Perseverance rover drops off first sample tube on surface of Mars A titanium tube that looks a bit like a steampunk telescope has been dropped off by the plucky Perseverance rover, stuffed with a Mars rock sample that NASA astrobiologists are hoping might reveal traces of ancient microbial life. But before the most difficult part – sending spacecraft from Earth to Mars to collect the sealed …
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But rain is very common in the English Lake District. That can carry dust particles in it, and over time, those get deposited where the rain lands.
Obviously not relevant to Mars, but leaves tend to fall on things as well, and rot. And that leads to stuff getting buried.
If this was a film or TV show, or even a documentary with a CGI simulation, those sample tubes would have a strobe flash and beeping sound with no indication of how they are going to be powered for a decade or more, not to mention the problems of transmitting the beeps through the near vacuum of the Martian atmosphere :-)
Can imagine these conversation amongst the engineers:
engineer1: (takes a puff) Yeah and we create the sample dumping site... oh man I am getting munchies... let's call it three forks yeah. mmm
engineer2: I thought you said dumpling site... ahh... so okay, we got the samples dropped then what's next? (takes a puff) let's make the sample tubes out of titanium and let's drop a lot of them and then let's have samples inside rover too you know?
engineer3: guys hang on a minute (takes a puff) how are we going to get these tubes to earth?
engineer1: that's easy. That lander's job will be to take the samples and use its robotic arm to place them in a containment capsule aboard a small rocket that would then blast off to Mars orbit. If Perseverance can't deliver its samples, a pair of Sample Recovery Helicopters will have to go pick the backup samples up, and then go back to the lander to be placed into the rocket-mounted capsule. Once the capsule is in orbit, the plan is for another spacecraft to capture the sample container and return it safely to Earth. (takes a puff)
engineer2, engineer3: whoaaaa
Is that the same team of engineers who came up with the idea of, "yeah, it'll scream through the atmosphere at interplanetary speed, slow down enough for parachutes to be deployed (Yeah guys, I know how thin the atmosphere is, bear with me), then, a few hundred feet before it crashes into the ground, we drop it!! But, wait for it guys, the bit we drop has ROCKETS on it and it'll hover about 30 feet from the ground and lower the rover on a rope to the ground!"
Rest of team: whoaaaa, shit man, can we have some of what you're smoking?
"...but if a perpendicular dropoff does happen to a subsequent tube, JPL said it had written a series of commands directing Perseverance to carefully knock the tube over using part of the turret at the end of its robotic arm."
The command is named "I dunno, try hitting it and see if it falls over"
Seriously advanced and intelligent civilizations tend to take millenniums to be erased from history, junkie or sober. But truly intelligent, nevertheless.
Enough said, the majority of keyboard warriors are the "nerdy" types. I prefer the keyboard warriors who can also handle pistols and explosives, better yet the ones who can integrate all that into real defense products to earn some millions. Monthly.
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