Science Report

April 23, 2008

Henrik Hargitai



Images from yesterday has been analyised. The overall appereance of the
surrounding is unchanged. Even chipped small pebbles could be found at
the very same place as 2 years ago. Salt precipitation patterns,
shrinkage cracks, grass patches were found to remain in the same place
in the same extent as 2 years ago.
There are some minor changes though: rocks rolling to their other side,
landslides etc.
Today more images were taken, esp. at the Toothy Ridge area. It is very
hard to find exatcly the same 3D position to take the picture, even if
we take them in printed form: it is difficult to see properly the
display of the camera, and lenses also may be different.
Husar 2D has been repaired and tuned on in the field for test
transmissions. With the help of our guest from the AustroMars research
habitate, we - he and our Engeneer - managed to repair the Husar rover
that did not work 100% yestarday so it now broadcasted images. The
problem was with the accus, so now there is a heavy accu attached to
it, making the rover unable to move.



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HungaroMars Crew-71

Sol-11 23rd April 2008

Special Science Report

The Rover Comes Back to Life

More than one week of the Crew 71 HungaroMars mission has gone by very
successfully… with one exception: Husar, the little Mars rover equipped
with temperature sensors, a webcam, a shovel for sampling, and a
sampling platform. So far, all attempts to activate Husar have failed,
but today was the day for one last attempt. We began by checking both
of Husars’ batteries and found out that the onboard-charger does not
recharge one of the batteries. Since the charger seems to work, we
assumed that the battery must be broken. Therefore, we replaced it by a
12V lead-battery, which limits the rovers’ moving capabilities, but at
least brought life into its systems. We were able to connect to the
rover via WiFi and started the control software on the laptop. After
some further trouble-shooting the webcam came to life as well. We were
able to control most functions of the rover – move the shovel, turn the
sample container, turn the tires, turn the webcam and take pictures.
Unfortunately, we were not able to activate the electro-motors for
driving the rover, which could either be a soft- or a hardware problem.
As well, the temperature sensors didn’t show any signs of data
acquisition. Still, we decided to celebrate our partial success by
carrying the rover including its lead battery outside and use the
webcam to take pictures of the surrounding area and the station.

Guest Austronaut
Florian Selch