An attitude problem sidelined NASA's Mars rover Curiosity recently, but the robot's handlers whipped it back into shape in short order.
"Attitude" in this case refers to Curiosity's position in space, and the position of its various parts, such as its instrument-laden robotic arm. Losing attitude knowledge could result in some pretty bad outcomes — for example, bonking that robotic arm into something or mistakenly pointing a camera at the sun, Sumner explained.
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NASA's $2.5B rover is frozen on Mars | Fox News
NASA's Curiosity rover, which celebrated its seventh anniversary on Mars in August and has made several remarkable discoveries, is stuck frozen on the Red Planet.
In a mission update earlier this week, the team operating the rover wrote that Curiosity recently lost its orientation during its last set of activities.
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"Curiosity stores its body attitude in memory, things like the orientation of each joint, which instrument on the end of its arm is pointing down, and how close [Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer] is to the ground," Sumner added.
Randolph County students studying how to raise chickens on Mars | myfox8.com
RANDOLPH COUNTY, N.C. -- The popular TV show Star Trek taught us that space was the final frontier. And it appears that frontier isn't so far away after all.
And students at Uwharrie Ridge 6-12 School in Randolph County are hoping to one day help conquer it.
They are studying how to raise chickens on Mars, which is something more on our minds with what other adventurous Americans are doing these days.
"Matt Koci is a poultry science professor at NC State and dreamed up the idea that one day when these sixth graders graduate, Elon Musk says that he's going to put us on Mars," science teacher Sarah Moore said. "Well, currently all the research that is going into us being on Mars is going into plants. Unless we all plan on eating only plants, someone needs to start the wheels growing on these chickens."
How space tourism can help prepare astronauts for Mars - POLITICO
NASA astronauts Nick Hague (suit with no stripes) and Anne McClain (suit with red stripes) upgrade the International Space Station's power storage capacity during a spacewalk. | Mark Garcia/NASA
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Space tourism is often seen as an opportunity for the wealthy to reach the stars. But sending more people to space will also allow scientists to collect far more data more quickly on what will be needed to send humans on a long endurance mission to Mars.
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NASA watched the ice in this Mars crater dance over a dozen years - CNET
You might think Mars is a pretty static place since it's lacking the oceans and atmospheric drama we have on Earth. But the dry Red Planet is surprisingly dynamic, as a new NASA GIF of a north-pole crater shows .
The animation comes from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRise (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera team at the University of Arizona.
"These inter-crater ice deposits shrink and expand or change shape or surface texture from year to year," wrote University of Arizona planetary geologist Alfred McEwen , principal investigator for HiRise.
Mars To Open Interactive M&M's Stores | PYMNTS.com
As the retail industry faces a string of closures, Mars Retail Group is bucking the trend by growing its M&M's candy stores in the U.S. and around the world by next year. The stores will be located at Minneapolis' Mall of America, Orlando's Disney Springs at Walt Disney World Resort and in Berlin, Germany, Fox Business reported.
The stores will showcase interactive features such as a wall of chocolate for customers to personalize M&M's bags, appearances by characters such as Red, and customization options like getting a photo printed on the confections. In addition, the stores will offer virtual reality experiences that will be switched out every couple of months.
An all-woman Mars analog crew just 'returned to Earth' in Hawaii | Space
KONA, Hawaii — An all-female crew of analog astronauts have "returned to Earth," completing a two-week mission in a mock Mars habitat on the big island of Hawaii.
Six scientists entered the HI-SEAS habitat (the name is short for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) — an analog Mars base for human researchers that sits on a remote slope of the Mauna Loa volcano — on Jan. 4. On Saturday (Jan. 18), at about 4 p.m. local time (9 p.m. EST/0200 GMT ), they emerged from the habitat through an airlock, completing the simulation.
The Downlink: Crew Dragon Completes Crucial Test, More Mars Mole Problems | The Planetary Society
SpaceX completed the last major flight test of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, demonstrating the capsule’s ability to safely separate from its rocket in the event of an emergency. The test began with a Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon blasting off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After a minute and a half of flight, SpaceX intentionally shut down the Falcon 9’s engines , triggering the capsule’s abort thrusters to fire and pull the capsule away.
The heat-flow probe known as the mole aboard NASA’s InSight lander on Mars once again backed itself out of its hole while attempting to descend into the martian soil. Scientists and engineers have been trying to bury the mole since March 2019; it can’t function for scientific measurements until the entire mole is underground, and was designed to work best at a depth of more than 3 meters. A lack of friction with the sides of the hole is believed to be the cause.
Happening on Twitter
On this day in 2004, Mars rover Opportunity landed on the Red Planet at Meridiani Planum. Opportunity far exceeded… https://t.co/kE1IzmKrla airandspace (from Washington, DC) Fri Jan 24 16:45:08 +0000 2020
What will the next Mars rover be called? @NASA needs your help choosing a name for the Mars 2020 Rover. Students… https://t.co/yWs1TOHZCt airandspace (from Washington, DC) Thu Jan 23 19:00:24 +0000 2020
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity had an attitude problem. (But it's fine now.) https://t.co/ziSwAstl5Y https://t.co/aXcjbm6DYf SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Fri Jan 24 13:15:05 +0000 2020
What best describes a Mars rover? Tenacity? Fortitude? Courage? We've selected nine potential names for the… https://t.co/c4lxTYeiJe NASA Tue Jan 21 20:00:01 +0000 2020
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