Slashdot Mirror
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.
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!
--
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
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.
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.
--
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.
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.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
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,"
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.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH).
Pfft, I was doing this sort of stuff years ago on my BigTrak
If you had a glorified RC car that worked 40 million miles away, I'd be jealous.
The unofficial
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
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!
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!
Yeah, and then we'd have people whiging about how it's too difficult for Windows users to convert to, how it violates "industry standards" for GUIs, how the fact that it can predict what you're doing and do half your work for you is just annoying....
No matter what linux GUI designers try, they'll be criticised.
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.
"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.
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!
1150x895 and 2.7 MB with a 0.18 correction for the tilt of the rover. http://test.muc.edu/spirit_pano.mov
So MoFoQ sez:
"...and the $600 toilet seat..."
It wasn't a "toilet seat" like you have in your bathroom. It was a fiberglass enclosure for a chemical toilet unit installed in an ORION C-3 aircraft. The seat was an integral part of the enclosure.
It cost ~US$600 due to the fact that there were less than 50 needed and as such, were essntially handmade by skilled craftsmenn/women.
It was more cost effective to have them handmade, rather than set up a factory assembly line or some other automated set up.
There are many valid examples of govt waste in spending. This is NOT one of them.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!