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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!"
Drivers ed was never this slow!
How unslashdotian :o)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I can just imagine the conversations at NASA:
"Hey, this gizmo thingy is pretty nifty."
"You shouldn't fiddle with that, its highly delica-"
"Dude, this thing has fourwheel drive! Can I go offroad? Please?"
"Damnit, you can't just wa-"
"Watch me do a barrel roll! Weeeee!!!"
~Tirinal
I thought at first the subject said: "Mars Rover Rolls And Burns"
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
... go to Mars for the untimate rock & roll experience? ;)
Looks like they're using linux. Anyone know which GUI?
here is the image.
-bk.
Sorry if this is a stupid question.. But why does it take so long for things to retract, the rover to move, etc etc. Obviously they want to be careful since they can't very well say "oops. pick it up and let's try again", but it's taking days for it to just move off the pad..
At least at NASA the backseat drivers are qualified enough to give criticism.
If NASA failed this driving test it would be huge waste of resources. How could they ever live it down? Imagine the headline:
"Rover drives off the side of ramp, breaks off two wheels, and a solar panel."
And the story afterward!
"Felix Milton man in charge of rover navigation watched in horror as the picture feed reached earth. "The rover wheel slipped off the side of the ramp due to some... er.. martian dust," Milton reported. All in all the rover took a five meter trip, and then reported fell 25 cm to the unforgiving martian ground. NASA spokesmen report the trip took 8 agonizing minutes to reach its conclusion. "
Ahh well I hope its fun for them, expensive remote control toy if you ask me. I hope we get solid answers for the questions this project was sent to investigate.
Geeze, and I thought my Grandma's driving was slow. Perhaps if the Rover was using a hands-free cell phone attachment it could concentrate on driving more....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Ok, I use apt, but I am using fedora. Now I can imagine a couple of ways to do this, but is there an elegant solution already available for working with packages/repositories from different distributions?
ymmv
that 7 meg picture is pretty sweet, and bland, but cool bland.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
The ground looks like it's been disturbed in the panoramic image from the website. A few locations, most notibly a little left of the "Northwest Hill 335.9 Azimuth 11.2 Kilometers" marking looks like it could've been caused by the rovers bouncing airbag landing. Anyone know for certain or can identify any terrain disturbed by the landing?
Beware blue cats moving at
Maybe if the Lunix community came up with an original GUI, it'd be more easily recognized.
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
I read this in a column on the internet:
"Kathy Sarvak of Burlington, Vt., points out that European Space Agency's "Beagle 2," named in honor of Charles Darwin's vessel, failed at Mars while NASA's "Spirit," with its quasi-religious name, succeeded. "God's sense of humor is a wonderful thing," she declares."
Personally, I am shocked and appalled that our NASA technicians are giving quasi-religious names to scientific equipment. This shows no faith in reason and deduction. It would not surprise me if the data from Spirit is cooked up by creationists in the Bush administration to shore up their own wacky beliefs.
I hope NASA's scientists use more common sense next time.
Hai,
This is Dr. Darkus Shin from mission control at JPL. It's true we been Debian fans and used that Operating system on every martian probe mission.
But recently due to an informative article from SCO ceo Mr. Darl McBride, we are influenced to try other operating systems.
Thus, there are two camps here on JPL, one the boy scouts camp running Apple's Operating System X and the other the Mars team running Gentoo GNU Linux.
Now, me I don't really know what the boys are doing up in their camp, we rarely hear much from them, but during late night we do hear a lot of celebrations and feasting. I do hope they would stop slaughtering the wild life.
And now since we are running Gentoo GNU Linux, the Debian way has been appricated (I'm sorry I'm dyslixc). The only sanatised way to do is is as follows (provided the enviornment varible JPL is not strange, in a quantum sense).
1. Make sure JPL is not strange.
2. Edit the kernel to make sure it knows what we are doing (thx to McBride for this).
3. Build the images from source by using
emerge mars-crap
Ok this would build it from source, it's optimized for the 8086 enviornment and should automatically launce Internet Explorer and show the pictures.
I hope you all build from source without downloading huge images. The source files are relatively small and use sophisticated imaging algorythems to guess the formations found on mars.
Dr. Darkus "Amaafui" Shin
Mission Control
--
"HI, my name is Darkus, if u r a lady who wants me, come click on the link to match.com, i'm waiting 4 u, i kiss u"
But why does it take so long for things to retract, the rover to move, etc etc.
OK, this is a fair question. Here are four big reasons.
1. As soon as it disembarks, there are hundreds of new risk factors that come up. So they want to make sure that if anything fails (e.g. airbag catches a wheel and knocks it over, breaking off the high gain antenna), at least they've gotten something for their incredible effort.
2. They ARE conducting scientific experiments while it is safely on the lander. It is furthermore slightly elevated and able to take panoramic photos from a position it will not again regain when on ground level.
3. Getting off the lander is DELICATE. There is a ~10 minute communications lag, which means ~20 minutes to give a command and see the results. This means everything must be done very carefully and very cautiously to make sure each minor step went off perfectly.
4. If they did it quickly and something broke, every "genius" on the internet would be saying how stupid NASA was for rushing ahead and how they never get anything right and were just trying to get publicity and blah blah blah blah blah. So let them do it the right way so the mission is a success.
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For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
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
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
hahaha slashdot mods are quite stupid.
Uncle Jimbo: Now boys, boys, I, I need to get serious for a minute. I want you to understand a few basic rules of interplanetary rover RC, since this is your first time. First, don't ever walk with your gun unless the safety's on. Second, don't shoot anything that looks martian and third, never spill your beer on the mission control computer.
Peter Theisinger: Uh, Uncle Jimbo, we don't drink beer.
Uncle Jimbo: You what?!?
Ned: Moh yeh, that's right, I don't think geeks drink beer, mmm.
Jan Chodas: I like chocolate milk.
Uncle Jimbo: Well, we'll be doing plenty of drinking on this trip; After all, scientific research sober is like
These rover updates are BY FAR more newsworthy than the latest Scott Peterson updates that seem to come in every couple of days on nearly all major news outlets.
Updates on the progress of the rover are NEW, and they are NEWS. I completely understand if you don't find it interesting, but in that case why do you click on the headlines, read the stories, and post about them? Just ignore them.
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For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
No, I too mis-read it that way, and felt my stomach drop.
What sort of sad geeks are we?
Spammers Using Mars Rover as Relay
"NASA engineers first became aware the issue when the images of the Martian landscape from the pancam started to resemble hot young girls"br>
"NASA promised to track down the people responsible. "Please send to us any spam you receive originating from the '@spirit.mars' address, so we can track down the offending spammers. Don't forget to include the pictures too,"
Isn't it neat. The whole world is going on a roadtrip around mars. It's like the whole planet is getting towed along behind the rover :).
There is the "Magic Carpet" which is the odd deformation of soil left after the airbag was retracted back under the lander to clear the way for the rover. This is right next to the lander.
Further out, there are numerous marks where the lander bounced during its landing stage and the airbags deformed the soil from impacts.
So basically, as far as I can tell, all the markings are from the airbag, either bouncing or scraping on the surface.
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For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
Why NASA writes "kilometers" instead of "km" is beyond me. After all these years they still speak metric like a second language. Hint: "kilo" replaces 3 zeros with 4 characters, it doesn't make things shorter.
Pfft, I was doing this sort of stuff years ago on my BigTrak
Good adrenaline rush, though!
.signature: No such file or directory
If you had a glorified RC car that worked 40 million miles away, I'd be jealous.
The unofficial
If the count reaches 10 is a technical K.O. (knock out).
At least you didn't find a gaping red hole.
I would call it a good day.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
As someone who has a few rc airplanes, I do find it newsworthy that it was actually able to move and complete a basic turn. Simply, it's the first time some its drive components are being tested. After its rolling and everything is _actually_ working ok, instead of just not being obviously broken and lighting up someones panel, then I'd agree and say it won't really be news until something breaks, gets discovered or the mission goes eol.
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
If you had a glorified RC car that worked 40 million miles away it would be on slashdot. Many lesser gizmos are.
Rover: Wirrrrrrr (crawls forawrd)
Martian Highway Patrol (MHP): Whoop Whoop! Pull over!
Rover: Wirrrr Click
MHP: You got a license for that thing?
Rover: Wirrrrrrrr Click Click Zoommm
MHP: Funny guy eh? (pulls ray-gun(tm))
Rover: !
ZAP!
Although I admit, this is some cool ass shit, it's slower than watching paint dry. Of course with millions invested, they have to make sure they don't f*ck up, like some of the other doomed mars missions in the past (including the one where software "glitches" caused it to become like a bug on the grill of a speeding big rig; must've been an ex-M$ programmer who made the boo-boo). Or it could be the ol' adage of the $300 hammer and the $600 toilet seat comes to play.
Now, wait until the guys who brought us Robot Wars and Battle Bots do Mars Exploration....rovers that seek other rovers all while exploring. Of course, not until cheaper reusable rockets or an alternate method, it would be a bit hard for normal folk (aka the non-million/billionaires).
When they get confident with this thing and have it barrelling across the surface at full speed in the same manner as the Lunar buggies!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
If it rolls and *burns* it would almost certainly mean there's plenty oxygen in the atmosphere...
It is true that such comments never do contain a rational conclusion,
I _do_ understand that Godwins Law is a descriptive one. My proposed supplement is also descriptive. I don`t mean to "disqualify" any poster who mentions the current administration, I am only trying to describe what you also say is "true": anyone who posts such a message weakens their post so much, that any rational conclusion, present or not, is rendered impotent.
davejenkins.com |
Dude, does this mean you are comparing the Bush administration to Nazis? [ObPoliticalHysteria Off]
That aside, people can occasionally come to rational conclusions about politics. It just doesn't happen very often.
Can anyone explain why the rover is only supposed to last 90 days? Why would it only last that long? Satelites last longer than 90 days? You would think that something built for mars would last much longer. It was only designed for a half mile drive. What is wrong with this picture?
Mark
The article says that more than likely the lander will run out of power because there will not be enough sun to power the solar panels in the Martian winter. My question is, is there no possibility of the lander "comming back to life" after the Martian winter?
It would be really great for slashdot to have a Q&A with the Mars rover designers and engineers. I'd love to ask questions about the type of CPU/OS used. How the optics differ from your standard digital camera (other than being expensive and high quality) and so forth. Anybody want to second that? There is some information on the engineering specs, but it's very spotty it seems and hard to find!
more like watching grass grow...
now if we were watching grass grow on mars...
everybody would be hitting their refresh button every five minutes
An "oops" is really big when you are talking a project costing in the realm of $400 million and taking years to prep. As other posters mentioned, they want to expend all options on the platform, before moving. If you screw something up there is not only no second chances, but you are talking serious money and serious time to get to try it again. There is just no such thing as being too careful when you've got that much on the line.
About Maestro A publicly available version of the tool used by scientists to plan daily activities for the Mars Exploration Rover mission. With Maestro, you can view pictures taken by the rover. You can also select driving destinations and points of interest where you want to take you own pictures. Make your own virtual experiments and set your Spirit soaring.
Is this available on other platforms? ( not a troll, I dont know )
"Hey, Phil! How long's the dorsal solar panel s'posed ta be?"
"10 feet, Bob."
"We ain't as'posed ta use feet nomore. What's that in meters?"
"Well, let's see. Darth Vader is 2 meters tall, and this is definitely bigger than him, but shorter than an Olympic swimming pool, which is fifty. 3 meters, Bob."
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Every time the spirit rover moves and doesn't get stuck on something, take a drink.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Wow, this site is screaming fast for just being slashdotted. I get half a MB/s downloading the movies!
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
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?
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
"Rolls" has a different meaning to anyone who does much offroading. I was picturing this
1150x895 and 2.7 MB with a 0.18 correction for the tilt of the rover. http://test.muc.edu/spirit_pano.mov
Yeah I thought it rolled over too, but then I think my stomach fell when I realized all it did was barely move. Will slashdot be covering play-by-play moves? NASA should look to battle bots for inspiration. Some of those bots can roll over and still keep going. Hurray for garage hobbies!
Rover, roll!
Good boy.
Rover, turn!
Good boy.
Here's a nice bone.
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
I read, in one of the related articles, that the reason for the Rover will only be able to operate for ~90-days is that the Martian winter will reduce the available sunlight to the solar panels, etc. Is there any plan or possibility for the Rover being able to "re-animate" when the Martian sunlight becomes more available in its next spring/summer? Thanks, *cragen?
Hence the word, "about"
Never confuse volume with power.
No, he's comparing the Nazis to the Bush Administration.
just a thought
I don't know if this has been linked to before, but it's a pretty overview of the mission.
i think you have to scroll down first.
> Heaven forbid that NASA names the rovers after the things that make America great.
Like "Shock" and "Awe?"
(Things that make America "Great" as in "the Great Tzar of Russia" or "the Great San Francisco Earthquake.")
Satelites around Earth are some 75k km closer to the Sun than the rover is. The Sun kilowatt power available at Mars is less than at Earth. Space althought frought with its own environmental hazards (vacuum, radition, etc. ) is not the same as even a weak weather system like Mars. Hardening something to be placed in LEO is one thing. Hardening something to be placed on Mars is something else.
It should also be pointed out that this thing is a hellva lot more complex than any run of the mill satelite around Earth. The fact they are getting 3 months and about half a mile is a miracle in my view.
This thing could have been made to last 30 months instead of 3 if it had a RTG onboard assuming the weight trade off is good compared to solar panels. But for one reason or another NASA is squimish about putting RTGs on anything "so close" to the Sun.
This rover is much beefier than the previous rover. They'll get good science out of it assume nothing weird happens. I'm sure they will also squeeze out as much as they can with the operational time they got.
Hard to tell, it could be any flavor of un*x. SGI has a short blub on their website about the terrain simulation hardware. Might even be IRIX running a different window manager.
Sheesh!
"A worthy cause has never been harmed by the truth" - Gandhi
With all the communication and positioning problems Mars probes have had, maybe we should first send a set of permanent navigational and communication satellites.
I see all these posts talking about the lander, but then actually talking about the rover. The CNN story discusses that the rover is rolling off the lander. This would imply that the rover and the lander are 2 different things right? Anyway what I was wondering is if it would be a plausible idea to use the "lander" and airbags as a garage for the rover to take refuge against the weather to preserve it for a longer stay on the red planet. I think that it would be more interesting to see how long we could keep it up there and actually put it to some kind of use instead of driving it towards some hills until it dies. To me, that just seems kind of boring and a waste.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I would really like a clear explanation as to why they chose solar over nuclear for their power feed. With nuclear they could have taken their time AND gone looking for the Beagle. With solar, they'll be lucky to see much more than they can see right now. Plus, they wouldn't be wasting time with power budget meetings allocating the few watts they have. I get the feeling some committee was a little too Politically Correct.
Here you go
Hopefully you will be at least a little bit taken aback at calling an orphan a "piece of crap".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I spat and slobbered all over myself from reading this! Mods don't know funny methinks.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
It seems like a shame to send an $800mil semi-autonomous rover mission to Mars whose power source limits it to a 3 month primary mission.
Aside from the political difficulty entailed in getting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (an nuclear decay electrical power source like that which powered the Gallileo mission) off the launchpad in this day and age, do we know of any good reasons why a more lasting power source like this would not have been feasible for the MER mission? Such a power source could probably keep a rover operating indefinitely on the surface of Mars, used in concert with solar.
How exactly was this move accomplished? If you look at the first frame and second frame, the rover moved sideways about the length of one wheel.
The rover was heard to say "I can't allow you to jeapordize the mission."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
I have a really obvious question for the rover operators but I can't think of an answer. Why are there no pictures of the Martian night? Is there too much cloud cover? Are the optics on the rover not capable of capturing low light? It's a little trivial I realize, but it would be neat to see stars from the surface of Mars. And it would seem like if there was no moon and scity lights to get in the way that the stars would be brighter.
_______________________________
We so need them to set up a Mars Spirit Web Cam for this stuff.
OTOH, the air on Mars is very thin.... interesting idea, though. :)
Engineers use metric because it's logical. The public will use metric when the engineers leave them no choice. My car has a 3.9L engine. My camera has an 80mm lens. Medicine is dispensed in milligrams.
The problem is that there will always be a place for natural measurements: an Astronomical Unit, a light year. I just hope nobody tries to push decimal time during my lifetime.
The Titan Rover will beat this. Watch for the anouncement before the re-election of Chenney in 2012. (NOT!)
I'm from the midwest too. In 6th grade (1978?) they tried to get us to do things in metrci. They said thewhole world was going that way. It was easy to learn and I still carry a few of the conversion ratios in my memory.
Full immersion Would Work - children are born to learn.
Stuff that matters.
The post by angusr is essentially correct. The longevity is dominated by a combination of environmental and engineering factors.
The basic mission is planned for 90 days. The atmosphere at Gusev is considerably less dusty than we expected, and the vehicle is performing very well. This leads to the conclusion the Spirit's longevity could be substantially longer. But anything could happen. It is also good to remember that we have not started to drive around yet, and that introduces more uncertainty. Nevertheless, we're considering plans for the possibility that an extended mission could go as long as 200 days. But let's keep expectations in check. If we go 90 days, it will be a huge scientific and engineering achievement.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
I will suggest this to our office of public engagement, which is handling the content on the web site. Because everyone is so busy right now, I think it will be hard to get that going. There is also the issue of what information has been cleared for general release, but questions like those above are probably fair. Another factoid. We're into billions of hits on the http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html website, and use is increasing rapidly.
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about. -- John von Neumann
Looks like there is a secret message put on the rover by the Planetary Society and Lego. Something to try while waiting.s pirit.html
https://planetary.org/redrover-dvd/dvd_