Hero to Jezero: Perseverance, NASA's most advanced geologist rover, lands on Mars, beams back first pics NASA just now successfully landed Perseverance, its largest and heaviest rover yet, on the surface of Mars in the Jezero Crater. The machine will conduct the ambitious mission to finding ancient microbial life on another planet. "Touchdown confirmed. Perseverance has touched down on Mars," Swati Mohan, Navigation and Control …
This is just the kind of wasteful, pork barrel expenditure that all right-thinking people should oppose! The government shouldn't pick winners and should instead leave scientific endeavors to private industry, which will be sure to advance the cause of pure science with much greater speed and efficiency!
Oh, well said, well said! Er, well written. Well played. Well, well. Whatever.
But of course we should not be exploring anything extraterrestrial at all until Holy Capitalism has finished its subjugation of Earth, put all peons in chains, and convinced consumers that Egyptian cotton is edible when covered in chocolate.*
It was unrighteous feats such as this which got Galileo in hot water with God, ya know.
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* Catch-22. Milo Minderbinder. Etc.
Quite so, DaveFlagAndTenDigits and My_Handle. Some/So many are far too quick to judge and jump to erroneous conclusions.
The following is a novel development which, with regard to the discussion of the pork being expended on a seriously speculative adventure reported on here, is certainly encouraging and some would say, not before time and long overdue. I look forward to the result of what must surely be grants awarded for developing ideas rather than interest free loans issued for later principal repayment ......... ARIA .... DARPA UKGBNI
That's the one sure way to guarantee future successful results. However, what's the betting on the system doing their best to fcuk that up with an intellectually bankrupt and politically incorrect attempt at lead, although the Telegraph article does say, right at the beginning .......
The £800m Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) will be led by scientists who will be given freedom to identify and fund transformational science and technology projects.
...... which if true, would be somewhat different and laudable and give success every chance of rapid progress in smarter programs and SMARTR Projects .
This post has been deleted by its author
Non-paywalled links to ARIA news:
<https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-launch-new-research-agency-to-support-high-risk-high-reward-science>
<https://news.sky.com/story/licence-to-fail-800m-for-new-scientific-agency-that-will-focus-on-high-risk-high-reward-projects-12222158>
<https://universitybusiness.co.uk/government-launches-advanced-research-invention-agency-aria-to-support-high-risk-high-reward-science>
Sarcasm is a risky post anywhere - sarcasm used to be seen as funny until it became a political standard for many people. I think the problem is that these days we read things and always see the bad side first. As a kid I love ghost stories, but these days it's just a dead white guy walking around with his head in his arms.
Recent research indicates that the Martian magnetic field was still active 3.7 billion years ago. As the atmospheric loss due to the solar wind would not have occurred until this field collapsed, Mars would still have had an atmosphere up to that time.
Earth has had life since 4.5 billion years ago. During the overlap between life appearing on Earth and the loss of atmosphere on Mars, Earth was hit many times by meteorites big enough to cause the ejection of rocks from Earth. At least some of those rocks would have had bacteria on them that could survive the trip from Earth to Mars.
Given the above, I would think it very likely that Mars had life at one time.
The interesting question (but very difficult to determine the correct answer to) is did life start on Earth then infect Mars or did life start on Mars and then infect Earth ?
This icon seems appropriate =======================>
The Solar System is 4.5 billion years old. The universe is 13 bn yrs, the galaxy 12 bn yrs. It is possible to imagine that life arose elsewhere in the galaxy 8 bn yrs ago. Ejected rocks carrying bacteria could move around the galaxy at, say, 20 miles per second, or c/10,000. In 1 bn yrs they would then travel 100,000 light years, the diameter of the galaxy.
So life starting at one point in the galaxy could spread all over. It would not have time, however, to reach the Andromeda galaxy.
This is, of course, the old panspermia hypothesis. Maybe one day we shall be able to test it.
Panspermia is interesting, but I think the more likely case is that [like planets around stars] it is more plentiful in the universe than not. Life exists on earth in even the most hostile places, "finds a way" to continue existing. Perhaps the rest of the universe is the same way...
> heat caused as it went through the (then) substantial Martian atmosphere would have rendered it sterile?
That's what I thought too, but apparently it is possible. I don't remember the details, but the gist was that while obviously a living organism would had been killed, the building blocks for life can survive the quite ungentle transfer.
On arrival, if there is the necessary solvent (water) and the right temperature ranges, they can assemble into something which can assemble into the most primitive structure one could call "alive". And from there on evolve to invent Facebook.
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On arrival, if there is the necessary solvent (water) and the right temperature ranges, they can assemble into something which can assemble into the most primitive structure one could call "alive".
"
That is indeed a popular theory. Except that all attempts to simulate such a thing in the laboratory has not once succeeded. If many thousands of *deliberate* attempts to create life have failed, the probability that it would happen *in this way* by pure chance is extremely remote. Events such as meteors from Earth hitting the surface of Mars before completely burning up in the atmosphere are *extremely* infrequent, so we are not talking about huge numbers of such events even over timespans of tens of millions of years.
I think you have forgotten the infinite number of monkeys. Any deliberate attempt to create life 'thousands of times' has nothing on billions of years of nature having billions of attempts in billions of combinations of environment. Life and evolution is definitely a numbers game.
"... surely the heat caused as it went through the (then) substantial Martian atmosphere would have rendered it sterile?"
Nope. Truly, the outer crust may get a bit hot but even a brick-sized falling rock could stay frozen at the core or even just a little way into it during the infall. Rocks don't fall through airs like Earth's or Mars's for very long, maybe only five or ten seconds or so, so there isn't time enough for them to be thoroughly cooked all the way through. Massive great boulders would be even more raw until they landed.
> I'm a bit skeptical
Why? You would be surprised how many martian rocks (stones ejected from Mars) have managed to land on Earth as meteorites, so one can assume there is a similar amount of Earth rocks on Mars. They could have cross-pollinated each other if the starting conditions were similar, but of course they could also have developed life all on their own.
A theory states that the basic organic stuff came on the asteroids which were at some point ejected from their orbit by Jupiter, in which case they would have sowed all inner planets with the building blocks of life, and life just caught where the conditions were right at the time. Simple life is apparently quite easy to create, so there is no reason why Mars wouldn't had been infected if it had the right conditions.
Actually... One would expect far fewer Earth rocks hitting Mars than Mars rocks hitting Earth.
To begin with, any rock ejected from Earth has to travel fast enough to travel outward against Solar gravity to get to Mars. The escape velocity is higher for Earth than for Mars (leading to fewer rocks escaping). And Earth is a larger target. Plus, the Moon tends to focus incoming objects towards the Earth.
atmospheric loss due to the solar wind would not have occurred until this field collapsed
Yes, this is the theory (along with a solid or nearly solid core which would lack the magma activity needed to generate a magnetic field from planetary rotation, etc.) along with other theories including the magnetic field generation theory.
Some direct proof of the above would be nice. Maybe on a later mission? The magnetic field could be measured with your standard 9 axis IMU. Just sayin'.
Until then, the Mars meteorites discovered over a decade ago [as I recall] had some evidence of structures that COULD have been caused by bacteria, and that the rocks themselves were supposed have originated on Mars. So, "some evidence" is already there. Proof time!
Maybe the helicopter can spot something better than on-ground cameras that would be worthy of the rover to analyze to a greater extent. Not sure exactly what they'd be looking for in that realm, but I kinda like the ancient lake bed approach so I think they've got a much better chance of finding that important conclusive evidence than on ANY other previous mission.
Yes, they do have a good track record of over-achieving in that department.
But I would imagine the hazards of flying are much greater than wheeled transit and a lot more random - any rc drone/aircraft owner could tell you about that!
I've been trying to work out how "fragile" this thing might be in comparison. On the one hand martian gravity is lower so, for any given height, a fall results in a much lower impact velocity. On the other hand the atmosphere is very thin so it is harder to create lift therefore it has to be as light and hence flimsy as possible. On a further hand, the blades will presumably have to spin extremely fast so if they do hit anything (e.g. on a wonky landing) that will be bad...
This is presumably why they haven't set any particular science objectives for it and it seems as if it is more of an engineering experiment - "can we do this? how well does it work? and, if it does, what have we learned and what future capabilities can we design and plan for?"
I don't know if they will have the bandwidth for live video (presumably they will still record some) but it will be awesome to see it fly (or get the point-of-view) for the first time!
Lets hope they have a good idea of flight issue, as dragonfly (to Titan) is a bit of a drone style craft (lots of rotors) and it will be great if that's a success (though its a long time away from launch, never mind arrival, one of those things you hope you live long enough to see when you're getting on a bit)
The hardware isnt the issue,its nuclear battery should keep it powered up for at least 14-17 Earth years, these timescales they quote are always about the budget allocated to maintain mission control ops on it to run the primary science objectives, its not wow look it was only meant to last for 30 Martian sols and it's amazing to be running to 31+, its engineered to survive launch, inter planetary travel and a 10g reentry at 5km per second that gives it a fair bit of long term resilience by default, so of course it will last more than 30 Martian sols, but it has to have money behind it to keep extending the mission duration to run it.And remember they have to keep the tech & software here that runs it static & operational for the length of time the mission then lasts as well. Cassini operations was literally being run by a classic mid 90s spec PC to communicate with it,because modern PCs just ran the code too quickly to handle the data properly.
The thing that is meant to last 30 sols is Ingenuity (the helicopter), which is very definitely not powered by an RTG. Perseverance (the rover), is intended to last for at least a Martian year and very probably much longer than that. Ingenuity is extremely unlikely to effectively last very long, but it is not intended to do so.
The plan is to drive off and leave it after 30 sols
But if it is still delivering, and the budget can be increased, then it could carry on as long as it can be funded.
They did it with Hubble and Curiosity. Curiosity had a two year mission, but it was extended indefinitely almost ten years ago and will likely only end when its wheels wear out. Hubble has lasted far longer than anyone expected, so extra funding must have been awarded.
No, it can't. Ingenuity needs to be close to Perseverance: it is not independently able to communicate. That means that, unless it can make repeated hops to keep up and unless there is sufficient time in various schedules for communication with it, which there probably is not, then at some point either Perseverance has to leave it so the science goals of the mission can be met, or it has to stay behind near it and sacrifice those science goals for further tests of Ingenuity. There is only one way that decision is going to go, and everyone involved knows what it is.
I thought that American cruise missiles used GPS for location tracking. The military version is much more accurate than what is allowed for civilian use, as their low level, high speed flight made use of local topography a bit difficult. Of course that was in the early days of cruise missiles, so maybe they have got better. But there is quite a difference between descending over a landing site from many kilometres up, and zooming through it at 100 feet altitude. El Reg's weapons experts please advise.
Even with the military precision GPS isn't fast or accurate enough for precision guidance of things like cruise missiles. Especially in altitude for things like terrain following. So you still need things like terrain relative navigation. Also, GPS has always been regarded as "nice to have" by the military, as a single nuke in space can likely take it down completely so not a system to be solely relied on.
I recall speaking with someone involved with early terrain following attempts and being told of a slight error that they ran up against.
A few tests had been performed during the autumn / winter and everything had worked perfectly but on the day in january when it was demonstrated to the bigwigs it took off perfectly and went into a straight level flight as planned and then flew (perfectly straight and level) into the side of a mountain.
The final cause was found to be that the terrain wasn't being recognised any more because it was covered in a couple of inches of snow.
>I thought that American cruise missiles used GPS for location tracking. .... Of course that was in the early days of cruise missiles, so maybe they have got better
Original cruise missiles used terrain following because 1, early GPS receivers weren't good/reliable and 2, if you were sending your cruise missiles into the USSR in the 80s it was because the commies had already nuked all your GPS satelites
The versions from the early 90s after the first Gulf War Operation "bring peace and love and freedom to the middle-east" (tm) used GPS because it was then obvious we were only going to use $MM missiles to blow up camels - so it might as well be the camels we were aiming at
not even highly contagious human malware spreading around Earth.
One could just as truthfully share it is a glitch in alien hardware resultant from some rogue animal software program ......with a few lines of dodgy code which jump the shark or cause and enable the sharks to bite the hands that feed and try to lead them to destruction ?
Surely one that to admit the enemy one is dealing with in a freely mutating global viral pandemic which kills indiscriminately is extraordinary whenever neither man made nor natural and common?
It's a great quantum leap, that small jump for human understanding.
Oh ..... and Bravo, NASA. What would the Fed and Uncle Sam do without you underwriting their dream programming with their lavish justified fiat capital support of your own dream projects in an alien space place.
It's such a pity though that your NASA success in an alien space place is not mirrored and reflected in the Fed and Uncle Sam hashes made on Earth where Doom and Gloom, FUD and SNAFUBAR reign supremely subprime under their rules and regulations in the Wild and Western Alliances of Five Eyed Monstrosities ..... the Lands of Cretins 'R' Us.
They already have discovered a lot of imperfect evidence of life on Mars. Perseverance has been designed to find the necessary incontrovertible evidence. They have achieved immense success in landing the rover. Now, all we can do is wait for the evidence to be discovered.
The Perseverance rover will collect together samples and package them up ready for collection and transport to Earth for human analysis. The collection mission is still in preparation.
https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/science-tech/how-nasa-plans-to-return-martian-sample-to-earth
To return the samples, they should package them into cylinders and just launch them in the general direction of Woking (or possibly Bayonne, New Jersey, may be more convenient to get them back to the lab for analysis).
Bonus points if they self-unscrew after landing, while making eerie synth noises…
Wonderful to see another sucessful landing from those steely eyed missile people.
I watched the landing live feed with my autistic son. Space is one of the few subject that really lights up his interest in anything. He want's to be one of the people in that NASA Dark Room, which is no bad ambition to have.
Beers for the flight team and I look forward to news from the surface science team.
There is a picture here of the hundreds involved in the mission. I'm sure that's just a fraction really - https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25063/the-team-for-jezero-crater/
I used to work on numerous projects for NASA and other US prime contractors.
After new management were parachuted in during a takeover, they realised that we were a 'difficult' group to manage with their US MBA book of shouting/man management skills. They got some expensive consultants in who declared most of us well down the autistic spectrum - quel suprise! (Alternatively, we were 'old world' and wouldn't play pony to their 'new world' ideas.)
Keep feeding your lad subjects he might be interested in and some day he will stand a chance of getting a job that he loves :-) Praise the good and don't repeat the bad.
I have my name etched on a piece of silicon on the Perseverance Rover :-)
I think we should buy some beers for the anonymous team who managed to capture this image.
https://mars.nasa.gov/system/resources/detail_files/25610_PIA24270-HiRISE-touchdown-annotated-1200.jpg
Pause and think about the mathematical gymnastics required (granted, it's a wide angle, hires image to maximize the chance of success) to line this up.
And ponder, if you will, a few nerds hanging out at the watering hole after work, when one says, "I'll bet I can get a shot of the parachute", and the others reply, "you're on!". I only hope the instigator(s) is enjoying their well-earned beverage.
https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25610/hirise-captured-perseverance-during-descent-to-mars/
The wide spread of intelligence Vs lack of in our species fascinates me.
My current theory is that there has been a significant advantage to having a large number of the population made up of stupid.
Eg A war of extermination against their neighbors is something I reckon stupid people could be enthusiastic about, even if it comes at considerable cost to them and their own society and enriches only their own corrupt leaders.
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