Posted by
michael
on from the look-both-ways-before-crossing-the-street dept.
Irishman writes "It looks like the Spirit rover has finally left the womb and is rolling free on the Martian surface. Space.com has the full story and some great pictures." NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage.
Revisit Sojourner!
by
grub
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I've been really hoping that one day they'll go back to
the original Sojourner site and return that unit to Earth for
analysis by NASA. They could gain valuable information as to what
finally gave on that rover and use it to harden future
rovers.
Sojourner was a great success as it lasted
much longer than expected. Of course the cost of getting that unit
back to Earth would be so high I'm guessing these are just nice
dreams. C'est la vie.
-- Trolling is a art,
Re:Revisit Sojourner!
by
AKAImBatman
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Dumb question, why no wiper blades?
Wild-ass guess, but the wiper mechanism would probably get jammed by dust just about the time if could be useful in cleaning off the solar cells.
Seriously, even the scientists on the project wanted an RTG in the thing. They could have driven it around for *years* if they had. Instead, they got solar panels which (due to dust) have an expected lifetime of about 1/2 a year. Stupid environmentalism...
Re:Revisit Sojourner!
by
Tablizer
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If they'd used an SRG or RTG they wouldn't have those problems. Solar cells? Bah. Waste of weight.
True, but dust and grit would eventually gum up most of the instruments and make wheels stick. The Viking landers didn't do much "moving" science after their first few months (after scooping soil, etc.) They mostly just tracked weather and looked around every now and then.
Making moving parts and instruments dust-resistant and/or cleanable would probably greatly add to the cost I would expect. In other words, power is only half the problem.
Further it costs something like 3 million USD a day to operate rovers (personell, communications, etc.) Thus, extended durations eat money in other ways.
And, it might be better science to have multiple short-distant rovers exploring a variety of marsographically[1] separated areas rather than one to two long-distance rovers. In other words, spend the money on quantity instead of duration.
And, "nuke" power cells are not politically popular due to possible launch crash risks.
Short Mission Duration (given the cost)
by
Inflatable+Hippo
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Shame it'll be over so quickly, 90 days is predicted I think.
I've read that this mission is limited by the build up of dust on the rovers solar cells, reducing the power attained to the point where the rover can no longer function.
An obvious solution (to me, here in my comfy chair) would seem to be the ability of the rover to gently tilt and/or shake its panels to remove at least some of the dust.
Since the rover arrived with it's panels folded could it just fold and unfold them again to shake some of it off?
It seems such a pity for the mission to end for such a mundane reason since I presume it would otherwise continue until the batteries failed or physical wear/damage destroyed some key component.
Solutions for other missions spring to mind, perhaps: - blowing the dust away with a small directed jet of compressed air. - A small fan or brush on a simple arm. - Speciali(s|z)ed tilt/shake schemes (as above). - Raise the panels up on a windy day (without blowing over). - Layers of protective film that can be peeled away.
Slashdot Mirror
%20in%20front%20of%20the%20lander%20and%20facing%20northwest.){kind=link}
I've been really hoping that one day they'll go back to the original Sojourner site and return that unit to Earth for analysis by NASA. They could gain valuable information as to what finally gave on that rover and use it to harden future rovers.
Sojourner was a great success as it lasted much longer than expected. Of course the cost of getting that unit back to Earth would be so high I'm guessing these are just nice dreams. C'est la vie.
Trolling is a art,
Anyway, as reported by the BBC, American scientist Don Mitchell found the original Soviet Venera probe data from the surface of Venus and he applied modern image processing techniques to it to produce some stunning new pictures.
He also has a really fantastic site about the Soviet Venera probes.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Shame it'll be over so quickly, 90 days is predicted I think.
I've read that this mission is limited by the build up of dust on the rovers solar cells, reducing the power attained to the point where the rover can no longer function.
An obvious solution (to me, here in my comfy chair) would seem to be the ability of the rover to gently tilt and/or shake its panels to remove at least some of the dust.
Since the rover arrived with it's panels folded could it just fold and unfold them again to shake some of it off?
It seems such a pity for the mission to end for such a mundane reason since I presume it would otherwise continue until the batteries failed or physical wear/damage destroyed some key component.
Solutions for other missions spring to mind, perhaps:
- blowing the dust away with a small directed jet of compressed air.
- A small fan or brush on a simple arm.
- Speciali(s|z)ed tilt/shake schemes (as above).
- Raise the panels up on a windy day (without blowing over).
- Layers of protective film that can be peeled away.