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
mOoZik
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The batteries can only recharge a certain number of times. Furthermore, there is no way of cleaning the solar panels, so they lose their efficiency over time. That's probably what contributed to its death and you're making a big deal out of a piece of crap rover.
Re:Revisit Sojourner!
by
onyxruby
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Dumb question, why no wiper blades? I've heard it said that wiper blades would damage the solar panels. However if the solar panels are too dust covered to work anyways, what's the loss? It's not like they're going back for warranty repair.
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.
Re:Revisit Sojourner!
by
AKAImBatman
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Well, they *are* radio-active
But safe enough to hold with gloves...
and there is a small chance that one could burst from launch errors...
The odds that one would burst are about as close to zero as they get. The RTG itself is sealed inside a "black box" type of shielding. The stuff is strong enough to survive reentry from orbit! An explosion of the rocket wouldn't even phase it (as past launch failures have shown).
...end up polluting a populated area.
Actually, that's why NASA launches over the ocean. If something does fail, it falls into an unpopulated area (i.e. miles of water).
I agree that the risk is tiny, but it does exist.
You have a greater chance of getting cancer from your cell phone battery.
Noboby sane claims they explode into mushroom clouds.
You'll love this guy. He still hasn't taken me up on my "nuclear challenge". I wonder why?;-)
Here's a photo of the landing platform it just rolled off of.
From the cited article: 'Data from the Spirit rover shows it completed this morning's drive off the lander at 3:41 a.m. EST. Confirmation was received on Earth just before 5 a.m. EST, verifying that Spirit had performed the 10-foot voyage on its own.
The move took approximately 78 seconds, ending with the back of the rover about 2.6 feet away from the lander egress ramp, officials report.
"It's as if we get to drive a nice sports car, but in the end we're just the valets who bring it around to the front and give the keys to the science team," says flight director Chris Lewicki.'
Who let the jugs out?
by
sielwolf
·
· Score: 4, Funny
JPL engineers played Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" in the control room as they watched new images confirming that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully rolled off its lander platform early Thursday morning.
Oh for the love of... Really, we didn't need to hear this. I hope that didn't get caught on film because that's the sort of thing that resurfaces at retirement parties.;p
About what might happen should the Martian government get their hands on the rover. They will most likely have to destroy it to cover up the fact that their planet has been visited by machines from another planet. Let's just hope we can get a picture of their leaders before they disconnect the cameras!
Re:Nice Article Summary...
by
PhxBlue
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
it's jackass commentary like this that does nothing but perpeptuate bullshit to the masses and misinforms that average (read stupid) american. then the average (read stupid again) american's think these things are a waste of money.
Right, and how many "average Americans" do you know who (A) read Slashdot and (B) won't pick up the sarcasm in the original statement?
It's humor (though I'll agree, it's not really funny). Don't sweat it.
-- !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Re:Why was moving dangerous?
by
Cyclopedian
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The rover had to drive over the deflated balloon, but why was that more dangerous than just driving over the surface?
Because mission engineers had tested the same setup (airbag position, rover position) and found that the orignal exit ramp had a chance that the rover's solar panel would get caught on the airbag. They decided to opt for the safest route, and turned the rover around and out through the second exit ramp.
JPL engineers played Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" in the control room as they watched new images confirming that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully rolled off its lander platform early Thursday morning.
A bunch of sweaty scientists dancing around the lab to "who let the dogs out"? Was Steve Ballmer there?
Why Moving the Rover Was Dangerous
by
zapp
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
* Driving over the balloons is more dangerous than martian terrain. They could get caught in the wheels.
* Suppose some part of the rover had been broken on landing, but had not surfaced yet because it had not moved. Think of a broken neck - it doesn't cause paralysis until you move and sever your nerves.
* Take advantage of a controlled situation. They wanted to take advantage of a controlled situation for as long as they could. From the lander they could take panoramic pictures from a sligh elevation. They could atmospheric measurements, etc. All this could be done without the adding the possible failure points introduced by moving the rover.
* The lander has more solar panels and perhapse some better communication hardware. Might as well take advantage of them while you're there.
I just pulled those off the top of my head. I'm sure there are better reasons and it's been discussed here before. Will you people stop bickering about them taking too long to move it?
How's this: Give me 3 equally good reasons why they should have hurried to get it off the lander.
-- no comment
Sniff a rock!
by
Tablizer
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I think they should hurry up and do a close-up analysis of a rock rather than worry about long-distance jaunts. If it croaks in a few days, not having analyzed a single rock up close would be a shame.
I remember someone back a couple of years was caught in JPL's computers. Maybe there are some backdoors still?::)
Shotgun first drive! Of course I realize it's not like an RC car, but I can imagine right?
-- --
taking over the world, we are.
Interesting soil
by
Fr33z0r
·
· Score: 5, Informative
The dirt sticking to the wheels of Sojourner (Pathfinder) was discussed at great lengths on a board I read (bit of a crazy board full of the insane for the most part, but there are decent threads from time to time), a bunch of people yelling "it's mud, Mars is wet!" when in reality Soujourner had spun it's wheels in the dirt and essentially "dug" in the dirt... Well, that and the "dirt" is largely magnetite which is inherently magnetic.
Flash forward to today and we've got the "magic carpet", and dirt sticking to Spirit's wheels, sans digging - very interesting, and by the sounds of it also very unexpected. It will be great to find out what's making it stick, and just "how Mars works" in general.
Did I ever mention how glad I am humanity has another rover on an alien world?:)
Look at those tracks!!
by
enjo13
·
· Score: 4, Funny
They've really stumbled onto something interesting. The martian soil in this area appears to have a really strange consistency... they've talked about it before, it looks like mud...
I hope it doesn't get stuck, it'd suck to have to call a tow truck (or a martian redneck with a winch) to get it out:)
-- Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Re:Nice Article Summary...
by
Chris+Burke
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I don't know... You seem to be pretty stupid, but you still understood it was a joke. I'm not worried.
Official pics
by
Fr33z0r
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The best site for Spirit pictures (and Opportunity when it lands too, I'm sure) is JPL's MER site, it's the official site, so first with the pictures (and if you click one of the dated releases and change the date in the URL manually you can sometimes get a sneak peek at the days release half an hour earlier than the rest of the world - about 4:30pm GMT or thereabouts:)
Re:flimsy looking
by
enjo13
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Wow, a monday morning robot designer..
If you could do all of that, and deliver a package with the neccesary weight, size, and other various launch/flight/deployment constraints.. then you would be (by far) the best robot designer on the planet. Ohh ya, and be able to do all of those things reliably on an alien world millions of miles away.
These are smart people (I've had the privilige of working with two of them), that are well aware of all of those possibilities. The realities of design have to come into play at some point, and that's how these things really come about.
-- Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
Re:the waiting is over ---but
by
lynx_user_abroad
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Why not get some very small solid rocket engines and put them facing in all directions on this thing.
A common reaction to the realization of a vulnerability is to add complexity to address the vulnerability. This is often a bankrupt strategy.
Wouldn't you feel silly if the "next ones" incorporated exactly this suggestion, and were unusable upon landing because "a small rocket engine, included to address the possibility of a rover getting stuck, ignited on re-entry and destroyed several critical components..."
On projects like this, every gram of hardware costs pounds of fuel, every contingincy plan requires man-weeks of meetings, and every non-essential task added to the process list amounts to a lost opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experiment. The last thing you want is find youself facing actual mission failure because of some contingency you put in place to address a possible mission failure.
--
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
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.
Re:Short Mission Duration (given the cost)
by
BTWR
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Wow! Good for you! You think like a NASA guy... I'm not sure of the specifics, but the missions principal scientist was my professor in college and he specifically said that they tried some of your exact ideas for the next rover (which was actually a cancelled 2003 mission). They tried a windshield-wiper type deal, layers of plastic film that would roll off every few days (think like a doctor's office, how they tear off that butcher paper and roll a new cover over for each new patient).
He didn't delve too much into specifics, but he definately said that they simply didn't get any of these ideas to work. Actually, there was a brief period of time when they were actually close to getting RTGs to power the rovers (plutonium, like the ones used in the Viking landers that allowed them to operate for 5 years), but the Greens stopped that:(
Beagle to final communication mode
by
Inflatable+Hippo
·
· Score: 4, Funny
After approximately 25 sols Beagle 2 will go into it's final communication mode SHM1 (Spell Help Mode 1). In this mode it will shred it's own parachute and lay the pieces out across the martian surface to spell the world "HELP".
Calculations suggest that each letter will be approximately 4-6 pixels across, easily discernable from the Mars Express orbiter.
High winds may hamper this last ditch attempt for Beagle 2 to communicate.
(I'm allowed to laugh, some of my tax money is spread all over the red planet)
Backwards hazard camera?
by
Woutepout
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Why does this thing have a "backwards looking hazard identification camera"? Are they that confident about finding life on Mars that they expect to be fleeing from it?
-- "Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view." - David Hilbert
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,
...It better roll one way or another.
- It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. - Alfred Adler -
There is also information from SpaceFlightNow here and here.
Here's a photo of the landing platform it just rolled off of.
From the cited article: 'Data from the Spirit rover shows it completed this morning's drive off the lander at 3:41 a.m. EST. Confirmation was received on Earth just before 5 a.m. EST, verifying that Spirit had performed the 10-foot voyage on its own.
The move took approximately 78 seconds, ending with the back of the rover about 2.6 feet away from the lander egress ramp, officials report.
"It's as if we get to drive a nice sports car, but in the end we're just the valets who bring it around to the front and give the keys to the science team," says flight director Chris Lewicki.'
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
JPL engineers played Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" in the control room as they watched new images confirming that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully rolled off its lander platform early Thursday morning.
;p
Oh for the love of... Really, we didn't need to hear this. I hope that didn't get caught on film because that's the sort of thing that resurfaces at retirement parties.
What is music when you despise all sound?
JPL engineers played Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" in the control room
Way to go and really enforce those nerd stereotypes. Come on guys.
NASA also has photos, straight from their fake set in Hollywood where they produce all the "space" footage.
That is such a big lie!
Those sets have been moved to India.
Casual Games/Downloads
Dear Great Britain,
;)
This is a picture of Mars, hope you like it!
Wishing you were here,
The US of A
Oh come on, laugh, it's not meant to be an insult!
About what might happen should the Martian government get their hands on the rover. They will most likely have to destroy it to cover up the fact that their planet has been visited by machines from another planet. Let's just hope we can get a picture of their leaders before they disconnect the cameras!
it's jackass commentary like this that does nothing but perpeptuate bullshit to the masses and misinforms that average (read stupid) american. then the average (read stupid again) american's think these things are a waste of money.
Right, and how many "average Americans" do you know who (A) read Slashdot and (B) won't pick up the sarcasm in the original statement?
It's humor (though I'll agree, it's not really funny). Don't sweat it.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Because mission engineers had tested the same setup (airbag position, rover position) and found that the orignal exit ramp had a chance that the rover's solar panel would get caught on the airbag. They decided to opt for the safest route, and turned the rover around and out through the second exit ramp.
Spaceflightnow.com has all the details.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
JPL engineers played Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" in the control room as they watched new images confirming that the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit successfully rolled off its lander platform early Thursday morning.
A bunch of sweaty scientists dancing around the lab to "who let the dogs out"? Was Steve Ballmer there?
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
* Driving over the balloons is more dangerous than martian terrain. They could get caught in the wheels.
* Suppose some part of the rover had been broken on landing, but had not surfaced yet because it had not moved. Think of a broken neck - it doesn't cause paralysis until you move and sever your nerves.
* Take advantage of a controlled situation. They wanted to take advantage of a controlled situation for as long as they could. From the lander they could take panoramic pictures from a sligh elevation. They could atmospheric measurements, etc. All this could be done without the adding the possible failure points introduced by moving the rover.
* The lander has more solar panels and perhapse some better communication hardware. Might as well take advantage of them while you're there.
I just pulled those off the top of my head. I'm sure there are better reasons and it's been discussed here before. Will you people stop bickering about them taking too long to move it?
How's this: Give me 3 equally good reasons why they should have hurried to get it off the lander.
no comment
I think they should hurry up and do a close-up analysis of a rock rather than worry about long-distance jaunts. If it croaks in a few days, not having analyzed a single rock up close would be a shame.
Table-ized A.I.
I remember someone back a couple of years was caught in JPL's computers. Maybe there are some backdoors still? ::)
Shotgun first drive! Of course I realize it's not like an RC car, but I can imagine right?
-- taking over the world, we are.
The dirt sticking to the wheels of Sojourner (Pathfinder) was discussed at great lengths on a board I read (bit of a crazy board full of the insane for the most part, but there are decent threads from time to time), a bunch of people yelling "it's mud, Mars is wet!" when in reality Soujourner had spun it's wheels in the dirt and essentially "dug" in the dirt... Well, that and the "dirt" is largely magnetite which is inherently magnetic.
:)
Flash forward to today and we've got the "magic carpet", and dirt sticking to Spirit's wheels, sans digging - very interesting, and by the sounds of it also very unexpected. It will be great to find out what's making it stick, and just "how Mars works" in general.
Did I ever mention how glad I am humanity has another rover on an alien world?
They've really stumbled onto something interesting. The martian soil in this area appears to have a really strange consistency... they've talked about it before, it looks like mud...
I hope it doesn't get stuck, it'd suck to have to call a tow truck (or a martian redneck with a winch) to get it out:)
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I don't know... You seem to be pretty stupid, but you still understood it was a joke. I'm not worried.
The enemies of Democracy are
The best site for Spirit pictures (and Opportunity when it lands too, I'm sure) is JPL's MER site, it's the official site, so first with the pictures (and if you click one of the dated releases and change the date in the URL manually you can sometimes get a sneak peek at the days release half an hour earlier than the rest of the world - about 4:30pm GMT or thereabouts :)
Wow, a monday morning robot designer..
If you could do all of that, and deliver a package with the neccesary weight, size, and other various launch/flight/deployment constraints.. then you would be (by far) the best robot designer on the planet. Ohh ya, and be able to do all of those things reliably on an alien world millions of miles away.
These are smart people (I've had the privilige of working with two of them), that are well aware of all of those possibilities. The realities of design have to come into play at some point, and that's how these things really come about.
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
A common reaction to the realization of a vulnerability is to add complexity to address the vulnerability. This is often a bankrupt strategy.
Wouldn't you feel silly if the "next ones" incorporated exactly this suggestion, and were unusable upon landing because "a small rocket engine, included to address the possibility of a rover getting stuck, ignited on re-entry and destroyed several critical components..."
On projects like this, every gram of hardware costs pounds of fuel, every contingincy plan requires man-weeks of meetings, and every non-essential task added to the process list amounts to a lost opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime experiment. The last thing you want is find youself facing actual mission failure because of some contingency you put in place to address a possible mission failure.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
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.
After approximately 25 sols Beagle 2 will go into it's final communication mode SHM1 (Spell Help Mode 1). In this mode it
will shred it's own parachute and lay the pieces out across the martian surface to spell the world "HELP".
Calculations suggest that each letter will be approximately 4-6 pixels across, easily discernable from the Mars Express orbiter.
High winds may hamper this last ditch attempt for Beagle 2 to communicate.
(I'm allowed to laugh, some of my tax money is spread all over the red planet)
Why does this thing have a "backwards looking hazard identification camera"? Are they that confident about finding life on Mars that they expect to be fleeing from it?
"Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view." - David Hilbert