The Universal Shop / intro
Mission Context
Launch: Built and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Launched on an Atlas V rocket, from Canaveral, Florida,
Earth on July 30, 2020
Landing: Landed on Jezero Crater, Mars on February 18, 2021
Parachute Deploy
Time: ~E +240s
Altitude: ~6~8 mi
Velocity: ~940 mph
Jezero Crater, Mars
Altitude: ~70 ft
Velocity: 17 mph
Rover Separation
Time: ~E +410S
Velocity: 17 mph Vertical
Rover Touchdown
Sky Crane
powered descent
Mars 2020 / Perseverance Rover
Body
The Perseverance Rover's body is called the warm electronics box, or "WEB". Like a car body, the rover body is a strong, outer layer that protects the rover's computer and electronics (which are basically the equivalent of the rover's brains and heart). The body keeps the rover's vital organs protected and temperature-controlled.
Tech Specs
Main job: Carry and protect the computer, electronic, and instrument systems
Length: 10 feet (3 meters)
Width: 9 feet (2.7 meters)
Height: 7 feet (2.2 meters)
Weight/mass: 2,260 pounds / 1,025 kilograms
Structure: Bottom and sides are the chassis frame; top is the rover equipment deck
(its "back"); bottom is the belly pan for the new Sampling and Caching
interior workspace, the belly pan in that front end (about the first 1 1/2
feet from front end) was dropped soon after the rover landed, to expose
it to the Martian atmosphere and make room for sample handling.
Wheels and Legs
Perseverance has six wheels, each with its own motor. The two front and two rear wheels also have individual steering motors, to turn in place a full 360 degrees. The four-wheel steering also lets the rover swerve and curve, making arcing turns.
How the Wheels Move
Like NASA's previous rovers, Perseverance uses a "rocker-bogie" suspension system . The suspension system connects the wheels to the rover and controls how the rover interacts with the Martian terrain. Perseverance is designed to withstand a 45-degree tilt in any direction without tipping over. For added protection, rover drivers avoid terrains that would tilt the rover more than 30 degrees.
The Perseverance rover is the first mission to demonstrate gathering samples from Martian rocks and soil using its drill. The rover stores the sample cores in tubes on the Martian surface. This sample caching process could potentially pave the way for future missions to collect the samples and return them to Earth for intensive laboratory analysis.
The 7-foot-long (2.1 meters) robotic arm can move a lot like your arm. Its shoulder, elbow. and wrist "joints" offer maximum flexibility. Using the arm, the rover works as a human geologist: holding and using science tools with its "hand," or turret. The "hand tools" extract cores from rocks, take micros copic images. and analyze the elemental and mineral composition of Martian rocks and soil. SuperCam can listen for about 3.5 minutes at a time while performing science observations.
This gives the rover the chance to hear the sounds of Mars, such as the high-pitched sound of sand grains over the surface, the wind whistling around the rover mast, and low-pitched howls of dust devils passing by. The microphone also records sounds of Perseverance using its arm, coring rocks, and the wheels crunching against the surface.
The Perseverance rover is the first mission to demonstrate gathering samples from Martian rocks and soil using its drill. The rover stores the sample cores in tubes on the Martian surface. This sample caching process could potentially pave the way for future missions to collect the samples and return them to Earth for intensive laboratory analysis.
Communication
The Perseverance rover has three antennas that serve as its "voice" and its "ears." They are located on the rover equipment deck. Having multiple antennas provides operational flexibility and back-up options in case they are needed.
Ultra-frequency Antenna
Main job: Transmitting Data to Earth through Mars orbiters
Radio frequency: Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) band (about 400 megahertz)
Transmission rates: Up to 2 megabits per second on the rover-to-orbiter relay link
X-band High-Gain Antenna
Main job: Transmitting data directly to and from Earth
Radio frequency: X band (7 to 8 gigahertz)
Transmission rates: 160/500 bits per second or faster to/from the Deep Space
Network's 112-foot-diameter (34-meter-diameter) antennas or
at 800/3000 bits per second or faster to/from the Deep Space
Network's 230-foot-diameter (70 meter-diameter)
X-band Low-Gain Antenna
Main job: Receiving Data
Radio frequency: X band (7 to 8 gigahertz)
Transmission rates: Approximately 10 bits per second or faster from the Deep
Space Network's 112-foot-diameter (34-meter-diameter)
antennas or approximately 30 bits per second or faster from
the Deep Space Network's 230-foot-diameter (70-meter-
diameter) antenna
Assembly
Mission Goals
Search for Life: Explore Jezero Crater, a site believed to have once been a lake and river delta, to find evidence of past microbial life.
Collect Samples: Identify and cache intriguing rock and soil samples in sealed tubes for future retrieval by a subsequent mission and return to Earth.
Prepare for Humans: Test technologies and study the Martian environment to help pave the way for future human and robotic explorers.
By Martian vehicle standards, Perseverance is a standout. Its top speed on flat, hard ground is just under 0.1 mph (152 meters per hour).
On Mars, it's about the journey and destinations--not the speed.
The energy-efficient slow pace consumes less than 200 watts, compared to nearly 150,000 watts for a 200-horsepower car.
Indigenous
Aliens
Pinched Space
Instead of a two dimensional sheet, four dimensional space-time can also be visualised as a three-dimensional volume that is narrowed or "pinched in" around large masses.
General Relativity at Work
Einstein encapsulated his theory of how mass distorts space-time in his set of field-equations. Physicists have used these equations to find that it is in the strongest gravitational fields - where massive dense objects distort space-time most strongly.
Before the introduction of general relativity, space and time were thought of only as an arena in which events took place. After general relativity, physicists realised that space and time are dynamic entities that can be affected by mass, forces, and energy. However, while general relativity accurately describes the Universe on a large scale, it has little to say about how it works at the tiniest, subatomic scale.
One of Einstein's major predictions based on general relativity was the existence of gravitational waves. These waves can be regarded as disturbances in the curvature of space-time that propagate outwards from their source - accelerated masses - at the speed of light. For over 100 years, gravitational waves remained hypothetical and unobserved, but in early 2016 it was announced that the first direct observation of such waves have been made, originating from a pair of merging black holes some 1.3 million light years from Earth.
Introduction
Named in honor of the trailblazing astronomer Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Space Telescope is a large, space-based observatory that has changed our understanding of the cosmos since its launch and deployment by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990.
Hubble’s capabilities have grown immensely in its over 30 years of operation. This is because new, cutting-edge scientific instruments have been added to the telescope over the course of five astronaut servicing missions. By replacing and upgrading aging parts, these servicing missions have greatly extended the telescope’s lifetime.
Telescopes have a particular range of light that they can detect. Hubble’s domain extends from the ultraviolet through the visible (which our eyes see) and into the near-infrared. This range has allowed Hubble to deliver stunning images of stars, galaxies, and other astronomical objects that have inspired people around the world.
Hubble has made more than 1.6 million observations over the course of its lifetime. Over 21,000 peer-reviewed science papers have been published on its discoveries, and every current astronomy textbook includes contributions from the observatory. The telescope has tracked interstellar objects as they soared through our solar system, watched a comet collide with Jupiter, and discovered moons around Pluto. It has found dusty disks and stellar nurseries throughout the Milky
Way that may one day become fully fledged planetary systems and studied the atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars. Hubble has peered back into our universe’s distant past, to locations more than 13.4 billion light-years from Earth, capturing galaxies merging, probing the supermassive black holes that lurk in their depths, and helping us better understand the history of the expanding universe.
In its over 30 years of operation, Hubble has made observations that have captured humanity’s imaginations and deepened our knowledge of the cosmos.
It will continue to do so for years to come.
warped space-time
object with large mass
White Dwarf
A white dwarf is a very dense, planet-sized star that can be thought of as producing a smaller, but deeper dent in space-time than does a star like the Sun.
Neutron Star
A neutron star is an exceedingly dense stellar remnant that makes a very deep dent in space-time. A neutron star significantly deflects light passing by, but cannot capture it.
Black Hole
In a black hole, all the mass is concentrated into an infinitely dense point at the centre, called singularity. A singularity produces an infinite distortion in space-time - a bottomless gravitational well. Any light that passes a boundary called "event horizon" near the entrance of this well cannot return
intense gravity
relatively weak gravity
event horizon, beyond which nothing, not even light, can break free of the gravitational field
extremely intense gravity
gravitational well of infinite depth, with steepness (gravity) increasing to infinity
singularity at the centre of the black hole
relatively weak
gravity
deep, steep
gravitational well
massive, dense neutron star
intense gravity
close to the star
white dwarf star
moderately steep
gravitational well
relatively weak gravity
Infinity Hotel
The Infinity Hotel refers to Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel, a thought experiment by mathematician David Hilbert that illustrates the counterintuitive nature of infinity. The paradox describes a fully occupied hotel with infinitely many rooms, which can still accommodate any finite number of new guests by asking existing guests to move to a new room (ex.: guest in room n moves to room n+1). It can even accommodate an infinite number of new guests, such as those from an infinitely large bus, by asking current guests to move from room n to room 2n, freeing up all the odd-numbered rooms.
Point Nemo
The Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility is the final destination point for larger spacecraft that cannot disintegrate and burn up as they enter the Earth atmosphere. The heat produced by air friction burns up small satellites entirely, but not other much larger devices. Since 1971, over 260 spacecraft have been dumped in the bottom of the Pacific Ocean at Point Nemo, the farthest point from land. The International Space Station (ISS) orbits at a maximum altitude of 416 km and when it is just above Point Nemo, it is the closest location of human life to the space cemetery.
So as not to allow the craft to become debris and endanger an entire ecosystem, space agencies have sent to the Pacific Spacecraft Cemetery more than 140 Russian resupply vehicles, the space station MIR, 6 Salyut stations, Russian Progress cargo craft, the Japanese H-II transfer vehicle, the European Space Agency cargo ships, 4 of Japan's HTV cargo craft, and the list goes on. When it completes its mission, the International Space Station will probably also end up at Point Nemo, at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Point Nemo
Spacecraft Cemetery
Named after Jules Verne's character in
Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
Location:
-
The Pacific Ocean
-
The furthest point from any dry land, equidistant from the three nearest islands
-
2.668 km from each of the three points
-
Located 48° 52.6 S, 123° 23.6 W
The International Space Station is due to be deorbited in 2031. (Image credit: Darryl Fonseka, Text: Noah's Ark, An Improbable Space Survival Kit)
On Exactitude
in Science
…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.
The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions,
translated by Andrew Hurley
...In that Empire of the Dark, where light twists slowly the bones of anarchy and rumours of Infinity, the Discipline of Geography refills. In that Empire of the Dark, the Art of Cartography, powders its territories and quasi-formations, insistently hunting the depths that subtract them.
Recalled in duty and awe, the Cartographers Guild strike back to map, with flickering hope, the marvelling summits and tumbling valleys, the mighty traverses and curling plateaus pulled by mysterious vacuums of impossible reach. Wrapped in an aura of ash and debris, still today, out of the Tattered Ruins of Planet Earth, dirty miners insist to seek fortune, humming in silence and groovin' sync, out for the goods, in that Empire of the Dark.
The following Generations
by Olivia Ale
Cosmopolicy
A political concept / Another concept of co-existence
A way of looking at it with a "kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness" (J. Baudelaire),
soon in The Universal Shop
Ad-Poem