Tag: opportunity
Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks The Off-World Driving Record

Mars Rover Opportunity Breaks The Off-World Driving Record

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times

Opportunity, the little rover that could, has broken a 41-year-old driving distance record that’s out of this world. The decade-old NASA Mars rover has crossed the 25-mile mark, surpassing the 24.2-mile record held by the Russian moon rover Lunokhod 2.

Not too shabby for a rover that landed on the Red Planet in 2004 with a 90-day mission and an odometer geared for a roughly 0.6-mile drive, said John Callas, the mission’s project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif.

“No one in their wildest dreams thought the rover would last this long,” Callas said. “People made bets early on — ‘Maybe we can get to the first Martian winter,’ ‘Maybe we can get two years out of it’ — but no one thought that it would last this long.”

No one’s betting against Opportunity now. It may be aging, with an arthritic elbow and a somewhat disabled front wheel, but it has long outlived its twin rover, Spirit, and lasted roughly 40 times as long as it was supposed to.

The previous record-holder for distance, the Lunokhod 2, was sent loping around the moon’s surface by Russia in 1973. It covered 24.2 miles in less than five months — speedy compared with Opportunity’s 10-plus years. But NASA’s Martian rover was the tortoise to Lunokhod 2’s hare, slowly and inexorably closing the distance.

Opportunity’s extra miles have allowed its handlers to make remarkable discoveries, because the robotic explorer has been able to venture far outside its landing site. Though it discovered hints of past water soon after landing in Eagle Crater, the water was acidic and unsuitable for life. Only after leaving its landing site and arriving at Endeavour Crater did the rover discover signs of neutral, drinkable water — a key ingredient for life-friendly environments.

If Opportunity can do about 1.2 more miles, it will reach Marathon Valley (so named because it marks the 26.2-mile point). The valley holds layers of rock rich in clay that could give new insight into the Red Planet’s geologic story. In that way, it’s a little like Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-high mound in the middle of Gale Crater targeted by NASA’s bigger, more advanced Mars rover, Curiosity, which touched down in 2012. Curiosity’s tools could help it read the mountain’s clay-rich layers like pages in a book, whose chapters could reveal ancient, life-friendly environments.
But in some ways, Callas said, Opportunity’s target is even better.

Mount Sharp will give Curiosity a window on Mars as it was about 3.5 billion years ago. But Marathon Valley’s layers could show Opportunity what the Red Planet looked like about 4 billion, even up to 4.5 billion years ago.

“The geology is older and more significant in terms of establishing the early habitability of Mars,” Callas said. The clays could come from very early days, he said, a time when Mars could have been warm and wet — with similar conditions to early Earth when life here first began to emerge.

And even though Curiosity’s high-tech tool belt will allow it to explore its target in ways that Opportunity cannot, there’s no knocking the “classical field geology” the older rover can do with its cameras and its rock abrasion tool, Callas said — analogous to a human geologist’s eyes and trusty rock hammer.

So when will Opportunity finally kick the bucket?

“You know, no one really knows. The only thing I can say is that with each passing day we get a bit closer to that end,” Callas said. “It could happen at any moment … or it could just keep plodding along. So we treat each day as a valuable day and keep exploring.”

Photo via WikiCommons

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Obama The Confidence Builder

Obama The Confidence Builder

WASHINGTON — When President Obama spoke to the nation Tuesday evening, his way was that of a politically moderate, temperamentally optimistic Democratic governor. He offered a long list of relatively modest but helpful programs that many voters will warm to and Republicans ought to have a hard time opposing.

Obama took a State of the Union address that began as a critique of economic inequality and turned it into case for restoring opportunity. Anyone who saw class warfare here is spending too much time with Rush Limbaugh or Fox News.

Yes, mention of a moderate Democratic governor kindles memories of Bill Clinton. His State of the Union productions consisted of thick catalogues of proposals that the pundits often panned but listeners usually liked. Most voters do not have an ideological view of government. They simply want it to solve some problems. Most Americans also reject a theological faith in the market. They think it’s a fine system until it acts unfairly.

So consider Obama’s latest effort as a set of confidence-building measures. It’s a bid to move the national conversation back to the economic basics: to “opportunity for everybody,” as he said in a follow-up speech on Wednesday at a Costco store in Maryland, and to the idea that “treating workers well is not just the right thing to do, it’s an investment.”

Obama hopes to demonstrate that government can take sensible steps — on wages, job training and income supplements, on savings, pensions and education — and encourage voters to ask Republicans why they would prevent such initiatives from being enacted on a larger scale.

After years of hoping in vain that he could break Washington’s “fever,” the president is responding to a systematic disconnect between the politics of the executive branch and the politics of the legislative branch.

Nationally, the country is moving steadily toward the center-left. Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections and never received fewer than 252 electoral votes. Generational change will reinforce this trend — conservatives are older as a group than the country as a whole — and the non-white share of the electorate will continue to grow.

But the legislative branch tilts rightward structurally, even when the national vote goes the other way. Republicans lost the popular vote in House races in 2012 by 1.7 million, but held the House because the GOP had disproportionate control over how congressional district lines were drawn. Democrats, for now, have a majority in the Senate. But the upper chamber over-represents conservative and rural interests. Thus do Idaho and Wyoming have the same number of senators as New York and California.

The Senate’s filibuster rules further empower a willful minority, while House rules confer enormous sway over the legislative agenda to the party that holds the speakership.

All of this means that initiatives such as an increase in the minimum wage, background checks for gun purchases, expanded pre-kindergarten programs and the extension of unemployment insurance can be foiled even when they enjoy broad national support. Obama pushed for them all again. But absent legislative action, he said he would accomplish what he could in each area on his own.

Moreover, to have real influence (and to help Democrats in this fall’s elections), Obama needs to boost his ratings. The most recent Washington Post/ABC News poll pegged his approval at 46 percent, up from 42 percent in November but still down from 55 percent in January 2013.

The Post/ABC News poll found that over the last year, Obama has lost the most ground among moderates and independents, moderate-to-conservative Democrats, women, and middle-income voters. This is close to the definition of the center ground of American opinion.

His “concrete, common-sense proposals,” as Obama called them on Wednesday, are aimed directly at these groups, particularly his initiatives on behalf of working women for equal pay and family leave. His unapologetic defense of the Affordable Care Act — he mocked the GOP House for staging 40 votes to repeal it — reflected his view that whatever their doubts, Americans are pragmatic in their approach to the new law and reluctant to see its benefits disappear.

It’s natural to contrast Obama’s soaring legislative ambitions of a year ago with this week’s less adventurous “I’ll do it myself” speech. But he has to deal with the Congress he has, not the Congress he wishes he had. The path forward is a lot more crooked than Obama once imagined it would be, and realism in pursuit of a degree of social justice is no vice.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad

What Can Wall Street Protests Do Next? Debt Counseling

Here’s a new idea for “Occupy Wall Street,” as the demonstrations conclude their third week: the protesters and their allies should set up booths where people can get debt counseling, or help from a foreclosure lawyer (or any lawyer), or assistance in dealing with a health insurance company. It is increasingly clear that the wave of demonstrations across the country stem from a sense that the system isn’t working for the “99 percent” — and that some version of solidarity is vital.

There’s no reason for people to go it alone, without help, when they are trying work through the bureaucracy and paperwork of banks, health insurance companies, or even government benefits offices. And there’s a very good reason to offer such help within the context of broader demands, as Christopher Hayes once pointed out in an essay – published three years before the 2008 crash – that noted how many families were suffering under massive debt and foreclosure threats, and how liberals had failed to reach them.

Now there is another opportunity and a far greater need. Rather than just a mass airing of grievances, the “Occupy” demonstration sites could become an open-air help center – a place of practical protest. People who empathize with the crowds but can’t stay overnight, or think drum circles are silly, or just can’t stand big crowds of “liberals,” could use their skills and smarts to assist other people in dealing with their piles of debt or hidden bank fees or unfair insurance decisions. (Organizers and volunteers could also provide free primary health care, as an insurgent Democratic Senate candidate did before and during his primary campaign in Arkansas last year.) Even college kids could just offer time to print out a necessary document for someone – like everyone – who feels bewildered by one of the many corporate or public bureaucracies that sometimes seem designed to screw ordinary people.

As unions and other progressive groups join the march, it’s worth remembering why these ragged bands of amateurs have drawn so much attention: Frustration with a broken system is not the sole province of liberal activists or even just liberals, as the early Tea Party manifestations showed. And it’s not just “fatuous liberal journalists” (as one conservative writer put it) who are taking the crowds in the street seriously. But that would be much clearer if the demonstrations were resembled something more than a concert for change.

In an essay recently published on the Washington Post website, labor organizer and historian Richard Yeselson wrote that in order to become involved in political action, people must “think that the movement connects to their everyday lives, that if it succeeds, those lives will be changed in an obvious and better way.” His point deserves to be taken seriously, especially by labor leaders who must decide whether and how they can support the “Occupy” movement.

As unions and other progressive groups join the march, it’s worth remembering why a ragged band of amateurs in downtown Manhattan has drawn so much attention: Frustration with a broken system is not the sole province of liberal activists or even just liberals, as the early Tea Party manifestations showed. And it’s not just “fatuous liberal journalists” (as one conservative writer put it) who empathize with the crowds in the street. So I confirmed during an afternoon spent speaking with the people who own and work in the shops around my Brooklyn neighborhood – the laundromat, the deli, the icre cream shop, the hardware store — rather than in Zuccotti Park with the activists, as I had originally planned.

Sam and Alonso, working at the Late Night Stars deli down the block, were all for the protests. A young immigrant from Yemen, Sam said, “We’ve been waiting for them to say something all this time. Their conscience is awakening,” he added, noting that the events of the past year in the Mideast proved that anything can happen. Alonso, who moved from upstate New York in hope of opening a bagel store, agreed, adding that banks and big corporations do everyting “in tiny print.”

Our conversation was interrupted by a middle-aged Italian-American named Frank, who owns a nearby paint store. He scoffed at the demonstrators as “trust fund babies.” But soon an 85 year-old World War II veteran in a sweatsuit walked in. Asked what he thought of the protesters, he said wistfully, “They’re beautiful people, but there needs to be 50 million of them and they need to march on the White House.” Explaining that he doesn’t like the president (“not because he’s black”), he suggested talking with his friend Mike, who owned the ice cream store down the block.

In his early 60s, Mike had a theory about the demonstrators, suggesting that they had been inspired by the writings of radical Saul Alinsky and “self-proclaimed communists” like former White House adviser Van Jones.

But “of course they have merit,” he said of the demonstrations, when the discussion turned to national “You get frustrated blue in the face,” said Mike. “Regular working people around here are all for it until the [protesters]do cuckoo things like trying to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge,” where hundreds were arrested last week.

Although Mike didn’t like the stimulus or social welfare programs, he said it’s impossible for small business owners like him to deal with banks and insurance companies.

I floated my idea to turn the demonstration sites into places where people could work together to solve problems. He was more enthusiastic: “Everybody needs help gaming the system! Big corporations and big government do it all the time,” he exclaimed. “But they’d need a permit.”

They could probably get one – and they might attract people like the alienated citizens on my block if they did.