
NASA’s Curiosity Rover Is Able to Drill Holes into Rocks Again - wglb
https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-curiosity-rover-is-able-to-drill-holes-into-rock-1826271498
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usermac
The engineer(s)/tech(s) name was never mentioned or the group members who came
up with this. Why no credit? I'd be nice to read about a human with a name, a
history, a story. I see that a lot in stories.

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Anzate
It is actually quite deliberate. NASA and JPL are big on always communicating
their work as a team effort, rather than highlighting individual contributors.
As a practical example, notice how, during critical events (anytime you have a
live-stream from Mission Control), everyone in the room wears the same shirt.
Another fun anecdote on the "one NASA" philosophy (albeit at a different
scale) is that the Pathfinder lander (if memory serves me right) had a JPL
sticker visible from the cameras at landing. NASA was not impressed: although
designed, built and managed by JPL, this was a NASA mission. So Curiosity
(also designed, built and managed by JPL) only has NASA stickers - but the
wheels have a pattern that spells out "JPL" in Morse code and is visible in
the rover tracks.

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gitgud
There's a reason everyone wears the same shirt now, after all the attention
the guy got on the rosseta comet mission for his shirt.

[https://i.imgur.com/vEhcUjr.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/vEhcUjr.jpg)

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hiccuphippo
I hope everybody sports a mohawk after curiosity's mohawk guy got all that
attention.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobak_Ferdowsi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobak_Ferdowsi)

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alex_duf
Bobak is so cool

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jonah
A few links in from this article are one about the problem with cutaway
drawings of the drill[1] and a more detailed article about developing the
fix[2] which includes a video[3].

[1] [http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2017/0906-cu...](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-
lakdawalla/2017/0906-curiosity-balky-drill-problem.html)

[2]
[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7070](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7070)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLTiv_XWHnOZqsp7on1ErHOTw...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLTiv_XWHnOZqsp7on1ErHOTweF5eHzOTt&v=B5TWtxRvydE)

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duxup
It never ceases to amaze me when I see pics that look like they could have
been taken anywhere on earth, but no that's on another planet and humans put a
little hole there!

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JonDav
I am amazed how quickly and how many images we get from another planet....

For those that might not know,
[http://www.curiosityrover.com](http://www.curiosityrover.com) is a great site
for the image feed, if you scroll down you can see the CHEMCAM images of the
most recent drilled holes.

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tachang
It's a testament to humanity's ingenuity that we managed to put a rover on
Mars. I sometimes wonder if in 1000 years we will look back and think how
primitive we were and curiosity will be in some museum.

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TangoTrotFox
On the other hand, for all the marvel that Curiosity has provided, a human on
the surface of Mars could have achieved vastly more and vastly faster. Rovers
and especially probes are ultimately very limited technology. If we continued
on the trajectory we were on in the 60s we'd likely already have human
outposts, if not civilizations, on the Moon, Mars, and perhaps even some of
the outer planets' moons.

Just imagine all the amazing discoveries and economic potential we've missed
out on due to myopia mixed with a bit of conservatism. The entire space race
was ultimately just a global level dick waving contest, and what space
exploration we have had since has been hamstrung by fear of failure. That
people will die in human space endeavors is hardly a reason to avoid them.
Columbia was named after the ship that first circumnavigated the globe. And
unsurprisingly that voyage came with immense risk. Nearly every seaman
associated with that mission, though successful, would go on to die in sea
related voyages and I doubt they would have had it any other way. Exploring
new frontiers always comes with risks and it has never served as a deterrent
to the right sort of people. That one of the biggest advocates for Martian
colonization today is Buzz Aldrin, is not a coincidence.

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iamgopal
The thing you overlook is, billions people mindlessly sharing their photo on
phone, are the ones actually providing economical and in turn technological
advances that enabled such high tech missions. I really doubt we could reach
sub 10nm chips only with government funding without such strong demand for
consumer products. So a bit late is much better because it gave us time to
actually improve technology at micro level, instead of just building larger
rockets.

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TangoTrotFox
I'd certainly agree in a way. Consumerism along with the backing of private
telecoms is one of the big reasons private companies like SpaceX can even
exist. And I do expect that the first rocket to land people on another planet
will not come from a government, but a private company. Such a comment would
have seemed quite sci-fi in the 60s when there was no private space industry
to speak of.

But at the same time, these are tangential achievements. Miniaturization and
greater processing speed will certainly be nice tools. But the things that are
really needed are effectively 0 fail rate self sustaining habitation, life
support, energy production, and food production in extremely hostile
conditions. We still have not entirely solved these and they are things we
could have been working on decades ago, but as human space flight died so did
their necessity.

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iamgopal
You will be amazed how much side effect / cross improvement this had created
in. For e.g. Because Semiconductor industry need precise high vacuums, large
vacuum pump companies invested in technology of high speed rotating device at
near zero vacuum scale. Which in turn enabled them to create ultra compact
flywheel technologies for transportation. Or on socioeconomic side, because of
higher wealth and more leisure times, there are tons of nutrition research
which in turn created single food all vitamin products and superfoods.

