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B8GETTYSBURG TIMES • MONDAY. AUGUST IS, 2012School DaysIU geologists to help guide Mars rover researchBY MIKE LEONARDTie Herald-TlmesBLOOM IMG TON, Ind. (AP) — Now that the seven minutes of tenor ae over, two Indiana Unvaaty geologists are ready to get to work.Geologists David Bish and Juagen Schieba worked for years on components of NASA' s Mats Science Laboratoiy mission, and both traveled to the Jet Propulsion Laboratoiy in ParadeiB. Calif, to witness last Sunday's landing after a 32-week flight to the Red Planet”They — and everyone else associated with the pi eject — worned about the intncate and complex scvcn-minotc landing procedure and the potential for a gitch or catastrophic falure that could teve scuttled the entire 525 billicn project and everything they'd worked for Space travel is not a cakewalk, plain and ample, Sclaeba said before the landing It’s technology at its limits. We have the best crew of engineers, but that doesn'tgiararteeitwiU succeedThe landing worked out flawlessly, however, meaning that bcth 1U geologists wll be spending the next three months in Pasadena waking in teams ga ding the r esear ch, and many mac months back in Bloom-mgon after that, analyzing data aid other informationSchieba is an expert in seA-moitary geolog/ and will analyze data Horn the Mats Hand Lens Imaga on the landing vehicle named Curiosity The imaga is a focusahe color camaa on the ticret at the end of Cunosity’s robotic atm and will take dose-up photographs of rocks, soil and. if presert, iceBish is the Haydn Murray Chair of Applied Clay Mineralogy and will work pnmanly on the CheMin, or chemistry and mineralogy component of the mission His work wouldn't be posable, he sad, if he and two other researchers hadn't been thinking ahead more than 20 years ago about coming up with a miniatix c X-ray A ffiac-tion instrument that could beused in space exploration lnhislabaatory at lU.Bish has a typical, standard machine It's about the size of two refrigaators, weighs 1,000 pounds and consumes a geat deal of enagy. It's not practical as a fidd instrument. It's definitdy not practical to even thnk abcut sending into oibit or to another planet. he said Bish and associates Bom around the county devdcped an instrument so small it can be hdd with two hands, runs on battenes and is one of the 10 key instruments on Curiosity.Simpler technology can ana -lyze the chemistry of the Martian sal but not the form, Bish explained Chemistry by itself is uscfi but limited Think of a diamond and graphite, the black stuff in penal lead. he explained They both have the same chemical composition as pure carbon, but obviously, they are quite diffaent The X-ray diffraction irat can tdl us how the atoms aie arranged, and that will tell us a gieat deal mac,” Bish said A let of wtBt we aie going to beBish said the small X-ray Affraction unit is a gpod example of how space aplaa-a on winds up a eating technology that transfers to soaety inAP AtaTarkflXMU Uwwiy a* Tk Hc*au - PmiREADY TO TAKE ON MARS - Indiana University apologists Juergen Schieber, left, and David Bish stand in their lal) on the IU campus ■» Bloomington. Ind., Aug.l.The scientists watched the landing of the Mars rover “Curiosity” and will sp end the next several months working in teams to guide the research and analyze data.dang on the surface orMars is day minors. We wll be ableto aralyze, for example, ir liquid wata las been present ”'It was ova 20 years ago that we lwented ths and it's been impicved on since then One of the guys on the team (that built it) bought the jratert Bam NASA, formed his own company and now sdls X-ray Affusion machines tlat are about the size of a suitcase and can be taken irto the fidd.” he said ”lt cai be used in mining. It can be used in environ-mental assessments. It can be used anywhere you’d like to know what sdid nvatends are preset* It's just anotha tan-gble pro Aid that comes out of space researchInpr nation fan The Herald Tines, http ZMww her at d-fimesonlme comam nncnAtuc
Newspaper Details
Gettysburg Times
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, US
Mon, Aug 13, 2012
Page 10
Full Page
Clipped by
Altoona A.
PA, USA 02 Jan 2019
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