So the picture doesn't really make it obvious, but I believe they are talking about the item emphasized here[0]. I might just be dense, but why would NASA think that is a part of the rover, it really doesn't seem like it to me. As an aside, it also doesn't seem particularly "bright".
For those that don't click on the image, there is a hole in the rover where a screw would normally be found. Does anyone here know if this is intentional?
It looks like someone forgot the locktite. The rover must have experienced lots of vibration on its long voyage, anything that wasn't secured properly could have vibrated loose.
Vibration is a pretty weird thing, the forces can be enormous with very little visible effect until something suddenly breaks or pops loose.
When I worked in satellite design we never used loctite because of outgassing. Washer thickness and diameter as well as torque was calculated for every screw and bolt. At the assembly at least two people were involved, one would use a digital precision torque wrench to apply the calculated nominal torque, another one would document the applied torque besides part number, date, time, etc. in a report. Assembly in aerospace is a bureaucratic process.
"The quartz camera windows were covered by lens caps which popped off after descent. Venera 14, however, ended up measuring the compressibility of the lens cap, which landed right where the probe was to measure the soil."
This is one of the things I remember reading recently that got me really excited about 3D printing. Along with all the cool uses for consumers, it could be revolutionary for space travel. For instance, if a screw(/driver) was missing in space, they could in theory "just print one out."
Tangent, but what a misleading use of those stupid Facebook and Google+ buttons. For a moment I was asking myself how your upload could have amassed so much attention so fast.
The story yesterday on Digg showed the bright object, plus it's not that hard to find since it's the only thing that's not rover or not red. I forget the source of that Digg linked to, but it speculated that most likely the bright shiny silver object was something from the sky crane or shielding from the entry stage. Considering the violence with which Curiosity entered martian 'airspace' it would seem very unlikely not to find some debris.
I wouldn't worry. As anyone who has dismantled technology can tell you, usually anything up to 90% of the small screws in any piece of equipment are entirely unnecessary, and in many cases seem to have manifested themselves spontaneously out of the vacuum. Or possibly the hoover.
According to the article it's "In the foreground, near the bottom of the image." I do see something near the bottom, halfway in the gap between the rover, that looks grey.... maybe metallic.
While that post was very amusing, I don't believe this can really be compared to your example. If this really is a piece of the rover that has fallen off it could spell disaster for a hugely important and expensive mission.
True but you have to agree that opening HN and seeing, "NASA: Mars rover Curiosity finds bright object" is a bit humorous on several levels. The dichotomy makes it so:
1. Big impact: Science and our understanding of the universe is being explored in new and very promising ways.
2. Big impact: Billions of dollars and years of time spent are on the line.
3. Generally tiny impact (except for this situation): What is often seen as a child-like curiosity: Look, shiny object! What is it!?
Which also makes it humorous that we see the title and think, "that sounds interesting".
The first thing that struck me when reading the headline was, "That's exactly the kind of thing we'd do. Drop a shiny thing in front of the foreign lifeform and see what it does with it."
I find it impressive that they can find that tiny thing. I imagine it is some image processing algorithm that identifies anomalies in the texture. Or do they have humans scanning through each full res picture?
oh boy you gotta love Yahoo, even now under Mayer. Spent 10 minutes looking at the photo and realized that photo caption is layered over it... good job Yahoo team!
Yeah, come on, CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. Stop pandering to stock holders, board directors, and senior management, and go look at a line of text on your photos!
"The rover team's assessment is that the bright object is something from the rover, not Martian material," mission team members wrote in an update today. "It appears to be a shred of plastic material, likely benign, but it has not been definitively identified."
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[0]: http://i.imgur.com/NOnPK.jpg