#nasa rovers

[blurring-ramblimgs]

Humans as a species are fundamentally coded to find companionship, form groups, to come together in packs as a way of safety.

As they evolved, however, they met one another, they clashed, and they fought. They found the worst in companionship and found the best in it too.

They shared information, communicated, and spoke. They built towers taller than the clouds and climbed the tallest mountains. They dug into the heart of their earth, filled only with curiosity and the prospect of finding new information about their home's past. They went past where any animal in their world had been, pushed past the limits of evolving featherless, and looked to the stars.

They soon found themselves racing against one another, to push past the limits of their home, a place they'd conquered and charted many years before. They entered Orbit, then set foot on their moon.

Then it was silent.

They'd assumed they had broken all possible goals, they couldn't reach farther than the moon in any visible future.

And the humans went about their lives, still thinking, of course, but forgetting what lied beyond their clouds and silly moon.

They developed their technology, made television that could easily be mistaken for live images, broke the speed of sound, dove into the farthest depths of the ocean, and they did all this, with the help of their creations.

Humans, as a species were made to find companionship.

They found that in these lifeless clumps of wires and servos. They found this.. love and empathy for something that was little more than an empty husk with no soul.

They programmed their creations' first words to be, "Hello, World."

They gave them hearts, empathy, love. They taught them what it meant to be human, to experience boundless curiosity, and to feel the desire to find the answers to their universe.

Robots as a species were made to find companionship.

The humans knew they might not last long. They made time capsules and sent them into the boundless depths of space. They sent satellites to follow after the capsules, then Rovers after the satellites, then nothing.

Their creations were able to find that companionship their species longed for, from within the stars. The robots cheered, celebrated and quickly lead these new companions back to their homeworld, to show what their creators had been able to accomplish in such a long time.

Robots were made to find companionship, yes.

But humans? Humans were meant to destroy themselves.

[local-demon-in-your-area]

In other news Curiosity discovered that there is more oxygen than we thought on Mars (in the Gale crater it found oxidation traces on manganese, which scientists can only attribute to oxygen right now). On earth Oxygen is produced by life (photosynthesis from trees for example), meaning its presence on Mars could indicate microbiological life, at the very least. Of course there still other options, such as the oxygen coming from asteroid or meteorite impacts, but since this is correlating with the discovery of a potential lake with liquid water under Mars's surface, I find it very exciting !

[junk-jester]

First Opportunity, now InSight.

When will the madness end?

[nasa]

Moon Mountain Named After Melba Roy Mouton, NASA Mathematician

Award-winning NASA mathematician and computer programmer Melba Mouton is being honored with the naming of a mountain at the Moon’s South Pole. Mouton joined NASA in 1959, just a year after the space agency was established. She was the leader of a team that coded computer programs to calculate spacecraft trajectories and locations. Her contributions were instrumental to landing the first humans on the Moon.

She also led the group of "human computers," who tracked the Echo satellites. Roy and her team's computations helped produce the orbital element timetables by which millions could view the satellite from Earth as it passed overhead.

The towering lunar landmark now known as “Mons Mouton” stands at a height greater than 19,000 feet. The mountain was created over billions of years by lunar impacts. Huge craters lie around its base—some with cliff-like edges that descend into areas of permanent darkness. Mons Mouton is the future landing site of VIPER, our first robotic Moon rover. The rover will explore the Moon’s surface to help gain a better understanding of the origin of lunar water. Here are things to know:

Mons Mouton is a wide, relatively flat-topped mountain that stretches roughly 2,700 square miles

The mountain is the highest spot at the Moon’s South Pole and can be seen from Earth with a telescope

Our VIPER Moon rover will explore Mons Mouton over the course of its 100-day mission

VIPER will map potential resources which will help inform future landing sites under our Artemis program

The VIPER mission is managed by our Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The approximately 1,000-pound rover will be delivered to the Moon by a commercial vendor as part of our Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, delivering science and technology payloads to and near the Moon.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[without-ado]

Mars' moon Phobos eclipses the sun

l NASA Perseverance Sep. 2024 via Daniel Pomarède

[aspaceinthecosmos]

Haven't seen anything about Ingenuity on tumblr yet, so I guess I'll make a post about it

Ingenuity (sometimes called Ginny) was an companion craft to Perseverance, one of the rovers currently on Mars. As opposed to any of the past rovers, however, Ingenuity was a rotorcraft intended to fly above Mars' surface.

After landing on Mars in February of 2021 and completing its first flight on April 19th, 2021, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to fly on another planet. Its original goal was only 5 flights, but it well surpassed that number, logging 72 flights with over two hours of in-air time.

On January 18th, 2024, Ingenuity lost contact with Perseverance midway through a flight, and a few days later, NASA had confirmation that the rotors were damaged, leaving Ingenuity incapable of flight.

So long, Ingenuity. You did so much <3

Source:

[deep-space-netwerk]

Ask and you shall receive.

So do y'all know about Curiosity's wheels? They have these cool hole patterns!

The holes are ostensibly for tracking wheel slippage. The pattern is stamped in the Martian sand, and by taking a picture of the tracks and measuring the distance between the repeating hole marks, you can tell how much the wheels are slipping.

But the pattern isn't arbitrary! Curiosity (along with many many other NASA missions) was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory - or "JPL". While JPL is entirely federally funded and almost exclusively works on NASA missions, it's technically operated by Caltech, not NASA. When JPL was assembling Curiosity, they added some "JPL" decals to it along with the cool "Curiosity" label on the arm.

Well, NASA HQ found out and got mad. "You can't put those JPL stickers all over our rover!" they said, and made JPL scrape them all off.

JPL reluctantly complied, but definitely got the last laugh. No decals allowed? Well fine - the holes in Curiosity's wheels say "JPL" in Morse code. So every few feet, the name of the real creator of the rover is stamped into the surface of Mars!

[theofficialastronomy101]

(UPDATED W PHOTOS) NASA's Curiosity rover ran over a rock and found crystals inside! They're pure sulfur. Elemental sulfur is something we've never seen before on Mars. We don't know much about these yellow crystals yet, but the team is already at work to figure it out!

[blueiscoool]

New NASA images reveal giant hole in Curiosity rover's wheel after 12 years of 'abuse' on Mars

Images captured by Curiosity's onboard cameras show several large tears in the tire of one of the rover's wheels. However, the damage does not appear to be slowing the roaming robot down.

Curiosity first touched down on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012 and was initially only expected to last for two years. But the hardy rover has defied expectations and has lasted 4,323 Martian days, or Sols, on the Red Planet, traveling more than 20 miles (32 kilometers) around the Gale Crater, where it originally landed.

However, new photos taken by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) and released by NASA on Sept. 24 reveal that the rover's epic journey has taken a toll on the robot's middle right wheel. The images show several large tears in the wheel's heavily scratched tire, including one particularly large hole that reveals the wheel’s inner mechanisms. It is currently unclear when these holes first emerged or if any of the rover's other wheels have suffered similar damage.

The damage may look bad but Curiosity "is still holding up well despite taking some of the worst abuse from Mars," mission operations engineer Ashley Stroupe wrote in the statement.

By Harry Baker.

[emacrow]

Commander Johnson, I-I think I found what or who been stealing our extra spare material supplies

Astronaut Jennifer said in the com as she stared, standing stiff as a board if it weren't for the gravity of Mars making it difficult.

What she was staring at couldn't be human but yet so close and eldritchic- alien like as the inner part of her mind was screaming danger danger, That Is Not A Human Being, Run RUN RUN,HIDENOWHIDENOWNOWNOW

It's look like a adult, a very slim and very tall adult if it weren't for the fact that his skin was tanned with a bit of splash of starlights all over, wearing a suit made of galaxies covered in red Mars rocks, his hair was white, whiter then the clouds on earth, ears pointy and curled a bit as if it wa to shield or reflect to what its was hearing(but they has moved back in a aggressive manner thar remind her of snuffles when threaten) and eyes glows so ominously Neon Green with black instead of white surrounding the iris, splatter of star like freckles that looks like he almost has two pupils mixing into a slits like in each of them.

Teeths razor sharp and thick, as the thing looks like it was growling at her with his body arch over, hands with extra digits of long blacken claws like nails dig into the dirt, hiding all the stuff that the alien had stolen along with a lil head of another mar baby, it weren't for the fact there was no sounds in space, she would've been screaming float running back to her headquarters base.

She was only patrolling the part of the base where they were trying to grow plants in one of the green houses they painstaking made on Mar, but then she saw the glow of unnatural green slipping out of the sealed tight glass.

Curiosity took the best of her as she put on her suit and went to check at that spot is where she find what seem to be a native Mar creature and its baby hoarding all the missing stuffs that they had lost in the base, along with the missing robot, opportunity as the top of it's hoard pile in a makeshift hole(it's a Nest and she has enter this creatures domains) near a small pool full of of oddly frozen water that glowed luminous.

It was a stand off between her and the creature not moving an inch until Jennifer's coms responded back as she flinched, her heart dropping snd face paling dramatically when the creature's ear flick a bit as it heard the static electric device.

"J-J-J-Jennifer, do you copy? I repeat, Do you copy?!?" Commander Johnson spoke a bit frantic.

Unawared of the danger he had put Jennifer in when she flinched, the creature lunged, Jennifer scrambling to turn around and hop/run back into the safety of the base as fast as she could.

Like inspiration for @tinycoded360

[adrianl4u]

Mars seen by Pereverance rover, May 13, 2024

[humanoidhistory]

Mars rover concept in 1989 NASA art by Les Bossinas.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[planetaryalphabet]

A view of Mars from 140 million miles away. Courtesy of the Perseverance Rover

[without-ado]

A Trailblazing Duo:

January 17, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of Spirit and Opportunity's landing on Mars. The two of Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of Mars and began exploring the planet. Since their landing, the rovers have sent more than 100,000 high-resolution, full-color images of the planet’s surface. Designed to last just 90 days, they exceeded expectations and changed the way we explore the Red Planet l more at NASA JPL

[theofficialastronomy101]

A 1500 Kilometer long lonely clouds spotted on Mars.