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Opportunity gets unstuck movie
They have a Quicktime movie up made up from pictures from Opportunity
showing the rover getting itself unstuck from the dune: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/mer/0...pportunity.mov Whoever designed those wheels the way they did should get a medal, as the rover doesn't drive its way out, it _digs_ its way out using the wheels like bucket-wheel excavators. One thing this movie really lets you see is the consistency of the Mars soil, and how it behaves when acted on by mechanical force; to me the way it behaves is a lot like I'd expect Lunar soil to behave- it's got a decided "stickiness" to it and stays clumped together, as well as adheres to things when compressed, the way dry cement dust would. The appearance of the soil in the wheel cleats makes it looks like it's extremely homogenous and fine grained, but has a sort of fragile crust over its surface that the rover is grinding up with its wheels, like very fine-grained sand whose surface has been wetted and then allowed to dry. Pat |
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