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Air Bag Blocks Spirit's Path

Posted by michael on from the jaws-of-life dept.

cosog writes "bad news everyone: 'Two sections of the air bags used to cushion Spirit during the landing phase are obstructing the vehicle's path.'. Fortunately scientists have a solution for it: 'We'll lift up the left petal of the lander, retract the airbag, then let the petal back down[...]'. This means that: 'The earliest the six-wheeled Spirit rover will get rolling is Jan. 14, about three days later than originally planned, NASA said'."

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Any landing you can drive away from... by mhw25 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    is an excellent landing.

    Every system is working as designed, so there won't be much to worry about. I believe they could likely solve that problem. And they still have days to test the rover before they could roll it off anyway, so even if lifting the panel doesn't work, maybe by the time they tested the system and agreed on where to go, the airbag would have deflated enough on its own in the low pressure of the Martian atmosphere. Drive off another ramp, if it comes to that. The rover has six wheels and was designed to worked even if the landing site didn't turn out to be as flat as it is.

    It seems that despite those gorgeous panaromic pictures they have got, the boffins haven't decided on where to go. Perhaps this little inconvenince will give them a few extra days to come to a hopefully good decision.

  2. Re:Rover can use another ramp by Eivind · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They are being extremely cautious because there *are* no small problems when you're dealing with a robotic probe 170 million kilometers away from home.

    Being stuck in an airbag. Getting anything entangled around the wheels. Sitting betweent rocks that are too large, all problems that would be trivial to solve -- if someone could go there and untangle the thing.

    As it is, a single wrong command can make the probe immobile for life. The mission cost 820$ million.

    I think you'd also be a little bit more careful about pushing buttons if you knew that pushing the wrong one *once* could waste $820 million and strand a major part of the science people have worked hard for a decade to land on Mars.

    There's no real down-side to being *too* careful. 3 days more or less on the lander is unimportant. They can always extend the mission in the other end if there's still more interesting stuff to do. (planned is 90 days of exploration)