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Mars Landers - Opportunity, Bedrock, Aerosmith?
Iphtashu Fitz writes "As was reported last week, the first Mars rover Spirit had some communications problems that the folks at the JPL have finally managed to trace to problems with its flash memory. Reuters is reporting that Opportunity seems to be having some power-related problems, too. It appears a faulty thermostat is turning a heater on overnight without being told to do so. While NASA isn't concerned about the rover overheating, they're exploring the long-term effects of continued power drain on the second rover." The article also notes: "The first three-dimensional, panoramic images beamed back from Opportunity showed an intriguing outcrop of exposed bedrock" - there's now a color version of the same image. Finally, lightwaveman points to the Spaceflight Now status page regarding new priorities for the Mars mission: "The airing of today's Mars rover news conference is being delayed on NASA TV to show the band Aerosmith touring International Space Station Mission Control at Houston's Johnson Space Center."
My understanding is they've already made some changes in the way Opportunity uses its flash memory, in an attempt to NOT recreate the problem they're seeing with Spirit. Something about dumping data instead of writing it there unless its crucial.
I'll try to dig up a link.
According to the Reuters article one of the theories that NASA is investigating is the possibility that a solar flare could have damaged Spirit during "a vulnerable point during its communications with Earth." If that's the case then there's probably not much they can do to prevent it from happening again. If, however, another theory like the machine overloading itself with datafiles, turns out to be the true culprit then they probably could patch both rovers.
From the last article I read, the problem with Spirit involves having too many files in flash. So the fix involves deleting old files when they no longer need them.
They're also deleting files off Opportunity as soon as they've been transmitted and/or are no longer required, so it hopefully won't develop the same problem.
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Interestingly there seems to be some sort of horizontal feature that in a terrestrial rock could very well be stratification, which would make it a sedimentary rock. I would guess that it's more likely some sort of weathering effect. Although you do quite often see this sort of effect in dykes. Very interesting :)
Here's what I found with a quick google news search.
Changes to memory usage
The latest theory on Spirit's difficulties involves an overloading of engineering and science data files in the flash memory. The memory had not been purged of files accumulated during Spirit's near seven-month journey from Earth.
The recovery plan includes a culling of the files and a change in the operating strategy for Spirit as well as Opportunity that will more closely monitor the file content.
Bold is mine
That depends on the nature of the problem doesnt it? If the problem was caused by a dust storm blowing a rock onto Spirit (just a silly example - dont take it literally), there wouldnt be anything to fix on Opportunity, right? Actually, the question you asked was asked by a journalist during one of the NASA briefings, and the answer was something along the lines of "..it depends on the root cause of the problem....". And if its a hardware failure, there might not be a software fix anyway (even though there might be a procedural fix to avoid causing the hardware failure).
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
Opportunity and Spirit are mainly set up to find out about the mineralogy, and their task is to try to establish once and for all that liquid water was once abundant on Mars.
karma capped
The Spirit/Opportunity landing system is heavily based on the Pathfinder/Sojourner design. The parachute and airbags had to be beefed up to deal with the additional weight, and some other modifications were made based on what was learned the first time around, but it's basically the same. I understand that squeezing the much larger Spirit and Opportunity into the lander was not easy, which is why the probes arrive folded up like elaborate origami.
--Larry
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
An examination of bedrock will tell us much more about mars than analyzing rocks that may have come from space.
Having played geologist for a number of years now, I can say that the bedrock looks like wind deposits to me. The crossbeds that are present look similar to crossbeds you can observe in the Navajo Sandstone in Utah or a number of other formations in the Colorado Plateau. Unless there are some scientific instruments I am unaware of they will not be able to conclusively determine whether the bedrock is water- or wind-deposited based simply on mineralogy.
Then there's Mars. Drama, excitement, scientific adventure
Or as Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2001 a Space Odyssey: "After ten thousand years, man at last found something as exciting as war."
Um with regards to Marco Polo and Columbus, money was THE driving force behind their explorations. Marco Polo wanted to tap into the exotic goods that he could bring back to Europe from Asia and Columbus was trying to find a quicker route to the East Indies so the spice trade could move faster.
Insightful? I say Funny.
/. previous, the cameras on the lander are strictly black and white - colors are gained by (wait for it) using filters!
As has been discussed on
If I was worried about Karma, I'd eat tofu.
And today they explained that Opportunity actually rolled around in the crater like a dice tossed into a bowl. Made a figure eight before settling down. That explains a few of those 'imprints' that were off at odd angles. So while the odds of landing in a crater are supposedly incredibly low, once a bouncing rover intersects one its' odds of staying in the crater go up dramatically.
======= ~\_/~\_O Burmese
Having somebody there would be useful if they had a spare part to install. It only makes sense for a manned mission to go to Mars after there's a reasonable amount of supplies already there. A long-lasting power source is one piece of that, but there are plenty of others.
They're called RTGs, and they weren't used on Spirit or Opportuniry because of backlash from environmentalists. After all, how dare NASA send up a few pounds of plutonium on space craft. Why, that Cassini thing nearly killed everyone!
Right.
Also, before we can just "use nuclear power", someone will have to design a power plant that will reliably survive EDL and produce a significant amount of power afterwards.]
It's called a Gas Core Nuclear Rocket (GCNR), which is a advanced NERVA style engine. NERVA was completed in the '60s, but cold war fears of nuclear power killed the project. Over the past decade, NASA has had the GCNR under quiet development for use in space propulsion. What most people don't realize (an intentional oversight by NASA) is that GCNRs can produce more thrust than a chemical rocket, but at a much higher Isp. Even the completed NERVA technology had 4 times the lifting power of today's Space Shuttle.
The really beautiful part about GCNR, is that it could potentially breath gases like O2 and CO2 as fuel. That means that we could easily create space planes that work on Earth *and* Mars. Wouldn't it be nice to fly into Mars' atmosphere instead of falling? (Do a search for "Project Pluto". It wasn't the cleanest plane ever, but it did work.)
Playing around with rovers is giving NASA (and humanity) the experience necessary to supply a crew and get the crew there safely.
Bull. These rovers don't even have a tenth the amount of power, resources, propulsion, and ability that can be accomplished with today's technology.
We have the technology already. We just need to stop putzing around and *use* nuclear power.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
You can't differnetiate the mineralogy of a wind-deposited from a water-deposited rock? Umm, might want to try playing a new game. Or, take some sophomore geology courses. Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, Petrology and Mineralogy and Crystallography would be a good start.
Granted, the source minerals are a little different on Mars, but the instrumentation will tell us what they are in detail. But any competent geologist can make that determination by the Junior year in school.
I work at Speedera who is delivering their content and NASA TV. At 6pm EST when slashdot posted this story the traffic increased only about 100Mbps. Articles posted on AOL, MSN and Yahoo home pages increase the traffic much more. The NASA TV live stream when Opportunity landed was 4 Gbps. There are lots of other sources that are bigger than the slashdot effect.
See the press release for more details on the traffic and our SpeedRank index for historical performance and availabilty of NASA's site.
You are correct.
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I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Details on the filesystem problem are also at New Scientist.
One of the Mars orbiters (Mars Global Surveyor) did extensive spectrographic mapping of the minerals on the surface of Mars. Opportunity has landed in an area that is apparently rich in hematite. Seven of the eight ways this hematite can be formed involve the presence of water. Opportunity will be used to determine if the hematite was water based or volcanically based. Some details here
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad