


Still no JWST yet either..  this was always going to happen...

Still, it can still be used so it’s the end of the world
« Last Edit: October 8, 2018, 09:10:35 pm by Tepid T₂O »
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Offline CornerFlag

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2010 on: October 8, 2018, 09:27:59 pm »
Ohhh


Still no JWST yet either..  this was always going to happen...

Still, it can still be used so it’s the end of the world
True, but JWST is now not schedued to fly until 2021 at the earliest, I'm wondering if the tech is going to be updated on board or will it already be somewhat redundant by the time it flies.

Schedule me a Soyuz to Hubble, I'll replace the gyros.  For free, I'm nice like that.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2011 on: October 8, 2018, 10:19:26 pm »
True, but JWST is now not schedued to fly until 2021 at the earliest, I'm wondering if the tech is going to be updated on board or will it already be somewhat redundant by the time it flies.

Schedule me a Soyuz to Hubble, I'll replace the gyros.  For free, I'm nice like that.
Sounds like an horrific job to be honest..  just incredible that they didn’t it once already...

They’ve been talking about JWST since the 90s... it sees, so long ago it’s untrue..  I don’t thye they will upgrade anything.  It’s much too difficult due to the absurd amount of testing they have to do..

It’s been pushed back so many times though...
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2012 on: October 9, 2018, 06:28:12 am »
JWST is has been a disaster... Fist pitched as $0.8bn project it gradually went up to $9bn. And the delays have been incomprehensible. Goddard given the mission was a NASA blunder, if you ask me. The worst (I fear) is yet to come. You can go fix Hubble, but good luck going to the L2 point to fix JWST should that be required.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2013 on: October 9, 2018, 04:56:35 pm »
You'd think the lessons of Hubble would have been learned well. Of course not.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2014 on: October 9, 2018, 10:01:40 pm »
Scott Manley talks about the HST failure

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/MY169HtCazE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/MY169HtCazE</a>
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Offline gazzalfc

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2015 on: October 11, 2018, 10:26:29 am »
Astronauts are to make an emergency landing after their Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned on lift-off to the International Space Station.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45822845

Looks like the crew are alive though search and rescue are on their way to find the capsule

Astronaut Nick Hague of NASA and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency landed in a 'ballistic descent mode'

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2016 on: October 11, 2018, 10:27:46 am »
Rogue NASA

@RogueNASA
 24m24 minutes ago

FYI ballistic descent mode means that the crew could experience over 9 G's of force upon re-entry.

Search and rescue crews will take approx 1.5 hours to find the capsule (landing somewhere in Kazakhstan)

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2017 on: October 11, 2018, 10:29:39 am »
The crew has landed and are in communication with rescue teams.

They are awaiting contact with search and rescue.

The crew is in good condition.

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2018 on: October 11, 2018, 03:30:10 pm »
Looks like they were found safe and well.

The Russian Space agency have suspended their future manned flights until after an investigation. They have promised to be transparent and dont expect any issues with their relationship with NASA

What could develop into an issue is if they cannot find the issue as there are still astronauts on the ISS and the Soyuz rockets are the only ones with the ability to take/return them. Supplies aren't thought to be an issue though as they can be sent in unmanned rockets

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2019 on: October 11, 2018, 07:38:25 pm »
Some footage and summary of the Soyuz situation.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/cpqq0i4w_fM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/cpqq0i4w_fM</a>
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2020 on: October 13, 2018, 08:45:05 am »
“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2022 on: October 14, 2018, 10:48:38 am »
Not directly involved in this thread - but saw "First Man" yesterday - the story of Neil Armstrong - actually more about him than the mission, but really brings into relief the risks and pure terror of what they overcame to reach the moon.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2023 on: October 14, 2018, 03:17:02 pm »
I've often wondered why Obama decided to cancel the Constellation program, which had NASA shift over to SLS?  Seemed to me that the former was just starting to come together, what with the test launch and everything.  Now it looks like stopping one project and starting the other has set America's whole manned spaceflight program back years.

If it was a cost measure then it looks like a major blunder.  I think EM-1 was originally supposed to fly this year I think but it's been pushed way back to 2020.

How do big contractors mess up like this when you've got these aggressive, up and coming independent commercial operators just getting things done?  Just seems so bloated and inefficient in their approach...
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2024 on: October 14, 2018, 05:51:53 pm »
I've often wondered why Obama decided to cancel the Constellation program, which had NASA shift over to SLS?  Seemed to me that the former was just starting to come together, what with the test launch and everything.  Now it looks like stopping one project and starting the other has set America's whole manned spaceflight program back years.

If it was a cost measure then it looks like a major blunder.  I think EM-1 was originally supposed to fly this year I think but it's been pushed way back to 2020.

How do big contractors mess up like this when you've got these aggressive, up and coming independent commercial operators just getting things done?  Just seems so bloated and inefficient in their approach...

I think Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos put paid to any government manned space program. Add to that the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster put safety back to the very top of the agenda which meant money which wasn't there after the market crash.

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2025 on: October 17, 2018, 05:03:57 am »

Astronauts are to make an emergency landing after their Russian Soyuz rocket malfunctioned on lift-off to the International Space Station.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45822845

Looks like the crew are alive though search and rescue are on their way to find the capsule

Astronaut Nick Hague of NASA and cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency landed in a 'ballistic descent mode'

NASA Astronaut Describes What It Was Like to Fall to Earth When Soyuz Launch Failed
"One wild ride."


Last week, NASA astronaut Air Force Colonel Nick Hague faced death as he and his commander, Alexei Ovchinin, plummeted to Earth following an aborted Soyuz launch.

Outside, the world held its breath as the spacecraft returned in what NASA called a "ballistic descent mode". Inside the tiny capsule, according to Hague, things got pretty rough.


"We knew that if we wanted to be successful, we needed to stay calm and we needed to execute the procedures in front of us as smoothly and efficiently as we could," Hague told The Associated Press.

It's the kind of event pilots prepare for while hoping they never need to put it into practice.

Minutes after launch, following the jettisoning of side boosters, a second stage booster on Ovchinin and Hague's Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft system failed, leaving them no option but to abort the mission barely halfway to the edge of space.

Getting back down again was anything but a gentle ride, and there was no promise of success.

"Any time you're launching yourself into space and your booster has a problem when you're going 1,800 metres per second, things are pretty dynamic and they happen very fast," says Hague.

Most of us might turn into a blubbering mess. But two years of training in Russia kicked in for Hague, who not only stuck to emergency procedures during the half hour descent, but did so in a second language.


"All of my instincts and reflexes inside the capsule are to speak Russian," says Hague.

Both astronauts touched down safely on a plain in Kazakhstan without injuries, where they immediately called Mission Control, followed by their wives. Hague's call went to voicemail.

What do you say when you've just stared death in the face from nearly 50 kilometres (31 miles) above the surface?

"I told her, 'I'm fine and it was one wild ride,'" says Hague.

One wild ride is what most of us might call a Japanese roller coaster. This was something else.

Just as the team was seeing the horizon curve and the atmosphere fade to black, warning lights indicated a problem.

"I knew once I saw that light that we had an emergency with the booster, that at that point we weren't going to make it to orbit that day – so the mission changed to getting back down on the ground as safely as we could," says Hague.

With alarms blaring, the capsule was violently thrown clear from the booster. The steady acceleration towards space was swapped for a moment of weightlessness, followed by a build of force equal to nearly seven times Earth's gravity.


Finally the parachutes snapped into place with a bone-jarring crunch, slowing the descent enough to avoid a deadly collision with the ground.

It might not have been a leisurely float to safety, but the system was designed to be efficient, not pleasant.

Soyuz's safety mechanisms have been a part of the system for decades. And this is the first time they've been deployed.

"That's the system that saved our lives, and Alexey and I are standing because of that," says Hague.

"It's on every rocket, and for manned launches on the Soyuz, they haven't had to use that system for 35 years, but it's always been there. It's always been ready, and we proved that last week."

It's been 15 years since NASA lost the entire crew of the Columbia space shuttle soon after lift-off. Since then, their fatality record on space missions has fortunately been a clean one.

Hague doesn't attribute his fate to luck.

"The Soyuz is an engineering marvel," says Hague.

"That thing is reliable, and I'm just glad that there are so many people that have invested so many years of their life making that system as strong as it is."

https://www.sciencealert.com/nick-hague-describes-soyuz-aborted-mission

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2026 on: October 25, 2018, 08:31:02 pm »
Hubble is back in business.  They had a gyro in reserve.  It had been taken offline because it wasn't behaving correctly but they managed to wiggle it a bit and get it working properly, so it's being used to replace the gyro that failed. :)
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2027 on: November 1, 2018, 06:52:22 pm »
Video of the Soyuz launch failure.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/5boa6wAK0Sc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/5boa6wAK0Sc</a>
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2028 on: November 16, 2018, 10:58:00 pm »
Scott Manley discusses the gap in US manned launch vehicles and the proposals looked at in the 80s and 90s to compliment or supersede the space shuttle.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/z49eVQ6LxIE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/z49eVQ6LxIE</a>
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2029 on: November 17, 2018, 08:15:00 pm »
InSight is scheduled to land on Mars at 11:53 am PST (19:53 UK) on Monday, November 26.

The Mars Polar Lander, first lander of that type, was lost on January 3, 1999 (Thanks, Lockheed Martin!).


Phoenix landed in 2008 has a moderate success, finding ice. But the scoop couldn't deliver sample to the tools... It worked for 10 months.


With luck, InSight will dramatically increase these statistics - the landing ones and the longevity. The primary mission is two years, the team is hoping for much more. Good luck to InSight!

 
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2030 on: November 18, 2018, 06:52:34 pm »
farawayred i love your posts in this thread. on a totally unrelated note i like a podcast from STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW called "the end of the world" by josh. first episode about "the fermi paradox", and second one about "the great filter". havent listened to the rest yet but i'll get around to them soon.

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2031 on: November 23, 2018, 07:51:33 pm »
Cheers, mate!

Forgot to add something about InSight. There is a period between entering the atmosphere and landing that we call "7 min of terror". During that time we have no clue what's going on with the spacecraft and whether the landing was successful. For the first time we may fill that information gap. There are two cube sats, WALL-E and Eva, which are intended to provide real-time information about the InSight EDL. Would be so much fun if we get an actual video of the landing!
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2033 on: November 25, 2018, 11:29:03 pm »
and this one is for you farawayred, but i daresay youve seen it

https://imgur.com/gallery/d47xKgg

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2034 on: November 26, 2018, 02:55:56 am »
This is awesome, mate, thanks for posting!

Exciting times are coming ahead... JPL is jam-packed with media from this evening, we've been encouraged to take the day off or work remotely (so I spent the long Thanksgiving weekend in my lab). Hopefully, the landing will go to plan, I'll be watching with family and friends.

Should all go to plan, instrument deployment would be interesting too. I can't wait to see marsquake data. I'm no longer working on the project, but if the vacuum in the seismometer doesn't hold up, you can hold me responsible. I'm sure it will though. It should actually have much better vacuum than initially planned, which will give the science team the chance to detect 10-100 times weaker quakes. This will overload them with data. :)

I haven't been involved with the mole after the redesign in 2016. The original one used to dig deep than it came up on its own... :) Surprises are part and parcel of the work... and that's what makes it exciting!

The InSight science is really cool too, but the seismometer is just an incredibly smartly designed engineering marvel! Think about it, on Earth we detect where an earthquake is coming from because we have a network of seismometers all over the globe and we do triangulation. On Mars, we have one instrument, one point. Yet, we can determine the origin! And the planetary structure. If anyone is interested, I could go in more details (though I'm not a seismologist).
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2035 on: November 26, 2018, 04:43:05 am »
Wonder whether anyone will ever come across InSight and read the names on the chips. Good luck to you all at JPL, I'll be watching too.
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2036 on: November 26, 2018, 06:55:34 am »
Wonder whether anyone will ever come across InSight and read the names on the chips. Good luck to you all at JPL, I'll be watching too.

Or Marvin the Martian on Curiosity... except they'd need an SEM to find it... ;D

Maybe the Russians will take a look, but first they have to check if the Americans actually landed on the Moon. ;)
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2037 on: November 26, 2018, 07:15:09 am »
;D

Never know, some of the alien blighters on Oumuamua may have hopped off for a vacation.

;)
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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2038 on: November 26, 2018, 05:43:46 pm »
Any updates on Mars?

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Re: Space exploration thread
« Reply #2039 on: November 26, 2018, 05:54:47 pm »
Any updates on Mars?

7.53pm is when a signal should be received.