5 mins to blast off.
It's not coming back. All the analysis will be done by the machine itself, under some control from Earth. Only data will be returned.I understand it will take about 6 months to get to Mars, spend about a year mooching around the surface collecting stuff and then return to Earth with it's valuable cargo.
This is going to be very interesting and I hope all goes well.
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It's not coming back. All the analysis will be done by the machine itself, under some control from Earth. Only data will be returned.
It cost them $2.5 billion to send a 1998 PC to mars, I would have given them my 2011 gamer PC for less than half thatThe two identical on-board rover computers, called "Rover Compute Element" (RCE), contain radiation hardened memory to tolerate the extreme radiation environment from space and to safeguard against power-off cycles. Each computer's memory includes 256 kB of EEPROM, 256 MB of DRAM, and 2 GB of flash memory. This compares to 3 MB of EEPROM, 128 MB of DRAM, and 256 MB of flash memory used in the Mars Exploration Rovers.
It cost them $2.5 billion to send a 1998 PC to mars, I would have given them my 2011 gamer PC for less than half that![]()
Ah - OK.
The TV piece I saw (Sky News) said the samples will be returned.
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I do agree though in the grand scheme of things they should have nipped to their local PC world and bought an ipad- im sure its just as advanced![]()