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INDY SIVERD - MSIVERD@ALUM.MIT.EDU Holiday Proposal: Sure, lamps lasting days beyond their planned fuel period is miraculous, but what about projects and devices that last long beyond their engineered scope? Now that's worth celebrating. To honor the official immobilization of Mars Rover Spirit, I propose Roverukkah. Mars rover Spirit was mobile for 1944 earth days, a factor of ~21.6 longer than the designed mission. Spirit will continue to gather stationary data and sister rover Opportunity will continue mobile exploration. But rather than mourn this lack of mobility, we should celebrate the unexpected cornucopia of data. The basic menorah design shall be a foil covered plate with locations for 21.6 candles with the central shamash or "lighting candle" on top of a central observation mast such as a pepper grinder. This is a simple design that can be quickly mocked up in most kitchens. More elaborate menorahs may include gold colored foil, and raising the plate on six wheels (cardboard paper towel tubes). A suggestion is to set a tube slightly forward to honor the disabled right front wheel. Dragging this wheel ultimately resulted in a later uncovering of an exciting silica rich region, which is considered ideal for possible microbial development. Adding other details such as the probe arm and antennas is encouraged. On the first night a single edge candle shall be lit. Each successive night an additional candle should be added to the ceremony to honor the miraculous mission extension. The 0.6 candle should be added on the last (22nd) night. The candle should be allowed to burn fully down symbolizing the astronomically defined fixed time windows inherent in the project, such as collecting enough energy during the day to power component heaters at night, or the fixed time windows of communication to update the rover with new commands. A small amount of pepper or nutmeg nut should be ground on the plate to honor the use of the RAT (Rock Abrasion Tool) to grind Martian rocks for unprecedented investigation of Martian geology and the search for evidence of water. The ground residue is cleaned every night to symbolize dust devils and other cleaning events allowing renewed increases in energy output from the solar panels. Cleaning with an actual red Dust Devil vacuum adds a nice touch. The holiday shall begin on January 4th, the landing date of Spirit. 21.6 nights of observation allows the holiday to encompass January 25th, the landing date of sister rover Opportunity on January 25th. Number of Candles: The number of candles used are an "almost triangular number", with the top of the triangle always being two, to include the first mission period and the shamash or "mast candle". Generally, Triangular numbers are given as

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To make this a Hanukkah number, n must be the number of nights plus one, with one candle taken from the overall result. Which can be given as

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With C as candles and n as nights. This can be simplified to:

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For the 8 night Hanukkah this results in a manageable C = 44, but the proposed 22 night Roverukkah duration is a formidable 274.6 candles. That's 6.3 boxes of 44 count Hanukkah candles. While Hanukkah candles will certainly be on sale on January 4th, that's still a pretty shekel. An alternate duration is 6, to honor the roughly 6 years, which is a sensible C of 27. Additionally, this joke is funny enough for 6 nights, but probably not funny enough for 22 nights. The only drawback of a 6 night Roverukkah is it doesn't make it to the landing date of Opportunity. Planetary Time: Hanukkah candles are officially lit at sundown, and typically lit at dinnertime at the beginning of a group meal. It might be more appropriate to light candles during sundown on Mars, but that means the lighting times could start at an inconvenient Earth time and would precess 41 minutes each day. Also, you could observe the starting date of Roverukkah based on the Mars calendar, but then the holiday would only happen every other year. Blessings: Candles are usually lit during the singing of blessings. Rather than blessings over bread or wine, blessings can be given to sunlight, the nourishing energy of the mission. Blessings can also be given to water, the possible existence of water, and lithium ion. Blessings can be delivered in the native language of the celebrants, Hebrew, or XBand, if you can figure out what that would mean.

Jan 27, 2010