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Space and Technology
With the current growing interest in space exploration, that the Mars missions and recent announcement by president bush over NASAs future direction, have caused, the time is right to bring back these pages. Bring back yes, out of date no, all are either totally new, or have been updated with current data plus the ever important images.
Covered in the pages indexed on this page are all sorts of things, for example; my take on the new direction for NASA and the ongoing Mars missions. Plus if thats not enough, other technology related stuff that does not really belong anywhere else on this site.
Now with my main area of interest being the exploration and colonization of Mars, so as you would expect, there is more space devoted to all things Martian, and yes the "sol4" domain name is more evidence. Sol4 is the official name for Mars meaning the fourth planet from the sun (Sol), or as I usually put it, "the fourth rock from the sun".
With, as I said earlier, the main focus of these pages, being all things martian, its a good move to start with a General Overview of the actual planet, which covers the sorts of features the red planet offers, what its like on the surface etc. [more]
Moving onto the current ESA and NASA Mars missions, which currently consist of two NASA orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey), plus two rovers, of which the first, named "Spirit" landed back on January 4 of this year, and was joined by the second rover named "Opportunity" on January 24.
Remember I mentioned ESA, and yes the European Space Agency has mounted their first Mars mission, "Mars Express" which consisted of a orbiter and a small hitchhiking British built lander, the Beagle 2.
Now while the Mars Express orbiter has successfully obtained Martian orbit, the Beagle 2 lander has not faired so well, since its landing its not been heard from, and is feared lost, although there has not been any official announcement confirming that belief. From the official Beagle 2 web site, they are going to try again on January 22 to contact the lander. Here's hoping they succeed.
More on the "Mars Express" mission later, but now, its back to the NASA rovers.
The "Spirit" rover has finally left its lander, after what seemed like years of system checkout. Add to that the delay caused by one of the lander airbags being in the way of the exit, and its been a nervous time for all concerned. After trying to pull the airbag out of the way, by using its retraction motor, mission control ended up turning the Rover and driving off in a different direction, which avoided the risk of hitting the airbag altogether.
Even before its left the lander "Spirit" has sent back some stunning images of the Martian Surface, showing it to be a wind swept dusty desert, that could be mistaken for some parts of outback Australia or US. Not that I am going to get into the whole "Conspiracy theory" over faked images.
Guesv Crater, Spirits landing site is thought to actually be a dried up lake bed, which makes it a good site to search for evidence of past water, or even life, plus being relatively free of large rocks its a less risky landing area that others.
At the time of writing, Spirit is about to start examining a football sized rock with its microscope, and additional instrumentation which will reveal its composition. [more]
All did not go well with Spirit, rather than starting its rocky examination, it stopped responding to communication attempts, and then when it finally did respond, it seemed to be resetting all the time. Things did not look good for a while, with the rover feared lost. However NASA techs traced the problem to a computer problem, and thankfully managed to correct the issue, such that its now functional again and ready to continue its science mission. A well done goes out to all the NASA techs for this miracle of long distance service.
Now the other rover "Opportunity" is due to land in "Meridiani Planum" on the other side of Mars from "Guesv Crater". Its been chosen mainly because it contains large deposits of grey hematite, which is a iron rich mineral normally formed by water over a long period of time. Yes again its chase the water time.
Opportunity successfully landed, and has now rolled off its lander to begin its science mission. But even before its made the short trip off the lander, it returned images of Meridiani Planum that showed a landscape totally different from anything Spirit did, even showing some unexpected rocky outcrops which are one of the targets for the rover to examine.
Expect lots more on the rovers as it becomes available..
Links and Related pages
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