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4 April 2008
Opportunity Update: Sols 1490-1491
Day by day, we’re getting closer to Cape Verde! On sol 1490, Opportunity did a little bit of driving, but the rover tilted a bit too much, which caused it to stop for safety reasons. Don’t worry, Opportunity is fine, but the rover drivers are being cautious, so the drive was cut short. We got down some cool pictures though! Some of the high-resolution frames of Cape Verde came down, …
3 April 2008
Opportunity Update: Sols 1488-1489
Opportunity spent the last couple of days driving closer to Cape Verde, the richly layered cliff face in the side of Victoria crater that is her primary target. Here’s a map showing where we are now in relation to Cape Verde: If you look closely, you’ll see that the rover actually drove for a while, and then backed up a bit. The rover driver do this so that they can …
1 April 2008
Opportunity Update: Sols 1485-1487
As promised, here is the latest from Opportunity. The goal right now is to drive up to Cape Verde, a 20 foot tall cliff of layered rocks in Victoria Crater. Over the weekend, Opportunity backed up the slope of the crater and re-oriented for the upcoming drive toward the Cape. The following picture, which is a close-up of this fantastic HiRISE image of Victoria Crater, shows where Opportunity is right …
31 March 2008
Opportunity is Going to the Cape!
Hey folks! I’m on-duty with Opportunity this week and it’s going to be pretty exciting. We are in the process of driving the rover over to the wall of Cape Verde to study the layers of rocks there in much greater detail. I will be posting updates all week with the spectacular new pictures that we should be receiving. Stay tuned, it’s going to be a pretty cool week!
27 March 2008
Spirit's science at Home Plate: SAFE!
With the MER budget scare having blown over, now is a perfect time to reflect on the science at Home Plate – and beyond – that Spirit has yet in store. Rather than vent frustrations about the near-disaster of a 40% funding slash, I’d rather be reminded that we’re lucky – astoundingly lucky – to be operating spacecraft on the surface of another planet. And for Spirit, I think the …
26 March 2008
Why does it cost so much?
We got a question today that I thought I should answer here on the blog so that others who are wondering the same thing can have an answer. The question was: Since the rover is already on Mars and it’s solar powered why does it cost $4 million a year to operate? I’m not doubting it does I just don’t know how projects like this work. Is most of it …
25 March 2008
Rescinded
I don’t have time to write a long post, but I thought I should share the latest about the rover cuts. The NASA administrator Mike Griffin has stated unequivocally that shutting down a rover is not an option. The letter directing the budget cuts to MER and Odyssey has been rescinded, and we are essentially pretending that the last week didn’t happen. There’s still a budget problem with MSL, and …
24 March 2008
Mars Budget Cuts
Exploring another planet is an expensive business. We all know this, but sometimes it hits home harder than others. Today was one of those times. This afternoon at an all-hands meeting of the Mars Exploration Rovers team, we heard about some particularly bad budget news. The situation is this: the Mars Science Laboratory mission is costing more than expected. It is common for this to happen with spacecraft missions because …
