Spirit's Tale

Spirit was sent to Mars with it's twin Opportunity for a 90 day mission. This is the sad story of Spirit...

Opportunity, however, roves on, no doubt terrified, having been left on Mars so long.

Begin the Begin

This was the picture in my first ever post on this olde blog, so many (4.5) years ago. I post it again because it fits the theme, it's awesome, and as a symbol of the new year.

Opportunity spotted this almost pure iron/nickel meteorite near its landing spot, and so dubbed "Heat Shield Rock" by NASA wags. Lame. But the meteorite itself is incredible - consider that iron meteorites are far, far rarer than stony meteorites, for the simple reason that an iron meteorite only comes from one place: The core of a differentiated planet. This planet of course was destroyed, a small piece of its core sits on the surface of Mars, right beside Opportunity. The odds!

Longtime fellow redshirts might recall that I have a bit of a love affair with Iron - the chemical substance. Fe 26, yo. It is only created in one place - a star. Either in the core of a huge star and as that happens, the star soon explodes, spreading the Iron hither and yon. In that explosion even more Iron is created. And every bit of Iron you know of - including the Iron in your blood (think about that, man) - came from an exploding star. This Iron now scattered to the four corners coalesced with clouds of hydrogen and helium and other gases, which if lucky began spinning fast enough to create a new star, with new planets - all of which will have Iron cores. Iron lies at the root of all creation, and destruction.

For it's true! Stars happily chug along creating all the elements up to Iron, glowing and casting their life giving light across space, and onto many, many exoplanets and exomoons, but then as soon as a star produces Iron in its core, it's doomed. So Iron is the end of the fusion line, and literally poison to stars. And yet, on the other side of the scale, all the higher number Elements - like gold, silver, plutonium, uranium, etc - all decay, over time, to Iron, and in so doing cease being radioactive. In fact, a definition of "radioactive": anything higher than Iron on the Periodic Table. This decay will take trillions of years, but eventually there will be a time when all higher elements have decayed to Iron, and lo, that will truly be the Iron Age.

Iron is literally - and figuratively - the balance point of creation, of our very reality. Everything we know of is made up from Elements (which in turn are made up of combinations of electrons, neutrons, and protons, which in turn are made up of combinations of quarks, which in turn, current theory posits but has not proven, are made up of combinations of preons, and I'm sure there's some other turn to be discovered in the future), and Iron sits in supreme harmony among them, destroyer and creator, ultimately, of all.

Yay, Iron!

Also, kudos to you Opportunity - you rule. But let's also pour one out for Spirit:

NASA lied to the rovers, of course, the cold hearted bastids.

Bonus Spirit pic, snapped 3/8/04:

Earth, as seen from Mars by Spirit. I'm on "Team Spirit" in case you couldn't tell. Opportunity's awesome and all, but too obsessed with being cool and down with the "in crowd". Spirit would talk to goths, for example. Also understands mortality, as any good redshirt should.

And so with that, I begin again. As we all do, every day. But some days more so than others.

Mars Curious?

Curiosity's descent to the Martian surface. Note the mountain chain below in fine detail. Curiosity's landing was described by the crack NASA PR guys as "7 minutes of terror", and for once they were close to accurate. Hitting the Martian atmosphere at incredible speeds, plowing through the first and hottest layer heat shield only, then POOF, mega parachute:

But given the thin atmosphere of Mars, even a giant parachute only does so much, thus, onto the rocket engine/sky crane:

And you think we're not living in the future? Look at this futuristic shit! Robotic rocket platform slowly lowers the Mini Cooper sized Curiosity gently to the Martian ground, then cuts the cables and bugs out, crashing as far away as possible. Check out the aftermath:

That's at least like 2000$ in littering fees. Probably far more. Keep Mars clean! Curiosity is watching.

O hai! Curiosity here, checking stuff out on Mars. Whatchya doin'? Oh, just surfing the Internet? Cool, well, I got things to do. Ciao.

Seriously, this is a self portrait of Curiosity, and despite reading an explanation, I still am not sure how it's done. Apparently the giveaway is by the front wheel. You tell me.  While you figure that out, here's one of Curiosity's first production level shots:

Click for epic. Just another day on the Martian beach. At this point we have two functional rovers on Mars - the August landed Curiosity, and the incredible Opportunity, which landed on Mars on January 25, 2004 for a 90 day mission of exploration, yet is still operating today. It's also incredible twin, Spirit, ceased operations on March 22, 2010. RIP, Spirit.  Spirit joins Phoenix, several Vikings, and some weird Russian probes as silent testimonials to Earth's achievements. Perhaps one day all these plucky bots will become museum sites or statues, at least. Right? Once mankind has colonized Mars and there's three boobed ladies in seedy bars and this dude's hiding in a cavern?

Start the reactor, Quaid.