NASA's rover Spirit is stuck and the rover was able to take a picture of its underside. The rover that has far outlasted its original expected lifecycle has found itself high centered on top of a rock.NASA engineers were able to rotate the microscopic imager to view the underbelly to take the photo shown below. The image is blurry because the imager was designed to take photos of objects at a distance of 6 centimeters (2.4 inches). Despite the fact that the image is out of focus and grainy in nature it does clearly show what the rover is stuck on top of and will hopefully assist in the demounting of the robot.
The Spirit rover landed on Mars on January 4, 2004 and has been exploring the surface ever since that successful landing. The rover has out performed its original intent and was only expected to survive for around 90 days. Five years later the rover finds itself stuck on a rock but still alive.
Engineers are optimistic that they can get the rover off of the stuck rock but being high centered on top of a rock is not easy to get one's self unstuck. The rover has survived a dust storm and a locked up wheel so a rock shouldn't be too big of a hurdle for its human counterparts on earth to overcome.
Why not? Vibrators aren't expensive, so have it one included so it can pleasure any eventual Mars life forms
I tell you they're just hiding away - they'd be much more likely to show if they knew there was a rover with a vibrator waiting for them.
Considering it was only designed to work for 90 days and they got 5+ years out of it, I don't think the design was that bad.
Honda is close...
dont get me wrong Honda builds some great stuff but they are not even targeting spacecraft besides maybe building some parts for other manufactures.
Well, they also have a robot...
BTW, I was being somewhat snarky with the jet comment.
don't forget they are a private company, they can´t spend millions developing a pen to write in space like NASA did in the past. NASA as the US government funding them. They have to explain and justify the costs to their stock holders.
Note: the Russians solved the same problem with a pencil.
Note: the Russians solved the same problem with a pencil.
About that: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
But it wasn't a rock.
It was a rock lobster!
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