The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Spirit has been stuck in sand at a small plateau called Home Plate with its five (out of six) still-working wheels, for a while, spinning out of control . Mission controllers back on Earth stopped the wheels and are now trying to figure out how to get the vehicle unstuck.
In fact, the Space.com article “Spirit Stuck in 'Insidious Invisible Rover Trap' on Mars” says just what Steve Squyres, lead scientist for the Mars Exploration Rover Project, stated. He stated that Spirit is stuck in an "insidious invisible rover trap."
It got stuck when it attempted to move over a 20 inch plateau in Home Plate, and couldn’t make the steep grade. Its right-front wheel has been immobilized for some time now, so it can only use its other five to move it forward or backwards.
Lacking the sixth week caused it not to be able to successfully climb the plateau.
In the May 22, 2009 Science article “Mars Rover Trapped in Sand, But What Can End a Mission?” (volume 324, numer 5930, page 998, DOL: 10.1126/science.324.998), author Richard A. Kerr states, “Times are tough for the Spirit rover. Last week, in its 5th year of exploration, Spirit became mired in a dry martian version of quicksand. Mission engineers are studying how it might extricate itself, but the crisis raises a perennial question: When, if ever, should a mission in its declining years be put out of its misery? When does the diminishing science output no longer justify the millions of dollars it costs?”
NASA engineers are analyzing their possibilities for extricating the little robot from its predicament. They even have a full-scale replica of the robot at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with a big pile of sand, to simulate the conditions on Mars.
The robot’s left-middle wheel is thought to have caused the problem, maybe being jammed, which caused the other wheels to spin erratically.
A May 18, 2009 press release from NASA titled “Mars and Earth Activities Aim to Get Spirit Rolling Again” states “A diagnostic test on May 16 provided favorable indications about Spirit's left middle wheel. The possibility of the wheel being jammed was one factor in the rover team's May 7 decision to temporarily suspend driving Spirit after that wheel stalled and other wheels had dug themselves about hub-deep into the soil. The test over the weekend showed electrical resistance in the left middle wheel is within the expected range for a motor that has not failed.”
Space.com reported Dr. Squyres comments, saying, “… that there is a chance they won't be able to get Spirit unstuck — the rovers have far outlasted their planned lifetime and could have technical failures at any point. (Spirit has actually experienced mysterious bouts of amnesia and restarts in recent weeks.)”
Squyres said, "It's Mars, these are old rover, anything could happen.”
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
