Monday, 13 August 2012

Mars rover gets application update to get ready for drive



USA: NASA provided its last Fascination objective briefing of the weeks time Saturday, going over in more details some factors of the rover's getting on Mars and applying out its next four times, which will be invested setting up application that the software will need to generate around and discover the world.
The application update means the rover won't be doing any technology over the next four sols, or Martian times, but will keep sending more of the information it gathered during its high-speed getting on the world Weekend night, NASA said.

The area organization said it has only a aspect of the information so far and desires as more comes on World it will keep get a better image of how the rover's getting analyzes with the forecasts and designs NASA invested years creating for the objective.
Now that the access, nice and getting stages are finish, NASA developers can close down certain applications required for those actions, liberating up room for the applications the rover needs to shift and discover the top area of Mars.

Rover's brand 10 periods more slowly than smartphone

Those stunned at the rover's amazing high-speed-landing on Mars were amazed to learn Saturday that the rover is undertaking its complicated objective with a portion of the processing energy of your regular smart phone.
A smart phone has about 10 periods the energy and 16 periods the storage space area of the computer generating Fascination, which has a 133MHz brand and 4GB of display storage space, NASA said Saturday.
The area organization invested most of Friday's briefing splitting down certain factors of the rover's getting, such as how close the getting site was to the focus on NASA had selected, and how well the parachute that assisted carry the rover to the Mars area conducted.

The rover arrived within the elliptical exerciser getting area NASA had organized out for it but deviated by about 2.4 kilometers from the accurate identify where NASA technical engineers had expected it would area because they did not have plenty of your energy and energy to appropriate for certain diversions mid-flight, NASA said.
The getting was still the most accurate of any of NASA's Mars rovers thanks to the use of a hypersonic advised access strategy just like that used by jet pilots coming back to World during NASA's Apollo system, the area organization said.

Bad information day for NASA

The last Fascination briefing of the weeks time came a day after some less good NASA information of a unsuccessful analyze journey of another spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Middle in Cpe Canaveral, Fla.
The spider-shaped planetary lander Morpheus, charged as a new "green" type of spacecraft thanks to its eco-friendly space petrol of methane and fluid fresh air, was hardly off the floor before it straight, gone down to the floor and exploded in fire on Saturday.
The area organization said the lander knowledgeable a components element failing — likely in a aspect of its GPS routing system — which avoided it from keeping constant journey.
Nobody was harm in the unmanned try things out, but the lander will likely not be fixable.
NASA has invested $7 thousand on the Morpheus system. That determine contains areas for a still-to-be-built second lander.
Although NASA said Saturday that "failures such as these were expected prior to the analyze and are aspect of the growth procedure," there was no question that the collision put a bit of a damper on the otherwisegood information experiences about the effective getting of Fascination on Mars that have been coming out of the area organization all weeks time.
The emphasize of the everyday briefings NASA has been telecasting from its Jet Propulsion Clinical in Pasadena, Calif., was a color spectacular image of the Mars surroundings taken by a photographic camera installed on the rover's mast that was launched Saturday.
Also on Saturday, NASA declared that it would name the quadrangle where Fascination arrived Yellowknife after the northern Canada town "that was the kick off point for many of the great geological trips to map the earliest stones in North The united states."
1st untethered analyze flight
Morpheus, revoked from a motorised hoist, moves almost five meters above the floor during a analyze at the Jackson Space Middle in Austin in Goal. (NASA)
Morpheus is a model for a inexpensive, eco-friendly planetary lander that can carry a payload such as a software, little rover or little medical labs to the heavenly satellite or other heavenly techniques such as asteroids.
It is one of 20 tasks that make up NASA's Innovative Discovery Systems Program.
Thursday was once Morpheus had been examined untethered in a free journey. It had conducted 19 routes at Jackson Space Middle in Austin, where it was developed and designed, and one more in California, but it was always connected to a motorised hoist, NASA speaker Brandi Dean informed The Associated Media.
The examining shifted from Florida to California the other day, and Morpheus had a effective tether analyze last Saturday. NASA had organized to run assessments for three several weeks. The plan was for routes over a exclusively designed area developed to imitate the top area of the heavenly satellite, with rocks, stones, runs and craters.

Environmentally helpful fuel

The lander was developed mostly with low-cost, off-the-shelf components. It was an effort by NASA to use less expensive, more available explode petrol that is more eco-friendly than the harmful explode energy sources it usually uses.
Methane, which is the main aspect of natural gas, also has other advantages: it can be saved for longer periods in area in comparison to other common explode propellants, and could be designed from ice found on the heavenly satellite or Mars.
The Worldwide Space Place generates – and places – enough methane spend gas each year to finish the Morpheus petrol aquariums, NASA said.
Morpheus was beginning in the NASA trial "test bed" procedure, and the area organization hadn't dedicated to using the lander in any particular journey, NASA authorities said.
The area organization has areas and programs to develop a second Morpheus lander, Dean said.
"Hopefully, we'll be examining again before too long," she said.

No comments:

Post a Comment