Saturday, December 15, 2012

Curiosity finishes initial soil testing, will resume roving | Essentials

Curiosity finishes initial soil testing, will resume roving

NASA's Curiousity Mars Rover
NASA's Curiousity Mars Rover by IntelFreePress
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Excerpt:

Buffeted by ethereal whirlwinds and twisters, the Curiosity Mars rover is wrapping up initial soil analysis operations at a sandy drift where it's been parked for more than a month, project scientists said Thursday. The rover is now being prepared to move on in search of suitable targets for a compact rock drill, the final major sample acquisition system to be tested. Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. , told reporters that Curiosity's robot arm had completed five scoops of martian soil, using the sandy material to clean and scour the sampling system and to deposit samples into both of the rover's main internal instrument suites. The Chemistry and Mineralogy package, or CheMin, uses X-ray diffraction to identify and analyze the minerals in samples collected by Curiosity's robot arm.

People:

Ashwin Vasavada

Overall Sentiment: 0.644396

Relevance: 0.380072

SentimentQuote
0Vasavada said Thursday SAM now is processing its first soil samples and "based on a very brief look at that data, the team decided to run a couple of more SAM experiments, which are customized to this particular soil and we're currently in the midst of getting those results back."
0.455753"We're pretty excited," Vasavada said. ...
0.180464"We're pretty excited," Vasavada said. "After more than 40 sols (martian days) being parked in front of this sand drift, we're actually going to start moving again. Frankly, the team is pretty excited about that even though it's been a wonderful campaign to analyze the soil."
0.227076he said, "I think you'll see us head on to our next site. We still would like to get a little further into this Glenelg region where we see this diversity of rocks and layered rocks and other really interesting terrain. And then we still have a goal in the next month or two of doing the big U-turn and heading up to Mount Sharp."
0"Most of what we've talked about on this mission is the ancient habitability of Mars," Vasavada said. ...
0.0611381"Most of what we've talked about on this mission is the ancient habitability of Mars," Vasavada said. "But we also have some pretty important goals on this mission of studying the modern environment. And it's a pretty dynamic environment. "If you were standing next to Curiosity, you'd realize you were on a planet with an atmosphere, an atmosphere that's thick enough that when the sun heats the ground every day, gusty winds rush up and down the slopes of Gale Crater and Mount Sharp and spawn whirlwinds that sweep across the landscape. But the atmosphere isn't thick enough to shield you from the harsh ultraviolet light and the natural high energy radiation coming in from space."
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 6
  • Aggregate Sentiment: 0.9244311
  • Mean: 0.15407185
  • Standard Deviation: 1.7320508075689

Juarez

Overall Sentiment: -0.0827269

Relevance: 0.256704

SentimentQuote
0.175259"The martian atmosphere is a very low-density atmosphere, the pressures (are what) you would have if you were flying at twice or three times the usual airplane height," he said. ...
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 1
  • Aggregate Sentiment: 0.175259
  • Mean: 0.175259
  • Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

Gale Crater

Overall Sentiment: 0.051818

Relevance: 0.226709

Don Hassler

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.195189

SentimentQuote
0"The astronauts can live in this environment," Hassler said. ...
0"When you add up all those different contributions, you need to stay within your career limits," he said. ...
0"When you add up all those different contributions, you need to stay within your career limits," he said. "So over time, we're going to get those numbers. Since we've been on the surface, we have not yet seen a large solar flare or solar particle event like we saw during cruise (to Mars). When we do see one, that will be very interesting and very important."
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 3
  • Aggregate Sentiment: 0
  • Mean: 0
  • Standard Deviation: 1.4142135623731

Key:

  • Aggregate Sentiment is meant to be an indicator of an individual's overall sentiment.
  • The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
  • The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).

Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.

Additional Info:

Facility: Mars rover Curiosity

Overall Sentiment: 0.0649118

Relevance: 0.865132

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