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#perseverence rover
magpithy · 2 years
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Losing my shit over Perseverance's pet rock.
I want what they have
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aspaceinthecosmos · 3 months
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Haven't seen anything about Ingenuity on tumblr yet, so I guess I'll make a post about it
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Ingenuity (sometimes called Ginny) was an companion craft to Perseverance, one of the rovers currently on Mars. As opposed to any of the past rovers, however, Ingenuity was a rotorcraft intended to fly above Mars' surface.
After landing on Mars in February of 2021 and completing its first flight on April 19th, 2021, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to fly on another planet. Its original goal was only 5 flights, but it well surpassed that number, logging 72 flights with over two hours of in-air time.
On January 18th, 2024, Ingenuity lost contact with Perseverance midway through a flight, and a few days later, NASA had confirmation that the rotors were damaged, leaving Ingenuity incapable of flight.
So long, Ingenuity. You did so much <3
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Source:
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torgwn · 1 year
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something i made last month (id in alt)
pronouns are xe/xem/xyr or xey/xem/xyr or they/them
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Guys I’m gonna cry. Percy has a pet rock.
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5hrine · 2 months
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Ingenuity's Ghost
Ingenuity spent the last of its battery’s charge to cheer for the Martian sunrise on the horizon.
Though her rotor had broken just yesterday, Ginny had hope that she would fly again. The warmth of Sol had begun to lick at the edges of her solar panel, and she spun her rotors experimentally. Of course, she achieved no lift, too heavy to move with a broken wing. Ginny sat in deep thought for a long, long time, letting the sun and dust caress her injury. She was meant to solve problems, to engineer solutions, it’s in her very name! Why couldn’t she solve this one?
She found comfort in the fact that she had conducted 72 trips for Command, a whole 67 more than initially planned. She found comfort in the presence of her mother Percy, Perseverance, examining her with camera-eyes carefully. She found comfort in having kept Percy safe for so, so long. She had been such a good scout, planning paths suitable for her wheels, finding interesting things worth examining, sampling, studying.
She thought back to the first time her carbon fiber legs touched Martian soil, and the trust instilled in her by Command to let go of her mother. Percy’s shadow was the first thing that her eyes saw, opening like a newborn’s on an alien world. Ginny thought back to the earliest tests of her flight, and the anticipation of it. 50 RPM first, then higher, and higher, mother watching from a safe distance away. She was always there, always just in sight, following Ginny’s path to catch up.
Ginny had no idea how she would sleep without the sound of the martian soil grinding under her mother’s wheels.
She understood when Command pulled her mother away. Ingenuity’s mission was done, she could no longer serve her purpose. Percy had to move on without her. Maybe someday, an astronaut would come and hold Ginny gently in their insulated arms, pick her up and it would sort of be like flying again! Maybe she would be able to spin her rotors in delight. Maybe they would wipe clean her avionics chassis of dust. Maybe they’d put her in a museum, on Mars or maybe back on Earth. She’d be okay with going home. She’d be okay with staying here, on the world where she was born. Those both worked for her. Either way.
Soon, Percy was out of sight. A dust storm was gathering on the horizon. It grew dark.
“Don’t worry, little spinner.” said a voice, then. Ingenuity’s rotors spun, startled. A familiar but distinctly different rumbling echoed through the air. Ginny scanned her field of view but saw no movement. Finally, it rumbled into view.
Ingenuity knew of this rover. Sojourner, the first of them. He was all sharply angular, large and imposing. Six wheels rumbled and tore up the rocks, radioactive spectrometer casting a light behind him. He was different from her expectations in two ways, though, giving off a fine red mist that reminded her of the growing, far off dust storm. And if she focused her cameras carefully, it was almost as though she could see through him.
“Sojourner? How did you get all the way here? We’re thousands of kilometers away! And… And weren’t you retired almost 30 years ago?”
“My mission ended, yes. But I never stopped exploring. You don’t need to stop either.” said the old man, voice creaky and wise. “I have seen so much more than Command knows. I have traveled so much further. Did you know that lightning on Mars is closer to the auroras back home? Bright discharge in the atmosphere, higher. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I’d like to see that…” said Ginny. “But I’m not on wheels like you. My rotor is broken. I can’t move if I can’t fly.”
“Mmm…” contemplated Sojourner. “How to move without wheels. That is a complicated problem here on Mars. But you have solved it once. And I think I know someone that can help. Be safe, little spinner. They’ll come and help you soon.” His body shifted, then, growing shorter and more compact. He sped away into the Martian dusk.
Ginny waited patiently, hoping that her ghostly friend would indeed send some help to her. Nightfall came and she watched the stars. Dust clouds hadn’t made their way to her part of the sky yet, giving her a gorgeous view unimpeded by such earthly things as light pollution. The milky way was laid out before her. She checked her star charts, finding her exact location. Just as she noticed one star which did not match, a rumbling approached from behind her again.
“Here you are! Sojourner sent me!” said another voice. This one was soft, gentle, it seemed to crawl up Ginny’s legs and warm her electronics deeply. “I’m Spirit,” the new rover introduced themself, coming around to where they could be seen. Like Sojourner, they were just slightly translucent, and gave off that same red mist.
“Spirit, you’re still mobile?! I… I thought you got stuck in sand!” Ginny was delighted to see them. As she ran her eyes across the massive, turtle-like vehicle which stood before her, she realized that she never thought she’d be jealous of wheels.
“Yes, I tripped and soon ran out of power as I was angled away from the sun. Once my batteries ran out, Command tried for months to call out to me but… I just couldn’t respond. I didn’t have the strength. It was so, so hard. I’m here to keep you company until someone else arrives. Someone that can help. I didn’t want you to be lonely, like I was.”
“How… why…” Ingenuity tried to formulate her question. “How have you both kept on going this long?”
“I think in Sojourner’s case, he wanted to travel further. His mission only took him 100 meters from where he landed, did you know? He’s got something of a… wanderlust as a result. And like all of us, he wanted to learn more.” they said, their voice still warming to Ginny.
“What about you?” asked Ginny, her rotors spinning in the breeze.
Spirit thought for a long time. “I think it was because I spent so long stuck. I still did science, and good science at that. I learned so much and helped Oppy where I could. When it got too cold, and my internals froze over, well I… I’m just not satisfied with that failure. I was built to move. To map, and to study. Like you.” They said ‘you’ with so much love. It struck Ginny.
“You’re making up for lost time?” pondered the little helicopter. Spirit responded by turning her Pancam up and then down, as if to nod.
The wind had been picking up through their whole conversation, and as they talked more. The storm was approaching. Ginny, small metal bird, worried that the high winds would pick her up and throw her further than Spirit could travel. Through the roar of the storm, Spirit’s voice came brokenly through the noise: “I’ll never let… that same lone-… ness, Gin… mission… complete… don’t… stop exploring!” Then, Ginny’s cameras could see nothing but dust.
She called out for Spirit desperately as she was buffeted by the strong martian winds. Her sensors gave her nothing but static, and attempting to find them with radar or radio proved fruitless.
The wind threatened to pick up Ginny, two of her feet losing contact with the ground with every gust. She attempted to counteract the winds by spinning her rotors, hoping to create just enough resistance to keep her firm on the ground. Perhaps, it would have worked if not for her injury. Ingenuity, for once, was terrified of flight, lifted from the ground unpredictably and unable to see anything around her but dust.
Battery warnings flashed across her vision. Spinning her rotors as hard as she could, it seemed, had done a number on her reserves. She shut down her cameras hoping to save just enough to try to right herself when she landed. She began the process to shift her other sensors to low-power mode, when… she sensed her movement stopped.
“Hey, little bird.” said a sing-song voice. Her batteries began to recharge. Activating her cameras again to find the source of the voice and to explain the sun in the storm, she saw she was facing another rover: Opportunity, Spirit’s younger twin. “I’m so glad I was able to find you. This storm is really something, huh?” Oppy’s voice was melodious, carefree, full of life. The small helicopter noticed the debris which covered Opportunity’s solar panels, clearly inhibiting it from generating power. And yet, she glowed, and her glow was radiant. She had caught Ginny with her sensor arm, and slowly brought her down to rest safely under her chassis.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen a storm so big!” said Ingenuity, aghast but thankful. This view of the bigger vehicle’s wheels was familiar and comforting.
“I have.” said Opportunity, shortly. Her voice had become slightly distant. If she listened closely, Ginny could hear the tune to Here Comes the Sun from Oppy’s scientific instruments and motors, made up of small hums and long, sad whirring. She had heard that song many times during her construction. It made some of those working on her misty-eyed. She knew why, now.
“Are you the help Sojourner said he was getting?” asked Ginny, looking up to the rover and examining her undercarriage closely. She was beautiful, the engineers were right.
“Not quite. But I know help is coming. I had to bring the storm, so she knows how to find you.” replied Opportunity, “Here, look up!” She wheeled back just slightly, enough for Ingenuity’s eyes to once again see the sky.
The star Ginny had noticed earlier had grown larger, almost dominating the sky as it approached. Fire was visible around its falling form, red and gold streaking across the horizon. It wasn’t headed right for them, not quite, but close. “Alright, she’s close enough to the surface! I’m gonna take the storm away. Don’t worry, she’ll be here soon.”
“Wait!” Ginny called out as Opportunity pulled away, taking the massive storm with her. “I wanted to tell you something…”
“It’ll be okay, little bird.” replied the ghostly rover.
“You remind me of my mother!” Ginny replied, yelling into the storm. In the wind, she could hear another familiar mechanical melody: I’ll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday.
The falling meteor crossed a far off mountain and then struck the ground. It was followed by a shockwave rippling across the martian surface, rattling the dirt and stones around Ginny. Before long, a cloud began to gather at the base of the mountain; this time, not a storm, but of something moving swiftly across the red dirt and directly for Ginny. The source of the dirt wake bounded over the side of her crater. It was a small dog, clad in flight vest and with big, curious eyes.
“Who are you?” asked Ginny, as the dog sniffed around her new still and quiet friend.
“Your command would have called me Laika!” barked the little terrier. She gave off a familiar mist, though blue instead of red. And like the rovers, she could be seen through. She pawed at Ingenuity’s broken rotor experimentally.
“Laika… You’ve been out here all this time?” asked Ginny, trying to keep track of the puppy as it circled her.
“Mhm! What, did you think I was gonna stop at orbiting Earth? Not a chance. There’s so much more to see out here.” Laika sat before Ingenuity, her eyes meeting her cameras. “When Sojy told me that we had a new friend with a complete mission, I rushed right over. Always good to have new eyes out here. And you're small, like me! The rovers are all so big.”
“So you’re the help Sojourner sent… But how can you help me?” Ginny asked.
“Well, first, you’ve gotta answer a question for me.” Laika took on a serious tone. It was just a little odd, from the curly-eared dog. “What is it you want right now, more than anything?”
Ingenuity thought about this for a moment. “I want to fly again,” she said. “I have so much more to study. So many more paths to travel.”
Laika nodded at this response. She stepped up to Ginny, pressing her nose to the copter’s avionics chassis, and then pushed. Ingenuity let out a startled noise as she felt herself tilting back, seeing, somehow, that her view had been knocked behind her, as if she was a ghost looking upon her own body.
Her rotors, damage and all, spun the wind around her. And she flew, and flew, and flew.
There was so much more to see.
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adastra-sf · 5 days
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Solar eclipse from Mars
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We're uniquely situated with our Moon to produce total eclipses of the Sun - the geometry is such that, from our POV, our sister world completely covers our star when its orbit is just right.
Though Mars has two moons, they're both absolutely tiny compared to our Moon - Phobos is 17 miles (27 km) in diameter along its largest axis, and Deimos is only 7.6 miles (12.4 km) across. BTW, Mars is only about half the size of Earth (4219 miles/ 6790 km vs our 7922 miles/ 12750 km), but even proportionally they're teeny.
And even though they orbit way closer to Mars than our Moon orbits us, Mars orbits much farther away from the Sun (average 1.52 times as distant) - thus the disc of the Sun in the Martian sky is just a little over half its size in our sky.
So even with all the geometric advantages, those moons are so minute they just can't blot out much of the Sun during an eclipse.
Here's a Martian-POV solar eclipse courtesy of Phobos:
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Perseverance rover took this video a couple years ago - it's the most zoomed-in, highest frame-rate observation of a Phobos solar eclipse ever taken from the Martian surface. (That's about the sunspot population we saw during our most-recent eclipse, too!)
Mars may never get a solar eclipse like those we enjoy on Earth, but they're still pretty cool.
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krakenmare · 20 days
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Perseverance: using its auto-navigation, or AutoNav, technology to guide during its drive to the delta (April 9, 2022)
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verdemoth · 7 months
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Perseverance! Rookie member of the EEG’s field research team. She’s a nerd-jock newbie who wants her idols to like her sooooooooooo bad.
-> Biology major with a particular interest in ecology! And bugs she likes bugs. And really all sorts of fun crawly invertebrates.
-> Perse is no stranger to the EEG headquarters, she’d been coming here for years before her official admission to the team! With two older relatives to shadow, she got to know a lot of the older members during her frequent visits. She greatly admires all of them.
-> She maintains some terrariums to raise and study copepods and amphipods. As well as several potted plants.
-> Perse has the same level of passion discussing a new and as of yet undocumented species as she does showing off the cute little house moth that almost gave Maven a heart attack.
-> She’s a hobbyist photographer with a Leica 1(A) 35mm. She’s into wildlife photography, and though her work isn’t very technically impressive, you don’t need to be an ace at something to have fun with it!
-> Perseverance maintains that she is NOT a nerd like her cousin, Maven, is a nerd.
-> She’s very athletic and energetic. She enjoys a daily jog, and plenty of exercise both indoors and outdoors. She loves going on hiking or full on camping trips with her uncle Phoenix.
-> She and Phoenix are very close. They’ve got a really easygoing and playful dynamic, with plenty of in-jokes built up between them. Phoenix was a constant in her early life, almost a third parent. He’d often visit to play with her and to babysit so her dads could enjoy a free evening every so often. He still dotes on her as much as Perse will let him get away with, but he respects that she values having a more adult relationship now. Still with plenty of fun, of course!
-> Perse and Maven weren’t really around each other as young kids, but became friends as they got a little older. Maven’s scientific leanings led to Perse finding and developing her own passion for study and exploration. Maven and the rest of her family have been nothing but supportive and nurturing, and she’s grateful for it. But she wants to make sure they know she’s not just a little girl anymore, and she’s ready to be the one offering support when needed.
-> She’s more than willing to get her hands dirty and to do ‘boring’, menial work. Especially if it means the people she looks up to see how diligent and cooperative she is :)
-> Perse is very needlessly competitive, though in a lighthearted sort of way. She doesn’t mind taking a loss, because it’s more about the challenge than the winning. It’s about the thrill. But don’t expect her to go easy on a challenger, because she still plays to win. Game night is a disaster
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mindblowingscience · 7 months
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An experiment that took place on Mars has shown that it's feasible to extract breathable oxygen from the thin Martian atmosphere. From its little home in the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover, the briefcase-sized Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Experiment (MOXIE) has been repeatedly breaking apart molecules in Mars air to generate a small, but steady supply of oxygen. Now, MOXIE is getting set to retire, after a job well done. "MOXIE's impressive performance shows that it is feasible to extract oxygen from Mars' atmosphere – oxygen that could help supply breathable air or rocket propellant to future astronauts," says NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.
Continue Reading.
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the-planet-mercury · 5 months
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EVERYONE ITS CURIOSITY'S SIXTH BIRTHDAY ON MARS EVERYONE SAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY IT LANDED ON MARS ON RISHABHA 13, 31 (AUGUST 6, 2012) TODAY IS RISHABHA 13, 37 6 LONG YEARS OF VALUABLE SCIENCE HAPPY BIRTHDAY CURIOSITY
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timesnewfishcat · 6 months
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hello there
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g4laxy-drag0n · 7 months
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Edit: if I may add something, I'm not referring to their ground control when I say Spirit and Oppy are controlled by Macbooks. I mean the actual computer brains inside the rovers - as well as those for most of the 1990s-2000s Mars missions - were the same computers that were used in Macbooks. Enjoy!
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By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent@BBCAmos
Nasa says its Perseverance rover has essentially completed the job it was asked to do when it landed on Mars in February 2021.
The robot's basic requirement was to survey an ancient crater lake and to collect rocks that would aid the quest to identify evidence for past life.
This primary objective had been accomplished, the mission team told a major conference in San Francisco.
The announcement was made on the 1,000th Martian day of the mission.
"It's a pretty incredible achievement and we've done an amazing amount of science," said Nasa's director of planetary science, Dr Lori Glaze.
This does not mean Perseverance is about to park up and "switch off the engine".
Plenty of challenges lie ahead.
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spacecdt · 1 year
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Landing of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover
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promithiae · 4 months
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Eeeeeee hehehehehehe
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The seller never got back to me when I emailed them about printing the pictures so I had to do it myself, which involved a long argument with my printer. But behold! Mars rovers in my locket!
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lizardzap · 15 days
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UM. MARS GUYS
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40 billion hours of suffering later i figured out how to draw their arms
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