Perseverance - the hunt for life on mars

[RanchRoper]

I wonder if they passed Elon Musk's little car on the way there?

[BigAl52]

Dont know about his car but I bet they passed some of his satellites and rockets

[GeoBoy]

It would be great if this country spent these billions of dollars on making life better on this planet.

[RanchRoper]

Maybe they should search for intelligent life here first....

[BigAl52]

We have a lot here that think there intelligent. There on top of hills on the east and west coast

[Grunt67]

We have a lot here that think there intelligent. There on top of hills on the east and west coast

Same folks that build on top of hills that go sliding down the hill.

[Ernie]

The company I work for produces controls for military aircraft and we are now doing prototypes for rockets. Work on some of these a bit.

[CT_Shooter]

This might have been an interesting discussion about an extraordinary scientific achievement, but unlike the Perseverance, it has drifted far from its intended trajectory.

Regarding intelligence, a person doesn't have to be a genius to know the difference between the words "there", "their" and "they're"; or "to", "too", and "two". It's simple. The average fourth grader knows it. But, aiming at and hitting a 28 mile wide bullseye on a moving planet that is currently 126 million miles from earth does require the knowledge and intelligence of a team of rocket scientists.

Great range report, NASA.

[GunnyGene]

Great range report, NASA.

Indeed. Kinda like hitting a running hog at 2000yds from a helicopter doing 80mph. And you only get one shot.

[RanchRoper]

Yup, them their rockets are amazin'. Reminds me of an uncle my wife had who would not watch the moon landing because "I didn't buy a color TV to watch stuff in black & white!"...

[Hatchdog]

Great range report, NASA.

Indeed. Kinda like hitting a running hog at 2000yds from a helicopter doing 80mph. And you only get one shot.

That certainly puts it all into prospective, great analogy.

[GunnyGene]

Great range report, NASA.

Indeed. Kinda like hitting a running hog at 2000yds from a helicopter doing 80mph. And you only get one shot.

That certainly puts it all into prospective, great analogy.

It's orders of magnitude tougher than the hog shot, even if you can sort of adjust the trajectory on the way to Mars. You have to figure the speed of light, which means Mars is a little over 11 minutes ahead of where it appears to be in a telescope. Mars orbital velocity is approx. 24km/sec. So in that 11 min. Mars would have traveled approx. 16,000 km ( 9,900 miles). Same with communications to the rocket as it nears Mars. And Mars is only about 4,200 miles in dia. so you could miss the entire planet very easily. And none of that includes the rotation speed of the planet (868km/hr -- 539miles/hr), which also has to be taken into account if you're aiming for a specific spot on the surface. Lead time on that Martian hog is really out there.

[John E Davies]

It's orders of magnitude tougher than the hog shot, even if you can sort of adjust the trajectory on the way to Mars. You have to figure the speed of light, which means Mars is a little over 11 minutes ahead of where it appears to be in a telescope. Mars orbital velocity is approx. 24km/sec. So in that 11 min. Mars would have traveled approx. 16,000 km ( 9,900 miles). Same with communications to the rocket as it nears Mars. And Mars is only about 4,200 miles in dia. so you could miss the entire planet very easily. And none of that includes the rotation speed of the planet (868km/hr -- 539miles/hr), which also has to be taken into account if you're aiming for a specific spot on the surface. Lead time on that Martian hog is really out there.

That is a great description, however it isn’t at all like a bullet from a rifle, because the shooters back on Earth can make course corrections en route using the thrusters. And on this landing, they wanted a really precise touchdown in a really hazardous location (200 foot cliffs just a mile away), so the lander used its camera/ radar system and made its own adjustments based on what it saw, during that final phase. That impresses me a lot more than the fact that computers at home can calculate trajectories so well. I noticed on the “dash display” that the skycrane had about 1000 pounds of fuel on board as it started down. I did not notice how much was left when the cables released.....

Interesting article about the “Right Kind of Crazy” Skycrane:

“The Skycrane works much like a heavy-lift helicopter (without the blades), using tether cables to lower the rover down to the surface while the crane relies on rocket propulsion to hover above. In fact, the team even consulted with the engineers and pilots behind the Sikorsky Skycrane, a helicopter that uses very similar technique to haul logs from forests, as well as other heavy cargo. But unlike earthly helicopters, as soon as the rover’s wheels hit Mars regolith, the flying crane shoots itself clear of the landing area, completing its task in a fiery explosion.”

https://astronomy.com/news/2021/02/sky ... nd-on-mars

John Davies
Spokane WA

[GunnyGene]

It's orders of magnitude tougher than the hog shot, even if you can sort of adjust the trajectory on the way to Mars. You have to figure the speed of light, which means Mars is a little over 11 minutes ahead of where it appears to be in a telescope. Mars orbital velocity is approx. 24km/sec. So in that 11 min. Mars would have traveled approx. 16,000 km ( 9,900 miles). Same with communications to the rocket as it nears Mars. And Mars is only about 4,200 miles in dia. so you could miss the entire planet very easily. And none of that includes the rotation speed of the planet (868km/hr -- 539miles/hr), which also has to be taken into account if you're aiming for a specific spot on the surface. Lead time on that Martian hog is really out there.

That is a great description, however it isn’t at all like a bullet from a rifle, because the shooters back on Earth can make course corrections en route using the thrusters. And on this landing, they wanted a really precise touchdown in a really hazardous location (200 foot cliffs just a mile away), so the lander used its camera/ radar system and made its own adjustments based on what it saw, during that final phase. That impresses me a lot more than the fact that computers at home can calculate trajectories so well. I noticed on the “dash display” that the skycrane had about 1000 pounds of fuel on board as it started down. I did not notice how much was left when the cables released.....

Interesting article about the “Right Kind of Crazy” Skycrane:

“The Skycrane works much like a heavy-lift helicopter (without the blades), using tether cables to lower the rover down to the surface while the crane relies on rocket propulsion to hover above. In fact, the team even consulted with the engineers and pilots behind the Sikorsky Skycrane, a helicopter that uses very similar technique to haul logs from forests, as well as other heavy cargo. But unlike earthly helicopters, as soon as the rover’s wheels hit Mars regolith, the flying crane shoots itself clear of the landing area, completing its task in a fiery explosion.”

https://astronomy.com/news/2021/02/sky ... nd-on-mars

John Davies
Spokane WA

Yeah, I know what I briefly described was very simplistic. There's a thousand other things that go into it. Available fuel for course corrections, gravity, & solar wind among them. It took the NASA team a few years to put this whole thing together, and there was still some uncertainty that it would go off as hoped. Phase 2 - retrieval of the samples by a separate spacecraft, lander, and launch back to Earth won't happen for 2 or 3 years. If that's successful, we might see a manned round trip a few years after that, which would present a multitude of other problems that would have to be solved to keep a crew alive for a couple years during the trip out and back. There ain't any truck stops along the way.

[CT_Shooter]

An Easter Egg on Mars... Fun with Science...

During a news briefing on Monday (Feb. 22), NASA revealed the first video taken by Perseverance as it descended to and landed on the Martian surface Feb. 18. Those watching may have noticed a distinct red and white pattern on the interior of the parachute. Allen Chen, the entry, descent and landing lead for the mission confirmed in the briefing that there was a hidden message, and he dared the public to decode it.

"In addition to enabling incredible science, we hope our efforts in our engineering can inspire others," Chen said during the briefing. "Sometimes we leave messages in our work for others to find for that purpose, so we invite you all to give it a shot and show your work."

https://www.space.com/perseverance-rove ... age-solved

It took just a few hours for space fans to figure it out, Clark said. Next time, he noted, “I’ll have to be a little bit more creative.”

“Dare Mighty Things” — a line from President Theodore Roosevelt — is a mantra at JPL and adorns many of the center’s walls. The trick was “trying to come up with a way of encoding it but not making it too obvious,” Clark said.

As for the GPS coordinates, the spot is 10 feet (3 meters) from the entrance to JPL’s visitor center.

https://apnews.com/article/mars-rover-p ... 7d57ef564d

[fortyshooter]

You think there are any UFO findings in the pictures,videos of all the Mars missions? If "they" are around the earth why not the other planets?