Oppurtunity Rover on Mars

[Durandal7]

The Oppurtunity rover has successfully touched down on Mars. It touched down at about 12:05 EST and stopped rolling about 20 minutes later. It is sending out a strong signal. Pictures should come by morning.

Mission Status: http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/status.html

[Juventuz]

GREAT to hear!

To think that it rolled for 20 minutes, cripes.

[Dippo]

Yeap, I watched it all on NASA TV. It was so exciting :D

Maybe they can roll Oppurtunity over to Spirit and give it a good swift kick!

[Mr. Anderson]

The predicted landing site looks to be a little more interesting than Spirits - I'm really looking forward to seeing some pics in the next couple days.

D

[alphaone]

It probably wasn't rolling for the 20 minutes. They interpreted the fluctuation in signal strength as a sign that the lander was still rolling but this wasn't the case. Since the lander stopped on one of the side petals the UHF antenna was pointed at Earth, but also bouncing off of the martian ground. This caused a multi-pass/beading effect which caused the signal fluctuations. It was probably only rolling for about the expected 10 min.

This is great news. 2 rovers on Mars!:D Hope Spirit gets well soon. It looks like the OS stored in the Flash memory was corrupted when it went to sleep improperly.

[alphaone]

Wow! The pictures from Opportunity look really cool! Left me speechless!:D Very devoid of rocks sans the large angular outcroppings. A smooth flowing surface. Those angular rocks are like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Fantastic images! You can see very very very fine sand and soft sand. You can actually see imprints from the seams in the airbags in the sand.

The rover is in perfect shape so far.:)

[alphaone]

Wow!

[alphaone]

another. I guess this is why they sent 2!:D Sorry for the quadruple post lol.:p

[alphaone]

Yet another. Amazing stuff! I'll leave it at that for tonight.

[MrMacMan]

Nice 5PostSpree. ;)

Those pictures are nice.

:)


I hope all goes well... unlike spirit.

:rolleyes:

[wdlove]

Go Opportunity! It goes to show that NASA was able to overcome the landing problems successfully, by completing the second landing.

Nice pictures alphaone, thank you!
;)

[job]

this is great stuff. i bet if life or evidence thereof is found on mars (or even anomalies) we'll try to land a manned mission there as soon as possible.

wouldn't it be fascinating to find ancient, extraterrestrial life, even if it might only be a few bacterium?