MSL Curiosity 2013

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Tiassa, Jan 15, 2013.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    Yellowknife Bay

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Snake River: A "sinuous rock feature" in Yellowknife Bay.
    (NASA JPL)

    NASA reported earlier this month that target selection is underway for the MSL's hammering drill:

    Snake River is a thin curving line of darker rock cutting through flatter rocks and jutting above sand. Curiosity's science team plans to get a closer look at it before proceeding to other nearby rocks.

    "It's one piece of the puzzle," said the mission's project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed after the deposition of the layer that it transects."

    The drive during the mission's 147th Martian day, or sol, on the Red Planet took Curiosity about 10 feet (3 meters) northwestward and brought the mission's total driving distance to 2,303 feet (702 meters). The rover is within a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay," which is a flatter and lighter-toned type of terrain from what the mission crossed during its first four months inside Gale Crater.

    During a holiday break for the rover team, Curiosity stayed at a location within Yellowknife Bay from which the rover took images of its surroundings. The team is evaluating possible first targets for use of Curiosity's hammering drill in coming weeks. The drill will collect powdered samples from the interior of rocks for analysis by instruments inside the rover.


    (Webster, "Yellowknife")

    Just look at that landscape. It's absolutely gorgeous.

    Mission project manager Richard Cook noted that, "The area the rover is in looks good for our first drilling target."

    And, indeed, word emerged three days later that mission managers tested the Dust Removal Tool onboard Curiosity as part of its preparation for drill deployment:

    Nearing the end of a series of first-time uses of the rover's tools, the mission has cleared dust away from a targeted patch on a flat Martian rock using the Dust Removal Tool.

    The tool is a motorized, wire-bristle brush designed to prepare selected rock surfaces for enhanced inspection by the rover's science instruments. It is built into the turret at the end of the rover's arm. In particular, the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer and the Mars Hand Lens Imager, which share the turret with the brush and the rover's hammering drill, can gain information after dust removal that would not be accessible from a dust-blanketed rock.

    Choosing an appropriate target was crucial for the first-time use of the Dust Removal Tool. The chosen target, called "Ekwir_1," is on a rock in the "Yellowknife Bay" area of Mars' Gale Crater. The rover team is also evaluating rocks in that area as potential targets for first use of the rover's hammering drill in coming weeks.


    (Webster, "Brush")

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Ekwir 1: The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) shows the successful first use of the Dust Removal Tool onboard Curiosity.
    (NASA JPL)

    Now, a week later, NASA may well be preparing to announce its selected target for the hammer drill. JPL announced yesterday that the MSL team will host a media teleconference to discuss the progress of their Curiosity rover.

    Nine hours to go. Audio streaming of the teleconference will be available from NASA; video will come through uStream. The teleconference is scheduled for 10.00 AM PST.

    Update: The "video" is simply a slideshow accompanying the teleconference.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Webster, Guy. "Curiosity Rover Explores 'Yellowknife Bay'". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. January 4, 2013. Mars.JPL.NASA.gov. January 15, 2013. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1407

    —————. "NASA's Big Mars Rover Makes First Use Of Its Brush". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. January 7, 2013. Mars.JPL.NASA.gov. January 15, 2013. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1408

    Webster, Guy and Dwayne Brown. "NASA Hosts Jan. 15 Telecon About Mars Rover Progress". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. January 14, 2013. Mars.JPL.NASA.gov. January 15, 2013. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1409
     
    Last edited: Jan 15, 2013
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    How Cool Are You?

    HiRISE on Curiosity

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Tracking Curiosity: HiRISE catches the rover's tracks from Bradbury Landing to its Jan. 2, 2013 location in YellowKnife Bay, the bright area at right.
    (NASA JPL/Univ. of Arizona)

    NASA should sell t-shirts with the agency logo at the back collar, and the question, "How cool are we?" across the front.

    Alfred McEwen explains:

    This image was acquired for color coverage of the region that the Curiosity rover may explore, but we acquired some extra RED (monochromatic) coverage of the rover tracks.

    This image shows the entire distance traveled from the landing site (dark smudge at left) to its location as of 2 January 2013 (the rover is bright feature at right). The tracks are not seen where the rover has recently driven over the lighter-toned surface, which may be more indurated than the darker soil.

    In the first place, there is Curiosity. There is little to be said, right now, about how cool that rover is, or NASA's work in getting it to Mars. Or, rather, I could gush until next Wednesday, but you've heard it all before.

    But HiRISE? The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter actually managed to capture an image of the Mars Science Laboratory's descent from 340 kilometers away.

    And now, it has tracked the rover across the face of Mars. And after its voyage of over 350 million miles (563 million km), the 1.5 inches per second Curiosity crawls across the Martian plain on its best days might seem excruciatingly slow, but they are certainly the most important, the rover's raison d'être. And MRO's HiRISE has managed to snap a picture of the rover's trail.

    And while I'm not certain, it would seem that the larger images ... well, what is that I see?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Hello, Curiosity: Is that a rover I see?

    No promises, as McEwan's explanation of the photo says nothing about it, but, really, that does look suspiciously like our Martian traveler. (I have tweeted an inquiry for confirmation; I hope they answer.)

    Yeah, NASA, how cool are you? (Make the t-shirts. Maybe with a two-tone glyph of Curiosity's mastcam array and rigging? Yeah, I'd buy one.)

    Best wishes to Curiosity, and much love to MRO HiRISE. My admiration, of course, to both project teams.

    Yeah. How cool are you?

    That cool.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    McEwan, Alfred. "The Tracks of Curiosity". University of Arizona High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment. January 16, 2013. UAHiRISE.org. January 17, 2013. http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_030168_1755
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    Testing, Testing

    Testing, Testing

    As Curiosity prepares for its final first-use test, there is, of course, plenty of preparatory testing to be done.

    NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.
    The rover carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars yesterday (Jan. 27). The tests enable engineers to check whether the amount of force applied to the hardware matches predictions for what would result from the commanded motions.

    The next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill. At Curiosity's work site in Gale Crater, air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight. Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin.

    The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., sent the rover commands yesterday to begin the overnight pre-load test today (Monday).

    "We don't plan on leaving the drill in a rock overnight once we start drilling, but in case that happens, it is important to know what to expect in terms of stress on the hardware," said JPL's Daniel Limonadi, the lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system. "This test is done at lower pre-load values than we plan to use during drilling, to let us learn about the temperature effects without putting the hardware at risk."


    (Webster)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Ready ... Steady ....: Hazcam image of percussion drill during load testing.
    (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

    The target rock is named "John Klein", and is described as "a patch of flat, veined rock". Among the tests slated before the John Klein drill are "drill-on-rock checkout" and "mini-drill", which check, respectively, the percussion mechanism and tailing behavior of the rocks when drilled.

    While the rover has worked on Mars for nearly 175 sols, and has conducted some experiments in its first-use testing, the percussion drill will mark the end of preliminary checkouts, and then the real science begins.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Webster, Guy. "Curiosity Maneuver Prepares for Drilling". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. January 28, 2013. Mars.JPL.NASA.gov. February 1, 2013. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1419

    NASA/JPL-Caltech. "Curiosity's Drill in Place for Load Testing Before Drilling". Jet Propulsion Laboratory. January 28, 2013. Mars.JPL.NASA.gov. February 1, 2013. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5058
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,882
    Curiosity Sez: Six Months!

    Curiosity Sez: Six Months!

    A message from our droid on Mars:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    As of this writing:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Rove on, Rover ....
     

Share This Page