Steve Squyres
Mars Exploration Rovers Principal
Investigator
Professor of Astronomy
Cornell University
¨ What are solar
flares?
¨ Are the solar
flares going to affect the MER project?
¨ How much money did
it cost for the MER projects?
¨ Can water on Mars
rust the spacecraft?
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QUESTION:
What are solar flares?
ANSWER
from Steve Squyres on 17 December 2003:
Big outbursts of x-rays, protons, and other nasty things
from the sun. They're usually associated with
sunspots.
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QUESTION:
Are the solar flares going to affect the MER project?
ANSWER
from Steve Squyres on 17 December 2003:
Nope. There was a huge solar flare back in October
-- one of the largest on record -- and even that one only
gave us a little bit of trouble. Our spacecraft
uses a special kind of camera, called a star tracker, to
figure out how it is oriented in space. In essence,
it looks out at the stars to figure out which way it's
pointed. When the big flare hit us in October, it
got our star trackers a little bit confused... when the
protons hit the star tracker it created what looked like
little flashes of light to the star tracker. So we
just stopped using the star trackers for awhile and let
the spacecraft do without. It didn't do any harm,
and within a few days the sun settled down. Things
have been okay since then. So if that monster flare
didn't hurt us, we don't expect any serious problems.
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QUESTION:
How much money did it cost for the MER projects?
ANSWER
from Steve Squyres on 17 December 2003:
The whole thing, including both spacecraft, both rockets,
and everything else, was $800 million.
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QUESTION:
What would happen if there is water on Mars and your
instruments, rovers and other machines started to rust?
ANSWER
from Steve Squyres on 17 December 2003:
Not a problem. First, Mars is too cold today for
liquid water to exist. Second, our rovers and
instruments aren't made out of metal like steel that can
rust. Instead, they're made out of stuff like
aluminum, titanium, graphite expoxy (the material a lot
of high-tech golf clubs and tennis rackets are made of)...
and that kind of material doesn't rust.
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