7 April 2008
Opportunity Update: Sols 1492-1494
Opportunity is still making her laborious way over to Cape Verde. This weekend we had a drive planned, but the wheels slipped too much in the loose sand that we’re driving on, so just to be safe, the drive was cut short. The good news is that this week Opportunity will be driving every day, so we should make better time. More good news is that we got some pretty …
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, …
Carnival of Space #48
Carnival of Space #48 is up over at Next Big Future! Space-junkies, check it out for your weekly fix!
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
Google + Virgin Galactic = Mars Colony
Big news! Google has teamed up with Virgin to form Project Virgle: the first human colony on Mars. It’s great to see companies like Google and Virgin looking toward the future and getting involved in space exploration. They certainly have the money to do it, and I think more and more of them are realizing that the publicity and potential revenue are well worth the initial cost. Click to find …
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
Carnival of Space #47
Welcome to the Martian Chronicles, a blog written by three graduate students at Cornell University who are involved in exploring Mars! This blog is where we share our experiences and excitement about the red planet and space exploration in general. Our focus is Mars, but if something else catches our attention, it will probably show up here too. To learn more about us, check the Authors page. To learn more …
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 …
