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Author Topic: MER-B "Opportunity"  (Read 42342 times)

Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« on: January 24, 2004, 07:43:01 PM »
The second Mars Exploration Rover (Opportunity) is scheduled to land at 9:05pm PST (12:05am EST) tonight.

Hopefully the landing will go as smoothly as Spirit's landing did.

Don't forget that you can follow the landing live using NASA TV.
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2004, 11:47:43 PM »
It is now about 20 minutes until the scheduled landing time and JPL has just reported that the cruise stage has separated successfully.
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #2 on: January 25, 2004, 12:04:05 AM »
It's in the atmosphere and decelerating.
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2004, 12:06:01 AM »
The parachute has been deployed, and it's radar is active.
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2004, 12:07:23 AM »
It's bouncing!

Radio signal is strong.
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2004, 12:14:55 AM »
:lol:

Governor Schwarzenegger is in the control room congratulating the team... CNN's Miles O'Brien said "Of course, Schwarzenegger is the only person in the room to have been to Mars" (in the movie Total Recall). Hey, I thought it was funny! ;)
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Offline Satanic Mechanic

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2004, 12:28:08 AM »
Excellent news indeed!
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Offline skyjim

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2004, 02:45:47 AM »
2 for 2 for the aces at JPL!

Landed about 24 kilometers long according to preliminary nav data.  This time, the small rockets available to cancel excessive horizontal velocity weren't needed and didn't fire.  

Awaiting the first "opportunity" for uplink to Odyssey at around 0100 PST.  I'm staying up!

Jim
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Offline skyjim

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Spectacular!
« Reply #8 on: January 25, 2004, 04:44:17 AM »
Utterly different view from Gusev!  Fine soil, almost no rock coverage, but a light outcrop right out front, apparently displaying layering, maybe 50 feet away or less at first guess!  The forward egress aid is completely clear of landing bag obstruction - drive right off and you're already pointing at what Squyres already referred to as a likely first drive target.  Yee ha!  Worth staying up for.

Jim
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Offline fiona_j

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #9 on: January 25, 2004, 04:58:56 PM »
Hehe, no need for me to stay up, thats 9am my time. Its been all over the news today, but we dont get as much coverage or a wide variety of channels (well not on my student income anyway) so have to keep checking back here to get more details. Keep up the good updating guys :)

fi x
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Offline skyjim

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #10 on: January 26, 2004, 01:08:48 PM »
Yep, you're nicely in phase with current Martian time at Meridiani, Fiona!

The Pan cam image released at this morning's news briefing is gorgeous!  (And this isn't yet full resolution - they are still on the low gain antenna, so are using a lot of data compression...)

All of the science instruments checked out OK - including the Mossbauer spectrometer, which you might recall had some calibration glitches while en route.  Whatever the problem was seems to have gone away now that the instrument is in the environment for which it was designed.

Jim
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Offline Satanic Mechanic

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #11 on: January 26, 2004, 03:14:52 PM »
Great picture of the landing:
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #12 on: January 28, 2004, 07:42:42 AM »
Isn't that from the Spirit landing, SM?

It looks like they're having power problems with Opportunity:

Quote
Besides a serious malfunction that has idled the first rover, Spirit, since last Wednesday, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said they are now contending with a power drain on Spirit's newly arrived twin, Opportunity.


Mission manager Jim Erickson told reporters said the power loss appeared to be from one of the craft's heating units that keeps turning itself on and running overnight without receiving commands from NASA to do so.


Full Story: Yahoo! News
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Offline Satanic Mechanic

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #13 on: January 28, 2004, 10:42:18 AM »
Yep it is Opportunity. At least that's is what JPL listed the photo as.

SM
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Offline LunarOrbit

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MER-B "Opportunity"
« Reply #14 on: January 31, 2004, 07:56:56 AM »
Opportunity has left the lander.



The soil looks like wet sand at the beach to me.
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" We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."
 - John F. Kennedy
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