There's another Mars article in the Times this morning, which I wouldn't bother to note in a full post save for one thing: the way they got the results.
The right front wheel of Spirit stopped turning in March 2006. Since then, the rover has been driving backwards, dragging the lame wheel along. This May, scientists noticed a bright spot in the trail of overturned dirt.
They turned Spirit around for a closer look, finding high levels of silica, the main ingredient of window glass. They then aimed the rover at a nearby rock, wanting to break it apart to determine if the silica was just a surface coating, or if the rock was silica all the way through.
The target rock survived Spirit's charge, but a neighboring rock cracked open. The interior of that rock, which the scientists informally named "Innocent Bystander," turned out to be rich in silica.
NASA gets a lot of bad press when probes go missing or malfunction, some of which is justified. They don't get enough credit, though, for their ability to work around problems, which is nothing short of astounding.
I mean, think about what happened here: the Mars rover broke down over a year ago, and they found a way to keep it functioning in spite of one bad wheel. Then, they made an interesting discovery precisely because of that malfunction, and their clever work-around.
That's impressive even without mentioning the fact that the rover was supposed to stop working entirely a few years ago.
If you listen to popular discussions of NASA, you'd think the place was being run by monkeys, and that's not even from the private-space-program nuts. People harp on their mistakes all the time, without any real understanding of how difficult the things they're trying to do are, and how impressive it is that they manage to get anything done at all.
I mean, look at it this way: if somebody asked you to figure out what some rock was made of, you could probably do it relatively easily (assuming you know something about rocks). You just walk over, pick it up, maybe hit it with a hammer or do some chemical analysis.
If they asked you to figure out what a rock was made of from the next room, by looking through a window, that starts to become a hard problem. You can probably bounce a laser off it, and do some spectroscopy, but it's a little tricky.
What NASA's doing is trying to figure out what rocks are made of from 100 million miles away. And they're doing an amazing job of it.
So let's hear it for the ingenuity of rocket scientists.
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NASA does have a great track record of working around problems. If I remember correctly, they did an impressive job with Galileo when one of it's antennas got stuck and they had to figure out how to get as much data back to earth as possible with a low transmission rate (new data compression algorithms, etc.)
There is nothing intelligence can achieve that management cannot destroy for a performance bonus. The only Martian interest is life, past or present. NASA is singularly punctilious in not resolving that issue. It's for "later."
TOP SECRET/Lotus Eater black research has a use for Mars... weaponize.
Sounds much like what I was raised on. Good old fashioned Southern Engineering. Too bad there's not duct tape or bailing wire on Mars though.
In all seriousness though, that wasn't that smart. If it doesn't work, just fiddle around with until something works a little better. My first thought would have been "if it don't go forward... let's try going backwards." that being said. I agree that NASA is getting a bad rap for their various pitfalls. Still, I've got something to say to all those who criticize NASA for such mistakes: "If you think you can do a better job, then whey don't you launch a Mars rover?" It's not like we can just shoot a remote controlled car out of a cannon in Mars' general direction.
I find it fascinating that the rocks are made up of so much silica! That could mean that if Mars where to be colonized, we could develop massive amounts of computer chips there for a very low price. I mean, you've got all the stuff you need just laying around in your yard. Sounds like a good deal to me.
That could mean that if Mars where to be colonized, we could develop massive amounts of computer chips there for a very low price.
I'm looking forward to Martian windows and Martian bottles. I'll be the envy of my friends: "Wow, HP," they'll say, "Is that a bottle?" "Not just any bottle, my friends -- it's a Martian bottle! Perhaps you'd care for a closer look ... through my Martian window."
JPL-related stuff is first rate - I have faight in their technical people. For comparison look at the record of Russia, ESA and Japan, in the unmanned missions
But the shuttle/ISS is a giant blunder. It also does not help that the top eshelons of NASA bureaucracy are so ingrown in the Washington coridors of power and they became corrupted by lobbying and all the PR stuff.
We have to distinguish between the scientists and engineers that NASA employs, and NASA itself.
The first are startlingly creative, curious, and intelligent people. The latter is an obsolete waste of time and money that was established to win propaganda victories over the USSR, and is retained only because we need it to put and keep satellites in orbit. Actual science is given only a pittance.
I watched a documentary a few years back that highlighted the feats of the NASA engineers. The fact they have kept the shuttles running as long as they have, with only a few problems along the way, is a testament to their ingenuity. If you think about it, they have kept those ancient scraps of metal working far longer than intended, with huge budget cuts to boot. The shuttles are incredibly outdated technology practically falling apart, yet the NASA engineers keep them running on a shoestring budget because they have no choice.
This is actually the second time the stuck wheel has led to a serendipitous discovery - a year or so ago Spirit was dragging it, as usual, and dug a trench with it that revealed soil a dramatically different color from the surface material. The geologists spent a couple of weeks investigating that phenomenon - not sure what they concluded, but they were excited for a while.