Talk:Opportunity rover

(not antagonistic, just really don't understand) How could it not be ambiguous? "Sol 5" could be January 7 or January 28. --Spikey 00:50, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps in cases where there might be ambiguity, we could call them "Sol 5 (B)" or "Sol 7 (A)", with the (A) and (B) possibly linked like this by way of explanation? Bryan 01:24, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I don't see how there could be confusion considering the fact that there is a sperate article for each Rover. If I said Sol 3 in the Spirit article, it would be the same as saying "day 3 of spirit's stay on mars". If I said Sol 4 in the Opportunity article, it would be the same as saying "day 3 of Opportunity's stay on mars". On another issue entirely, I dont like the idea of this making dates on earth correspond to Sols. A Sol is 40 minutes longer than a day on earth, and we are already starting to have some conflicts between sols and earth days. Sennheiser 14:53, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It is not currently the case, but there may at some point in the future be an article that makes it ambiguous as to which rover is being referred to when "sol" is used. For example, someone might mention significant events over on the main Mars Exploration Rover Mission page. At that point this method of disambiguation could come in handy. Bryan 18:54, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

As I said, Sol's shouldn't correspond to earth days. If an important date that should be included in Mars Exploration Rover Mission might be ambigous, it should be written in the standard "earth day" system. But if you guys are insistent upon using sols, Bryan's suggestion sounds ok to me.Sennheiser 19:53, 28 Jan 2004 (UTC)

(sliding the thread horizontaly) So "Sol 2" isn't really a date as much as "the second sol". That makes sense. I don't think we need to mark them A and B, then, since they will always be used unabiguously, but I'll make the point of my first sentence clear in the articles. --Spikey 02:21, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

well done

Everyone who's contributed both to MER-A and MER-B should give themselves a little pat on the back, as they're both great articles. And they're more important than you might think. A few days editing Current Events over the christmas outage made me realise that it's almost impossible to retroactively find a contemporaneous record of what happened (and in particular, on the prevailing theory-of-things). Right now both of these articles duplicate what's found on plenty of news sites and some NASA ones. But in five or ten years the news archives will be gone or useless or subscription-only, and the NASA pages will mostly be k-12 edutainment and dead links. -- Finlay McWalter 20:02, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

How To Structure Timeline

Guys... I was wondering, if we loose readability when we mesh together descriptions of Sol activities and News conference blurbs? Up to Feb 8, I tried to keep those separate so the Earth date vs Sol can "slide". The last edits combined those subsections. I'd like to have a "vote" if this or the older formatting is preferred. Oh, and thanks Finlay! That's exactly what we're doing. -- Awolf002 01:41, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The edits you're referring to may have been mine. I was cleaning up sol timestamps (esp. for MER-A, which were off by +1 for January) and in a few places (i.e., between 2 and 4) for MER-A and/or MER-B encountered duplicate stamps for the same Earth calendar date. The reason why was not at all apparent to me so in those cases I merged the info. Otherwise, the only chronology I messed with was sol of landing, combining both landing and first imagery into the same sol.

One thing that has gotten confusing (for me) of late is that the JPL MER website is no longer posting press releases every day -- I've had to reference spaceflightnow to get the sequencing straight (as e.g. the past few days, mea culpa). Anyway, I'm all for someone else willing to keep things organized. I only started making chronology entries today because there'd been very little in the past few days. If you need the info, I have sol timestamps worked out for the next week and can do more easily. -- rbs

Hey rbs. Yes, JPL is going slower, now. They only post press releases when there is a press conference. So in the future this will spread out. Let me propose this: Have two section headers. One for Sol activity descriptions, and one for press conferences. Obviously, if no announcements are made, the Sol entries will lag behind. But this is OK, as long as we stick close to what JPL says, once they have a briefing. I think it is important to document what HAS happened as precisely as possible, not necessarily add it as fast as possible. We do not want to duplicate 'spaceflightnow', do we? What do you think? Awolf002 02:16, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Sometimes the NASA press releases are missing information concerning some of the topics covered in the briefings. Thankfully, Mozilla developer Asa transcribes every briefing! [1] (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/) --Sennheiser! 02:45, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hello... The "Timeline" section got moved into a separate page, but is this what is best? If so, then we do need a link from the main MER-X page to the respective timeline!!! 24.28.28.209 21:14, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The timeline and the article will become too large for one page. Users with slow internet connections will have to wait a long time. Perl 21:20, 21 Feb 2004 (UTC)

spherical grains

Do you think these are Ooids or mabye even accretionary lapilli [2] (http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Products/Pglossary/AccretLap.html)? --Ed Senft! 17:46, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's still up in the martian air, what exactly these granules are. However, I think we should start a section in the page about them. Awolf002 02:41, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Good idea. You might want to include a quote from Steve Squyres weblog (http://athena.cornell.edu/news/news_detail.shtml?id=64). --Ed Senft! 02:50, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Looks like we worked on this section at the same time ;-) Should be in reasonable shape, now. Awolf002 01:31, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi! What are the general rules to link to outside pages? I linked an "Astronomy Picture Of The Day" page of a Moon spherule inside the text. Should that go to "External References"? Awolf002 16:34, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yeah. And Astronomy pictures of the day are public domain so you can copy text from it and paste it into an article. NASA

APOD pix are /not/ public domain. Well, some/many are, but many are not. Go to [3] (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/about_apod.html), scroll all the way to the bottom and read the section "About image permissions:". - Rbs 21:35, 2004 Feb 16 (UTC)

Okay, I think APOD has a good archival system, so we can just link to the page. No need to bother with the pix to be moved. The text describing the Moon spherules is my own. So, is it confusing to jump to APOD when clicking the link, and therefore we should put it into the "External Reference" section? I think I hear 'Yes'... Awolf002 22:55, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I would put it under ==external links==. Is this a link for this article? NASA 02:39, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I created an ==External References== section. It is giving references to articles mentioned on the MER-B page, in contrast to ==External Links==, which looked like a collection of links to other MER/MER-B pages. Hope this makes sense. Awolf002 16:21, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Does anybody have a good reference for the size of the Martian spherules? The article mentions the size of the Moon spheroids, but the Mars spheroids need not be similar in size. In the images of the spheroids, it's difficult to determine the scale — even though I know they're microscopic, they look like they could be the size of pebbles or rocks. It would be best to add a sense of scale to the image captions and image description.

Also, the page Martian spherules contains little information that's not in this article. Perhaps we could move content from this article to that one and put a See also: link. —Brim 15:18, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

Water hypothesis

I think we should use the section "Drenched in water" to summarize the argument for water with its multiple lines of evidence. Sounds good? Awolf002 23:15, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Thats fine with me. Perl 23:33, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I put in a first stab at this. Not sure I like the formatting. Maybe if the entries are more verbatim it will look better. Awolf002 15:43, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Images to be used on this page

I uploaded some NASA images for use on this page:

Missing image
PIA05474_modest.jpg
Missing image
PIA05482_modest.jpg

Perl 23:43, 2 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Quote from Steve Squyres. Awolf002: it would be great if you could incorporate portions of this into the appropriate sections in the article.

Yeah! Looks like you tried already... This gives the right flavor of a strong, but still preliminary indication for water at the outcroppings. I'll take a look if there is anything to improve. Awolf002 01:56, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"First, the little spherules like blueberries in a muffin are embedded int his rock and weathering out of it. Three ideas, lapilli, little volcanic hailstones, one possibility. Two, droplets of volcanic glass or impact. We've looked at these things very carefully. Probably concretions. If so, it's pointing towards water. Second piece of evidence is that when we looked at it closeup, it was shot through with tabular holes. Familiar forms. When crystals grow within rocks, precipitated from water. If they're tabular, as they grow you can get tabular crystals and water chem changes and they go away or they weather away. Next piece of evidence comes from APXS. We found it looked like a lot of sulfur. That was the outside of the rock. We brought with us a grinding too, the RAT and we ground away 2-4 mm and found even more sulfur. Too much to explain by other than that this rock is full of sulfate salts. That's a telltale sign of liquid water. Mini-TES also found evidence of sulfate salts. Most compelling of all, the Mossbauer spectrometer in the RATted space showed compelling evidence of Jerosite, an iron sulfate hydrate. Fairly rare, found on earth and had been predicted that it might be found on Mars some day. This is a mineral that you got to have water around to make. We believe that this place on Mars had a groundwater environment that would have been suitable for life. Habitable place at one point in time. This is a place where minerals precipitated out from liquid water. One of the best kinds of rocks that preserve evidence for life are rocks where minerals precipitate and trap and preserve evidence of past life. These are very, very interesting rocks. Just as a teaser, we have tentative evidence that not only were they modified by liquid water, they may have been laid down by water."

"Before we landed we had picked this area because TES on MGS had said it had interesting mineral content. First chart shows the APXS samples. Red is the original soil right off the lander. In the blue dots you see sulfur is much higher in the outcrop. Chlorine about the same. Bromine showing up on the right side. We had known that sulfur was high on Mars from Viking. Inferred at that time that it could be salts. When we analyzed rocks at Pathfinder and Gusev, the rocks didn't contain salts. At Meridiani that was different. At Meridiani, chlorine in green is small, sulfur is in yellow. Sulfur jumped up at McKittrick before we RATted. In third bar, the sulfur jumped up (after RAT) and at Guadalupe, we have the record on Mars, almost 5 times the amount. We interpret this sulfur to be sulfate so we expect magnesium sulfate, epsom salts, on Mars with less water it's called kesorite. Kesorite plus the chlorides add up to a salt concentration that may be 40% of the outcrop. This is astounding. No longer can be considered to be a volcanic construct. Only way you can form such large concentrations is to dissolve it in water and have that water evaporate. Further evidence is that the chlorine didn't go up. Also, bromine showed up high. Up at Guadalupe we have highest level of sulfur and down at McKittrick we have highest level of bromine and chlorine. We have an evaporative sequence. There should be additional salts in such a sequence. Next graph is the Mossbauer spectrum that has detected 4 types of minerals in McKittrick sample, including Jerosite, a large fraction of the iron, about a third. It forms in water at a fairly acid PH. Finally we have mini-TES that has looked inside RAT holes and found evidence of sulfate in the spectrum. Joy Crisp: After a more close-up investigation we're going to want to broaden our view. How extensive was this liquid water. Our near long term plans include looking at younger material above the outcrop and on nearby plains. We'd also like to drive to Endurance crater. This graphic is a rover Pancam view of Endurance and a smaller crater between it and the rover. This MOC image shows large crater with bright rim around it. We're interested in finding out what that bright rim is made of. We've attributed it to being the older etched unit that underlies the hematite unit across the Meridiani plains. Is it the same as the outcrop bedrock? Endurance is 30 m deep so we would like to visit it. There's mottled plain to the south that we'd like to get to if possible. This MOC image is 3 miles across showing mottled terrain. We would like to find out if the bright material is the same or different from our outcrop rock. We will drive around and try to determine the water history for this area. James Garvin: What an amazing time to be alive and doing science on Mars. What immediate scientific impact on our program. How can we use these results to target our program. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will do remote sensing from orbit and look for new landing sites. We have earth laboratories and we'd like to bring some of that stuff home to earth. We now have a possible target for a Mars sample return mission. These rovers are the first step to take us to see the new Mars. Q. Does the data suggest how long the water was there or how deep? Steve: I want to again differentiate between a standing body of water and water percolating up. We don't know if this bedrock was created in standing water. Best way to address the age problem is to see how extensive this stuff is, how thick this layer might be. Best way is to bring some of it back."

Perl 00:52, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Opportunity Archive copy

NASA's Report archive only goes back to sol 11, Feb 04, 2004, so I copied what's there to subpage Talk:MER-B/reports in case we need to fill in some MER-B timeline gaps from early February, or if NASA trims the archive. Wikibob 20:55, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about NASA trimming the archive. (Heck, all the Pathfinder status reports are still available if you know where to look.) Prior to Feb 4, JPL was not issuing the shorter status reports but was instead doing daily or twice daily long Press Releases [4] (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/). After both rovers were in good health and moving, the frequency of press releases dropped and the shorter daily status reports for each rover commenced. - Rbs 21:18, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

[edit conflict!] Ok, good to know, I'll get the subpages deleted after a week or so. Wikibob 21:54, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC)

I have eventually listed Talk:MER-B/reports on Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion. -Wikibob | Talk 21:10, 2004 Nov 30 (UTC)

TOC Table of Contents ideas

The TOC is getting rarther long now, and the first image causes the TOC to get very squeezed on my 800px wide screen, so my choices seem to be:

live with it
narrow the initial image to 300px
lobby for removal of numbers in TOCs in Wikipedia_talk:Section#unnumbered TOC possible?
use NOTOC and I devise a table-based calendar-type TOC

Why not I do all of them? Here's a first stab at a HTML solution, but I don't really favour HTML in a wiki. This will occupy maybe 6 lines per month, with a mission length of 3 months (hopefully longer), these tables will use up 18 lines, and if necessary could be laid out horizontally. Opinions?

Trial calendar linking to the MER-B timeline

(I've removed my old partial calendar from here)

This calendar (removed as of 2004 April 1 -Wikibob | Talk 19:18 UTC) is adapted from User:Wikibob/calendar horizontal better, and seems ok in Mozilla Firefox and lynx. Please remove it if it causes problems. I use right-mouse click and select open in new window/tab to jump to the day I want while leaving this talk page open.

End of calendar

Can we put more than one calendar on the same line? Perl 21:58, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

More than one calendar on the same line would hose text and non-table browsers much more than one table at a time would do. - Logotu 22:07, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

This is true, just tried a few WikiProject pages in lynx. I now have a couple of calendar templates that also look good in lynx however:

three month calendar with timeline
stand-alone calendar that links to a separate timeline page.

Anyone like to beta-test them for me (already tested in Mozilla and Lynx web browser)? -Wikibob 23:39, 2004 Mar 4 (UTC

Works in internet explorer 6 for pc and Mozilla firefox for linux. Perl 19:10, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Added a new prototype calendar to link to days in the MER-B timeline above. Wikibob 00:30, 2004 Mar 5 (UTC)

Experimental timeline versions

I have made two versions of the MER-B Timeline to overcome the TOC (table of contents) problem. The first divides the announcements into weekly sections, but each day still has its (non-section) heading. This lets the automatic TOC display a manageable table that doesn't interfere with the image of 300px, and is mercifully short. The second keeps all the daily section headers but disables TOC (using tag NOTOC), and instead uses (ugly) HTML to produce not one but two tables: the first is a very short TOC, the second is a three-month calendar with links to each day. I prefer the first because it has wider compatibility but the second is quite nice too. Feedback?

User:Wikibob/MER-B_timeline_weekly_sections I've added this to Category:Candidates_for_speedy_deletion
User:Wikibob/MER-B_timeline_HTML_TOC and this one too. -Wikibob | Talk 21:13, 2004 Nov 30 (UTC)

Wikibob 00:41, 2004 Mar 6 (UTC)

I do not think the HTML version works well. I would prefer the weekly version. However, if the MER's go on for another 60 sols, a monthly TOC might be best... Awolf002 18:49, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Deimos transit

Deimos transits the Sun 10:28:27 Mars local solar time

Deimos transits the Sun 10:28:36 Mars local solar time

Deimos transits the Sun 10:28:46 Mars local solar time

MER-B just provided images of the Sun from sol 39 which show the transit of Deimos, they are under 1000 bytes each, so I'll copy them here as they're not on the press releases. Also inserted into MER-B timeline.

March 4 (sol 39 ends at 8:52 a.m. Thursday 2004 March 4, PST) Wikibob 02:11, 2004 Mar 7 (UTC)

Where and when Opportunity used the RAT

Where and when Opportunity used the Rock Abrasion Tool.

McKittrick Middle Rat at El Capitan sol 30

MER-B Grinding Wheel Profile on McKittrick
Guadalupe (above McKittrick) sol 34

Guadalupe after grinding
Mojo 2 on Flatrock sol 44
Missing image
1P132181525ESF05A6P2560L6M1-BR.JPG
Mojo 2 on Flatrock

Missing image
MERB_outcrop_map_01-mw-01-labels-B041R1_br.jpg

Panorama showing rock locations

carwash

See newscientist.com Mystery of Mars rover's 'carwash' rolls on (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6824). "Spirit's output has dropped to about 400 watt-hours, partly because Martian dust has caked its solar panels. Opportunity's output also declined at first - to around 500 watt-hours - but over the past six months it has regained power. Lately, its solar cells have been delivering just over 900 watt-hours."

RAT links in MER-A and MER-B articles

I noticed links to RAT on the MER-B article, which yesterday went to a disambiguation page that didn't have Rock Abrasion Tool listed. I added it, fixed up the links on the MER-A and MER-B articles, and wrote a Rock Abrasion Tool stub. I know that the RAT is covered on the Mars Exploration Rover article, but that article is getting very long and Wikipedia is now warning against expanding it and in favor of splitting it into multiple articles.

I just thought that those who contribute this content should know this. You might want to tear down my stub and link back to the MER article, or the MER article folks might want to start setting up separate articles for instrumentation and etc. I leave it to others.

Jeff Medkeff 01:26, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

First atmospheric temperature profile

I'm assuming that the scale is in degrees Kelvin. Does anybody know if this is indeed so? If so, I think the description of the image should indicate the scale. —Brim 09:07, Jan 26, 2005 (UTC)

I added the original text from the JPL press release and the source URL. The temperature is indeed given in Kelvin. Awolf002 14:41, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Why the maddeningly obscure article title?

Really, are you guys trying to hide this from google and the world at large? I appreciate very well that it is MER-B, but no non-expert who could actually be enlightened by this information is going to search for it under that. Per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names), why can't we just call this Opportunity rover and MER-A Spirit rover.--Pharos 09:26, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Because that was the name of the rovers before the informal names of "Spirit" and "Opportunity" were given to it by the 10-yr-old girl. Now I'm sure if you still search for Spirit or Opportunity, one of two things will happen. Either you will 1) get a disambiguation page directing you here, or 2) be instantly redirected to these articles. I favor the latter. Riffsyphon1024 17:37, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

"MER-A" and "MER-B" were quite appropriate before they had common names, but certainly the vast overwhelming majority of persons using a search engine today would be more likely to enter "Spirit Rover" than "MER-A". Is there any particular objection to moving these articles to their common names?--Pharos 07:28, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'd suggest Spirit (rover) and Opportunity (rover) instead, since the word "rover" isn't part of their names as far as I'm aware. http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/ just calls them "Sprit" and "Opportunity", for example. Bryan 08:12, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with Bryan that we should call them "Spirit (rover)" and "Opportunity (rover)" since these are the most commonly used names and are used by the official NASA website. — Brim 08:30, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

An excellent move idea. You have my full support. Nohat 09:04, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this will help much in finding these articles. As an experiment I searched for "Spirit" on the WP sidebar and then for "Spirit rover". The first one does not give any obviuous "hits" matching a rover, the second on gives me a redirect page Spirit (Mars rover). This then will bring me to MER-A. What you propose, from a functionality point of view, is already implemented. I vote to leave the article named as the official NASA mission name = MER-A and MER-B. Awolf002 14:52, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's better to use Spirit (Mars rover) and Opportunity (Mars rover) instead of just "(rover)". Redirects already exist. Wikipedia usually uses the most common name rather than the official name, so this move would make sense. After all, we have an article entitled Space Shuttle Columbia, not "OV-102". I'm familiar with the names "MER-A" and "MER-B" and have edited some articles about them or related subjects (such as Heat Shield Rock), but I still find myself forgetting which one is A and which one is B... -- Curps 18:43, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Has anyone Google tested it yet? Do the articles come up when the search keywords of "Spirit" or "Opportunity" are used? -- Riffsyphon1024 00:27, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I would just as well put them at the simpler Spirit rover, in analogy to Huygens probe, the word "rover" is not out of context here and has often been used in this phrase.--Pharos 21:53, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I hope noone minds terribly that I've moved the articles to 'X rover'. If you feel strongly for one of the versions with parantheses, feel free to change/discuss further.--Pharos 18:46, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- It's more user-friendly now. -- Riffsyphon1024 20:16, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Why were all the articles renamed again to [[Spirit Rover]] and [[Opportunity Rover]]? Was capitalization necessary? -- Riffsyphon1024 01:35, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
- I don't know, but I don't agree with it. The "rover" bit isn't a part of their proper names, it's just a bit of disambiguation (which IMO should be parenthesized, but one battle at a time :). Bryan 02:39, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I changed them all, as the articles' text (and the Talk pages for the ones at which I looked) seemed to use the capitalised form for the title of the vehicles, and the lower-case forms for the generic name. I didn't realise that it would be controversial; sorry. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:42, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It was capitalized when they were called "Mars Exploration Rover A" and "Mars Exploration Rover B", since those were their actual names at the time. But now they're just called "Spirit" and "Opportunity", with "rover" being tacked on to describe what they are. That may be the source of the inconsistent usage. Bryan 00:37, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Strange goings on with images

Missing image
Pancam_Sol1_Postcard_part_th361.jpg

I reuploaded Image:Pancam_Sol1_Postcard_part_th361.jpg, and the Image:Pancam_Sol1_Postcard_part_th361.jpg

The [[Media:Pancam_Sol1_Postcard_part_th361.jpg]] link worked under preview (Media:Pancam_Sol1_Postcard_part_th361.jpg), but then it went all strange after saving, it only leads back to the main article... the page for that image was previously there, but the image was not showing... so I would assume there's something strange with the image server.

To add to all this, this image as described is a dupe of the image below it in the article:

Image:MERB_Sol1_Postcard-B002R1_th544.jpg

Retrieved from "https://academickids.com:443/encyclopedia/index.php/Talk:Opportunity_rover"