You Done Good Girl

 

The mission of the Spirit Mars Rover is officially over.  NASA announced last week that it has ceased all attempts to contact the rover which became stuck on the surface of Mars back in 2009.  I talked about this over a year ago when engineers were preparing Spirit for a long winter nap.  This grand old lady was unable to survive the harsh Martian winter and never responded to signals sent to wake her up.

The image above is the last panoramic scan made by Spirit on day 2175 of her originally scheduled 90 day mission.

Rest In Peace.  The data you collected on your extraordinary journey will keep scientists busy for years to come.


 

We're Having Company.

I hope you were on your best behavior today as the Earth had two guests drop by to visit.  They were actually kind of rude and antisocial but, as mother always says, that's no excuse for bad manners on our part.  Neither one even stopped in long enough for coffee.

We're talking, of course, about two small asteroids, 2010 RF12 and  2010 RX30, that passed by Earth today closer than the Moon.    This time lapse image is from Associazione Friulana di Astronomia e Meteorologia (don't freak, it's in English).  I'll let them explain:

We have been able to follow-up 2010 RF12 few hours ago, on September 08 at at 06:45am UT (00:45am local time) through the GRAS network, using a scope located in Mayhill (NM). Below you can see our animation composed of 4 unfiltered exposures, 30-seconds each obtained by means of a 0.25-m, f/3.4 reflector + CCD:

If it's any comfort, we did know these guys were coming.  They were discovered three days ago by the professional "Catalina Sky Survey" using the 1.5-m telescope at Mount Lemmon in Arizona.  Granted, neither of these asteroids were big enough to do anything more than cause a nice light show had they fallen to earth.  Bigger ones would have shown up sooner.  But will we know in time to do anything about it?  Until we have the option to pack up and leave the answer is "we'll never know".  Till that day comes the best we can do is duck and pray.

We'll go no more a roving

SO, we'll go no more a-roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

--George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron. 1788–1824  

On Tuesday, January 26, 2010, NASA announced that Spirit, that spunky little robot explorer thats been wandering around Mars for the past six years, is officially stuck and has been designated a fixed location science station.  Operators are preparing it to hibernate through the long Martian winter in hopes that it can survive  and continue to provide useful pictures and data for several more years.

Now, being rocket scientists, it only took them nine months to figure out that they couldn't go anywhere. I could have told them that when the bot first broke through the crust and started spinning its wheels.  But I suppose I have an unfair advantage.  Growing up on a farm you spend half of your time either stuck in the mud or pulling someone else out who is.

In the ongoing debate about sending men into space vs robots I generally side with sending the robots.  The information return per dollar is much greater with robots than with humans.  There is, however, something to be said for having a human around who can hop out, hook up a cable and come-a-long to the closest big rock, and ratchet the rover  out of the sand pit when it gets mired down.  A human operator on board might have avoided getting into the situation in the first place.  But the original mission of Spirit was to spend three months exploring Mars.  Had there been a human involved there would have been no choice but to pack up and come home before supplies ran out.  And we would have missed out on almost six extra years of information that Spirit has been able to gather. The fact is that, despite 50 years of exploring and 10 years of maintaining a permanent crew aboard the International Space Station, we haven't learned to live in outer space:  we just go there and camp out.  We have to take everything we need with us.  We can't just hang around for six extra years if we find something interesting.

If we, as humans, truly want to explore the outer solar system and beyond we should concentrate our efforts on the design and construction of a habitat capable of supporting human life outside the earth's atmosphere and independent of earth's support.  Only then will we be free to explore.