|
Home / News / Tags / Opportunity
|
|
30
Stories about: Opportunity |
|
|
Following Tuesday's attempt at moving the jammed rover Spirit, engineers and mission planners at the American space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have decided to upload a new set of commands into the robot's onboard computer earlier today. The machine has been stuck in a patch of loose soil ... |
19 November 2009
03:24 GMT |
 |
|
Since May 6, the rover Spirit has been trapped on the surface of the Red Planet in a patch of loose soil known as Troy. The exploration robot, which has been driving backwards on only five wheels for the last three years, was climbing a 12-degree slope when its wheels got buried in the sand up to their hubcaps. After... |
6 November 2009
05:50 GMT |
|
|
The last nine weeks have been very eventful for the Martian rover Opportunity, which has spent the first six of them looking at Block Island, a large meteorite it found on the surface of the Red Planet. After it looked at it from most possible angles – in a bid to provide its mission controllers with enough dat... |
13 October 2009
03:44 GMT |
|
|
The meteorite that the Mars rover Opportunity discovered a few weeks ago is shedding more and more light on the past composition and state of the atmosphere on the planet. Following thorough investigations, experts have been able to infer that the gaseous mix was a lot thicker in the past than it is now. The conclusi... |
20 August 2009
16:21 GMT |
|
|
The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission managers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, are celebrating Spirit's record-setting anniversary of Martian presence. Originally designed to roam the sands of the Red Planet for just 90 sols (a mean Martian day has 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 3... |
19 August 2009
05:57 GMT |
|
|
In its trek on the surface of Mars, the rover Opportunity has recently come across an ancient meteor, made almost entirely out of metal, according to investigators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California. The peculiar formation is currently helping planetary scientists gain a deeper insight in... |
11 August 2009
20:01 GMT |
|
|
While shifting through the data beamed back by the rover Opportunity from the surface of the Red Planet, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, discovered a dark, oddly shaped rock sitting right in the path of the rover. According to preliminary analysis reports, it may be that th... |
4 August 2009
01:38 GMT |
|
|
With the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) component Spirit stuck in Martian soil since May 6th, a team of engineers at the NASA-operated Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, which also doubles as the control crew for the rover and its twin, Opportunity, is currently engaged in a valiant effort to simulate... |
8 July 2009
06:25 GMT |
|
|
With Spirit trapped in loose Martian soil since May 6th, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, are working around the clock to mimic the conditions of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) in their test facilities. Spirit and Opportunity are not the only MER components, as mission pl... |
10 June 2009
13:21 GMT |
|
|
After driving around Mars' Victoria Crater for a good part of its mission, the rover Opportunity was finally able to beam back sufficient images for experts to piece together and propose a hypothesis on how the entire area came to look the way it does now. Two years of observations by the persistent rover have s... |
22 May 2009
15:31 GMT |
|
|
The Spirit rover is currently in a “sticky” situation, so to speak, having been trapped inside a very soft area of soil on the Red Planet since May 7th. After several attempts to get the robot to move in any direction, Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission controllers decided to temporarily halt all drivi... |
19 May 2009
10:29 GMT |
|
|
The resilient tiny Martian rover Spirit is currently facing some of the gravest challenges it has had to bear since arriving on the Red Planet, in 2004. With one wheel jammed since three years ago, it now runs the risk of becoming permanently stuck in the loose and very plastic soil its driving over. Recent attempts ... |
12 May 2009
09:53 GMT |
|
|
On Thursday, the Spirit Mars rover took its first drive since April 8th, when it started exhibiting “memory problems.” Confronted with bouts of amnesia, as in problems with its flash drive, the tiny robot was unresponsive to commands for a while, and rebooted its onboard computers a few times. On April 23... |
25 April 2009
04:40 GMT |
|
|
Officials at NASA have recently announced that the tiny Mars exploration rover (MER) Spirit is in doubtful “health,” on account of the fact that readings coming in from the robot have revealed that the craft has rebooted its onboard computers twice over the last weekend. Engineers and mission specialists ... |
14 April 2009
05:41 GMT |
|
|
If the Martian rovers could be compared to live scientists, then you could safely say that they are the founding fathers of a new scientific field, and that is robotic planetary exploration. Admittedly, they are not the first machines to have been sent to another planet, and they will most certainly not be the last o... |
31 March 2009
03:21 GMT |
|
|
The resilient Mars rover has managed just recently to get a first glimpse of its destination, the Endeavor crater, towards which the robot has been traveling for more than 6 months. It's panoramic cameras have revealed the uplifted rim of the large crater, still a good distance away from the rover's current... |
19 March 2009
03:44 GMT |
|
|
NASA's enduring Spirit rover is currently faced with a navigational problem, in that its path over a portion of Martian soil known as the Home Plate is obstructed by piles of loose rocks. These formations are very dangerous to the frail machine, so mission managers have decided to take the long way around, simpl... |
6 March 2009
03:42 GMT |
|
|
According to new data released by NASA and JPL-Caltech, the Spirit exploration rover received a larger input of electricity on February 6th, which seems to indicate the fact that Martian winds managed to blew a significant quantity of the dust that covered the robot's solar panels. This is nothing but good news ... |
13 February 2009
15:01 GMT |
|
|
On Saturday, experts at NASA finally resumed breathing, after the Mars rover Spirit eventually snapped out of its mysterious set of problems and started moving on the Martian surface again, following several days of not recording any images and not moving a single inch. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in ... |
4 February 2009
06:59 GMT |
|
|
Over the last weekend, NASA's “old” Mars rover, Spirit, missed its regular data transmission and remained silent for the next days. This prompted an immediate reaction from the agency's staff, to rescue the long-lived robot, which is now entering its sixth year of service, despite the fact that ... |
29 January 2009
05:55 GMT |
|
|
The endurance displayed by NASA's Mars twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, has been nothing but good news for astronomers and other scientists. Nearly 250,000 images were transmitted between the two planets in their 5 full years of operation. Originally scheduled to last a couple of months, their missions quick... |
16 January 2009
09:25 GMT |
|
|
The twin geologic rovers that were deployed more than 5 years ago on Mars, NASA's Spirit and Opportunity, managed to survive their fifth season on the Red Planet, despite the fact that they were expected to last less than 3 months in the frigid winter that their unfamiliar surroundings offered. Now, having survi... |
5 January 2009
04:31 GMT |
|
|
Mars' hemispheres are very different in weather and even in season, given the positioning of the planet in relation to the Sun. Since its southern part is now facing the Sun, it is spring time for half of Mars, while the other half gets ready for the closing winter. This also has a big impact on science, because... |
11 November 2008
03:02 GMT |
|
|
As soon as it arrived on the surface of the Red Planet, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity investigating the south equatorial regions discovered evidence of the past existence of liquid water, fueling even further the idea that Mars was once able to support life. However, a new assessment of the conditions requir... |
30 May 2008
07:05 GMT |
|
|
The four-year mission in the harsh Martian environment is leaving yet another imprint on one of NASA's twin rovers. While Spirit is currently hibernating in the northern region of the planet, Opportunity is still on route to exploring Victoria Crater's Cape Verde. The voyage to the cliff was recently stoppe... |
25 April 2008
03:04 GMT |
|
|
Well, it seems that NASA 'did it again', so to say. Just recently the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, responsible for the Mars Exploration Rover program, was ordered to apply a budget cut of 4 million US dollars for the 2008 fiscal year. Yet another cut was scheduled for the 2009, totaling 8 million ... |
26 March 2008
04:00 GMT |
|
|
Although still healthy and working round the clock of the surface of the Red Planet, NASA's twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity may soon find themselves hibernating for a undefined amount of time. If mechanical and software problems won't disable them permanently, NASA will surely do so. According to a NASA ... |
25 March 2008
05:11 GMT |
|
|
Dust is plenty, however more electric power would be pretty nice, since electronics don't run on 'dirt power'. That is true, but so is the following affirmation: 90 is not equal to 1,460! 1,460 days have passed since the Martian rover Spirit landed on the surface of the Red Planet, meaning exactly four... |
4 January 2008
09:32 GMT |
|
|
No wonder NASA received funding cuts for its Near Earth Object program, as it seems they are spending a lot of money on nothing. The threat at which NASA is exposing the human race to got updated in late November last year when asteroid 2007 WD5 was discovered. Upon calculating the trajectory of the object through th... |
4 January 2008
03:50 GMT |
|
|
Uncertainty hovers over Spirit, as it 'fights' for its 'life' on the surface of Mars, in order to reach the designated spot that would ensure its necessary power to remain operational over the coming Martian winter. To improve the chances that in the following winters the twin rovers, Spirit and O... |
17 December 2007
05:45 GMT |
|
|
If it had been a human being, it would have been more than a thousands years old. It got sand blasted, it lost a limb, multiple instrument functions failed, it got stuck in loose soil, and it is still sprinting for its life. However, this might be Spirit's last drive across the surface of the Red Planet, as the ... |
11 December 2007
07:49 GMT |
|
|
The Martian rover Spirit has finally freed itself from the patch of loose soil, in which it had remained stuck for about two weeks, and it might encounter similar terrain in its journey towards a spot that will ensure the necessary amount of sunlight. As a result of a sand storm that raged on the Mars surface, for ab... |
5 December 2007
02:50 GMT |
|
|
Designed to operate for only 90 days, driving across the red surface for almost four years and experiencing multiple mechanical failures, Spirit now hits another problem. While heading towards a slop which was supposed to ensure the optimal angle for collecting sunlight, the rover got stuck in what NASA thinks might ... |
28 November 2007
03:57 GMT |
|
|
Two of NASA's rovers present on the surface of Mars experience instruments failure after four years of activity. Though the original mission in which the rovers, Opportunity and its twin Spirit, were supposed to study the surface of the Red Planet was scheduled for only 90 days, NASA managed to extend it to almo... |
19 November 2007
03:07 GMT |
|
|
NASA's two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on the red planet in 2003, to explore the Martian surface and geology. Despite all the technical and atmospheric difficulties they have encountered in their missions, they kept going and were the main actors in a planetary science revolution.They have been ... |
25 July 2007
08:17 GMT |
|
|
The dust storm on Mars has been going on for nearly a month and is now blocking around 85 to 90 percent of all sunlight to the surface. If it doesn't calm down in more than two weeks, the two NASA rovers on the surface, Spirit and Opportunity, will run out of power and will go permanently offline.Scientists don... |
21 July 2007
05:01 GMT |
|
|
|
|
