Mars Rover Rolls And Turns

hcg50a writes "MSNBC reports that overnight, 'the golfcart-sized rover cut the final cord tying it to the landing platform that it came in on 10 days ago, then backed up about 10 inches (25 centimeters) and turned 45 degrees. These were the first maneuvers planned in preparation for having Spirit roll 10 feet (3 meters) down a ramp onto the Martian surface on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.' The NASA Mars rover website has complete animations from numerous cameras of the 45-degree turn. Driver training was never this cool!"

Comments

What happened to Beagle?

[edxwelch]

In this story http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/040113reconstr uction.html
It says that the atmosphere was much thinner than expected, because of a dust storm. NASA changed the chute to deploy earlier because of this, but even with this adjustment the chute opened a mile lower than expected. As far as I know Beagle's chute deployment was never adjusted for the thinner atmosphere, so maybe that explains why they haven't heard from it

Re:What happened to Beagle?

[elrond1999]

No, thats flat out wrong. The atmosphere was not much thinner that expected. There was however weather when they landed. The end of the recent dust storm seems to have caused an updraft as they landed, this caused the computers to deploy the chute lower than expected, but well within parameters. There was nothing wrong with the atmosphere models that Nasa used, and the weather was expected. In fact if you have watched the Nasa press conferences you would have seen that the temperature models of the atmosphere was exactly as predicted.

Spirit did however use rockets to slow the descent horizontaly and verticaly just before the rover was released from the chutes. (See the Spirit animation for a cool view of that) If they hadn't used the rockets the airbag might have popped and Spirit would certainly have bounced and rolled much farther. I don't know if Beagle used any retrorockets, and if they didn't Beagle might have skipped and bounced into a crater.

Re:Latest Mars images available thru apt-get

[Florian Weimer]

The URL to add to your apt.sources file is aptsource.spirit.downloads.nasa.gov. To grab the latest image updates, just issue this at the command line: apt-get update nasa-spirit-images

This is a complete fake. Neither host nor domain exist, nor is the information sufficient to populate a sources.list (the file isn't even called apt.sources), and the apt-get update command doesn't accept a package name, either.

sigh

More: Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH)

[dekashizl]

For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).

Re:linux at nasa

[Gogo Dodo]

Viz runs on Unix, Linux, or Windows according to the site, so it could be any number of GUIs.

Re:90 days

[angusr]

It's not designed for 90 days, it's expected to last at least 90 days. Basically, that's about the point where dust build up on the solar panels and the charge/discharge cycle of the batteries are expected to cut into performance. It may last longer, or there may be a dust storm before then that drops enough dust on the panels to cause power problems early. No one is sure.

And before anyone says; it's unlikely that just tilting the panels will shift it as it'll be held in place electrostatically. Also, there aren't any "wipers" - more possible failures and the dust is likely to scratch the panels if wiped.

And finally; the data gathered in those 90 days will take years to process and study anyway.

Either survival, or limited continued operation

[ControlFreal]

As some of the other posters have remarked, the major problems are:

• Battery chemistry: the upcoming Martian winter features both short days (less light for the panels) and low temperatures (affecting the battery's performance. In addition, the batteries start to give out after many charge cycles.
• Dust on the panels: over time, dust builds op on the panels, making them less efficient. And there aren't any wiper to take to dust off.
• Weather: dust and wind will gradually damage the rover.

Note that the above has already been mentioned. However, an idea that I haven't heard yet is continued limited operation: The Voyager probes lost most of their nifty features along the way (see here for some details):

First the science boom wouldn't deploy properly, then the primary radio receiver failed, leaving NASA with a backup receiver that also was a bit flakey, and along the way more things started to go awry (like to camera-platform movement started to become really limited at a certain point).

Nonetheless, the Voyagers are still used as science intruments: currently, they are taking measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field, plasma, and charged particle environment while searching for the heliopause. They function as mankind's most distant sensors in this respect.

In fact, this kind of limited operation isn't strange to NASA: many probes first serve an extended mission after the primary mission has ended, and then limited operation may continue until the probe fails altogether (e.g. ca. 2015 for the Voyagers).

So in fact, when Spirit isn't able to drive anymore, we may still use its camera and other instruments to gather as much data on the surrounding soil as possible. Still later, when available power has dwindled to such an extent that even the advanced camera's can't be used anymore, we could still use the temperature sensors. Finally, when the high gain antenna fails, the mission might be over altogether, or they might still use the low gain antenna, until, finally, Spirit reaches the end of its agony and dies a slow electronic death.

I do agree fully with the parent on that we should organize a Q&A on this. How do we set this in motion?