NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander lands on Mars May 25

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by cosmictraveler, May 10, 2008.

  1. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2008
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. D H Some other guy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,257
    Better stated as worked on it, rather than working on it. That was a 1995 SBIR project by Space Electronics, Inc. (not to be confused with the Space Electronics Inc. that makes mass properties measurement equipment). The first link redirects to Maxwell Technologies because Maxwell acquired the Space Electronics, Inc. that performed this SBIR in 1999; see http://sec.edgar-online.com/1999/02/12/16/0000936392-99-000171/Section2.asp.

    So what happened to this SBIR work? It became a product! (Not many SBIR efforts do.) A bunch of products, actually, centered on the radiation hardening technology developed in the cited SBIR. One such product is Maxwell Technologies' SCS750 single board computer.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    Good link D H. Many years ago, I was involved in a Faultproof design of a system that had a special enclosure for protection besides internal immunity logics etc for nuclear core control.

    Anyway, let us watch whether we found water or not....
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    I here about this before, these people are still using PC750 like the BAE RAD750 but they use 3 running at commercial speeds and smaller lithographic resolutions (the small the circuits the more prone to error from radiation) by having three processors voted error correction is used where the three will do an instruction, report their answer and if any one of the 3 reports a different answer its reset on the fly, the 3 processors run in sync as one processor with the error rate much lower then a single processor (the chances of 2 out of 3 erroring at the same time is extremely low).
     
  8. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
  9. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    Why can not they find out what was that white stuff? Dry ice or water ice?
     
  10. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    because:

    1. if it was any ice...dry ice or water ice...it sublimed from the scoop long ago before it got to the mass spectrometer chamber

    2. perhaps it was just a refraction of the material...magnesium or something...magnesium is white, so maybe it was magnesium powder (and as far as I remember Martian soil does have magnesium in it...10% *Oddysey 2001 data*)
     
  11. temur man of no words Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,330
    Now they are almost certain that the white stuff is water ice.
     
  12. blobrana Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,214
    Indeed,

    "Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporised after digging exposed it."

    Source
     
  13. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    Or frozen nitrogen.:shrug:
     
  14. Janus58 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,394
    We already went over this. Nitrogen freezes at a temperature 69 degree C below that of the coldest temperature found on Mars.

    There still is a possibility that it is frozen CO2, or "dry ice".
     
  15. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    My error, I meant CO2, sorry.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  16. Balerion Banned Banned

    Messages:
    8,596
    OK, so a question for the panel:

    There's no way they really expect to find any form of life on that rock, right? I mean, the water vaporizes...vaporizes. That's cold, baby. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some places in the solar system that had some form of life, but Mars? I just can't picture it. Not even microbial.
     
  17. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    If I recall correctly Mars has less then 1% nitrogen...that begs a question...how will humans create the pressure needed with only 23% of oxygen needed, what will feel in for the rest?
     
  18. kmguru Staff Member

    Messages:
    11,757
    We sent a multimillion dollar probe to find water but do not have instruments to check it....how stupid is that?
     
  19. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    they got instruments to check it, the problem is in sublimation...
     
  20. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    Human can live for in theory in a pure oxygen atmosphere at 4.7psi or in normal oxygen (=>3.3psi)/low neutral gas (nitrogen/argon/helium/etc) (=>1.7psi)/low pressure environment for their entire lives.

    Extracting nitrogen out of Martian atmosphere is simply a matter of sucking Martian air, pressurizing it and then freezing out all non-wanted gas (CO2), heck we extract xenon and argon from our air all the time be doing such a processes.
     
  21. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006
    humans cannot live with argon gas...it is too heavy. And helium is not present on Mars. Nitrogen is way too low in abundance to maintain, constant leakages will occur.

    Humans can live in pure oxygen?! No way...the cells would undergo extreme metabolic reactions as well as pure oxygen explodes easily.

    ISS has life supporting system, how do they maintain pressure? what gases besides Elektron module producing oxygen are in air?
     
  22. draqon Banned Banned

    Messages:
    35,006

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Wow...that does look so white, so white I wouldn't think it was water ice, but it is...
     
  23. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    There have been experiments with human living in argon atmosphere, it works, by your logic helium would not work because it "too light", weight of the molecule as little effect.

    Most early astronauts functioned in pure oxygen, fighter pilots function in pure oxygen, a human can live in pure oxygen at normal pressure safely for several hours, and at reduced pressure of 4.7psi theoretically indefinitely, pure oxygen at 4.7psi provides the same amount of oxygen as normal atmosphere at 14.7psi to your lungs, it will not have any effects on metabolism. Also 4.7psi does not provide much increased fire hazard, during the mercury to apollo days they would pre-pressurize the spacecraft to 14.7psi with pure oxygen so the spacecraft would not implode from sea level air pressure outside, then during or after lunch they would bring the pressure down to a safer (both for the astronauts and for fire safety) pressure of 4.7psi, this policy worked fine until Apollo 1 when a fire broke out while pressurized at 14.7psi, afterwards they would have the astronauts launch in their spacesuits at 14.7psi pure oxygen while filling the spacecraft with 14.7psi pure nitrogen, then when entering orbit they would bleed off the nitrogen atmosphere and replace it with a 4.7psi oxygen atmosphere, and the astronauts would take off their spacesuits. Honestly you should Google these things before making a idiot of your self!
     

Share This Page