[meteorite-list] Free at last, free at last, thank Mission Control, it's ...

Sat Jun 4 23:47:16 EDT 2005

Thanks for the post Darren!  Ron, being connected to Ithaca and  Altadena, 
please consider passing out heartfelt congratulations along to the  team and 
tell them to take a day off at the Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena on  gov't 
paid overtime.  Wake them up with the song "90% Air" by 'John  Dillinger Died 
for You'.  

If anyone gets stuck in a sand trap, see how well they do, and then  petition 
the golf course to unofficially name it the 37-Sol Mars Rover Sand  Trap.  
They can dump the sandbox the engineers have been playing in for the  past 177 
virtual meters in one there and bond/commiserate with golfers  everywhere.  And 
after all the commerative names on Mars, it is about time  that the drain 
backed up in Pasadena.  It is only fair to the  Martians...Boy I feel good, no 
disrespect meant...free at last it  is!  Golf, anyone??  Saludos, Doug  PS I 
still think Tiger  Woods should have been consulting in engineering on this one, 
or at least Arnold  Palmer could have given some advice...

It's such a beautiful day
I think I'll get out and golf
It's such a  beautiful day
Won't rent a cart I will walk
It's such a beautiful  day
As I step up on the tee
With my new driver made 
Of titanium  alloy-e

I hit that damn thing straight
I hit that shot like I should
Straight  and about 250 
Just like I knew I would
But there's a little wind
And I  hit a little fade anyway
And watch that ball roll
Right off the  fairway

FORE!

This is no problem really
This is a short par 4
I can go straight for  the green
No need for a detour
I bust a 7 iron it's looking like that I'll  be on 
But then it takes a shitty bounce and I am in the rough again

Oh but this shot is different
There's a tree right in front of  me
Should be able to go right over
Should be able to get on easy
But my  wedge's a little thin
That ball comes back and parts my hair
That's when I  hear big Ron say
"Trees are 90% air"

FORE!

Darren writes:
>Once again, a Mars rover pulls off a frikin' miracle  and escapes the sand 
trap.

================

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0506/04mer/

Mars rover  Opportunity finally escapes sandy trap
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT  NOW
Posted: June 4, 2005

A thick extraterrestrial sand dune was no  match for an army of engineers and 
scientists who worked
for over a month to  free NASA's Opportunity rover from its clenching grasp 
on the surface of Mars.  

"We're out!...all six wheels are on top of the soil," Steve Squyres  wrote in 
an online status report
Saturday. Squyres is the principal  investigator for the Opportunity and 
Spirit rovers. 

Now over 16  months into a mission originally planned to last for 90 days, 
the Opportunity  rover has
been exploring a geologically-rich region of Mars known as  Meridiani Planum, 
where the six-wheeled
robot found conclusive evidence last  year of the presence of great amounts 
of liquid water long ago.

On its  way to visit its third impact crater in late April, the durable rover 
entered a  treacherous
region known as the "etched terrain" fraught with obstacles such  as thick 
sand dunes. Opportunity
became stuck in one such ripple on April 26,  and engineers controlling the 
mission at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory opted  to take their time to complete studies of the 
situation before making
any  subsequent action. 

The ground team spent several weeks putting together  a "recipe" to create a 
similar type of soil in
an Earth laboratory to model  the situation Opportunity found itself in on 
Mars. Mock-up rovers  were
stripped of two-thirds of their weight to simulate the weaker gravity on  the 
Red Planet. The
testbeds were then placed in the soil to determine the  best way to exit the 
trap. 

After straightening the wheels, the control  team began commanding 
Opportunity to slowly spin its
wheels each day to begin  the process of extracting the bogged-down rover in 
a forward direction with
a  slight turn to the left. From mid-May until Friday, the craft had spun its 
 wheels enough to
normally travel 581 feet, but the actual movement detected  was just about 
three feet. 

But that deliberate movement proved worth it  as Opportunity crested the 
foot-high dune and its
ten-inch wheels emerged on  the surface during Friday's scheduled operation. 

"We've been confident  all along that this would happen, but still...what a 
relief," Squyres  said.
"It's been an arduous process, and it feels very good to be free."  

During its time stuck, the rover conducted a number of remote  atmospheric 
science observations and
used its high-resolution panoramic  cameras to take pictures of the 
surrounding area where other
potentially  dangerous dunes are found. 

Opportunity has driven 3.32 miles since  exiting its lander in January 2004, 
vastly further than any
pre-launch  estimate could have predicted. Its twin Spirit on the opposite 
side of the  planet has
traveled almost three miles. 

The robot is now about 1,300  feet from its next probable target known as 
Erebus crater - a formation
quite  a bit larger than earlier impact sites visited. 

Normal operations will  resume on Monday, but controllers will bide their 
time before sending  orders
to tell Opportunity to begin moving again. 

"Clearly we're  going to have to put some additional safeguards in place when 
we drive in this  kind
of terrain, and those safeguards certainly will reduce our driving speed  
somewhat," Squyres told
Spaceflight Now. "But we feel very good about being  able to continue 
southward at a reasonable
rate." 

"When we're  actually going to drive away from this place remains to be seen, 
but we're in a  position
right now to begin studying the dune that we ran into, and we're  going to 
start that  immediately
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