Wow, when did Spirit and Opportunity learn to work on their own? I wonder if the people who get paid to drive them know this. If they are working on there own, what do you think they're thinking? "There's a rock, let's flip it over." Or maybe, "damn it's dusty today." Or maybe, "Hey Opportunity, find anything interesting yet?" "Nope, I got stuck in a crater for a bit though." "Speaking of that, hows the foot?" "Oh, what a drag."
Yes, Jeff, the Mars rovers have been programmed to do simple analyses of their situation and environment. Since it takes something like 20 minutes for a command to be sent from the Earth to Mars, the rovers could fall off a cliff if they weren't programmed to recognize local conditions and proceed with caution. One or both of them got stuck in sand and had to maneuver in order to get out. Opportunity is now at the edge of a huge crater, descending to take samples. Could be more treacherous if it couldn't maneuver without direct orders from JPL. NASA channel has videos from Mars fairly often. So cool. Almost like being there. http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/video/spirit01.html http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/video/opportunity01.html Betty ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
