Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the congrats-from-the-news-nerds-to-the-nasa-nerds dept.
tvh2k writes "CNN reports that both the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity are now both fully functional. Working on opposite sides of the red planet, they have begun analyzing rock and soil samples."
I guess the idea of a redundant rover is to make sure that errors are not a total loss. But it's nice to have both, especially since Opportunity seems to have found evidence of water. This has been really exciting to follow.
Re:Very good news
by
Cosmonut
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· Score: 5, Insightful
NASA/JPL learned their lesson when the Mars Polar Lander disappeared. Most Mars probes up until then had actually consisted of two spacecraft (the Mariner series and Viking 1/2) simply for redundancy; if your launch failed or the spacecraft blew up (Mars Observer, anyone?) there was a complete second set of spacecraft hardware available.
With two rovers that redundancy is back, and at the same time you can target them into two different landing zones on Mars, doubling your data sampling if they both survive.
I think it would have been excellent science to have Beagle operational at the same time. Imagine, three rovers investigating Mars at the same time, given "similar" environmental conditions (either a lack of or similar-intensity dust storm conditions).
We should be glad the problematic file stores on Spirit and Opportunity were easy to correct.
Remember they had three redudant rovers (Spirit, Opportunity and Beagle 2). In the big scheme of things Beagle 2 took one for the team, stiff upper lip and all that. However, I can reveal that despite Beagle 2's problems contact was recently reestablished as follows:
Jodrell Bank: I command you, as King of the Britons, to move! Beagle 2: I move for no man. Jodrell Bank: Report damage! Beagle 2: 'Tis but a scratch. Jodrell Bank: A scratch? Your wheels are off! Beagle 2: No, they're not Jodrell Bank: Well, what's that pile of molten slag? Beagle 2: I've had worse. Jodrell Bank: Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Beagle, but you are no longer operational Beagle 2: Oh, had enough, eh? Jodrell Bank: Look, you stupid bastard. You impacted the surface of Mars at high speed, your camera's broken and you've got no wheels Beagle 2: Yes I have. Jodrell Bank: Look! Beagle 2: Just a flesh wound.
John.
Re:Very good news
by
amightywind
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· Score: 4, Funny
..if your launch failed or the spacecraft blew up (Mars Observer, anyone?) there was a complete second set of spacecraft hardware available.
This also vindicates a longstanding principle of government procurement: why buy one when you can buy two at twice the price!
-- an ill wind that blows no good
Re:Very good news
by
kippy
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· Score: 2, Informative
That's a funny quote and all but I don't know if it's entirely true in this case. A lot of the cost involved was put towards getting the technology together and paying the people involved. Once one was built, the other one just required the same set of parts and a team to assemble and test it. No R&D costs were repeated.
While it's not exactly assembly line type savings, there is a reduced cost for building a duplicate of something that already has been built.
Re:Very good news
by
Dominic_Mazzoni
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· Score: 3, Informative
That's a funny quote and all but I don't know if it's entirely true in this case. A lot of the cost involved was put towards getting the technology together and paying the people involved. Once one was built, the other one just required the same set of parts and a team to assemble and test it. No R&D costs were repeated.
While it's not exactly assembly line type savings, there is a reduced cost for building a duplicate of something that already has been built.
That's true, and FYI, they actually built three rovers, just in case there was an accident with one of them before launch.
Re:Very good news
by
argStyopa
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· Score: 4, Insightful
principle of government procurement: why buy one when you can buy two at twice the price
I'd mod this -1, ignorant. Generally with advanced projects like this the cost is hardly 1=N, 2=2N. The first one might cost a ton, but the second one, being a simple duplication of parts and methods developed for the first, is far, far cheaper (sometimes as much as an order of magnitude).
But hey, who am I to stand in the way of a pointless swipe at The Government?
-- -Styopa
Re:Very good news
by
el-spectre
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Is the third the one at JPL that the keep rehearsing maneuvers with?
-- "Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
I would have hated to have been the tech support guy on that call:
Me: "So the machine is spontaneously rebooting every hour or so?" JPL: "Yeah, it looks like it's having a problem reloading the flash filesystem" Me: "Can we do an "ls" on that directory to see what's in it?" JPL: "Hold on..."
... 45 minutes later...
JPL: "ls came back with an error... no such file or directory" Me: "Hm, did you type the command correctly" JPL: "Yeah we typed 'lf' and that's the error we got." Me: "L... F.... no no no..."
The problems the rovers have had have cut into thier research time - due to the dust build up on thier respective solar panels.
Nasa, next time take a lessen from the past and harness the power of the atom - the Viking probes lasted for years.
-- It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Re:Great -
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
They were GOING to, but the touchy-feely tree-huggers scared enough people into believing that if the launch went sour, there would be a nuclear explosion killing millions of people..
Yet another example of the left thinking only of their agenda...
What about having the reactor in the base station, and the rovers moving back to it to recharge? or better yet, give it a full service station, imcluding solar panel cleanings, battery recharge. Also why dont the rover have some kind of wipers to stop the buildup?
-- All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
Ah, but the Vikings only had a very small power requirement. The only things electricity were needed for were the intruments. The rovers need to move under their own power. Futhermore solar panels are cheaper and simpler and lighter.
At lastly, since they only have enough money to pay people to run them for a couple months, why design a rover to last years?
-- Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Actually, powering these things with some form of nuclear power would be a great idea... With the technology we have now, I'm sure that we could get enough useful power out of it, at least to charge the batteries.
And when NASA can no longer maintain it, they can sell time with the rover to independent companies. The companies could carve people's names into martian rocks or something else that people would pay for lol... In the end, NASA makes back some money, heck, the project might even pay for itself in the long run.
Only problem now, is the environmental nuts lobbying congress, and causing a ruckass whenever something carrying anything more radioactive than a cabbage is sent into orbit.
There may be risks, but that is why it is launched over the ocean. If it goes down there, the environmental impact would be minimal, as a) the casings would undoutably be very solid, and could be recovered undamaged and b)even if some of it did leak out, it would be dilouted in millions of gallons of water in no time, and would not be any greater than the natural background radiation, and c)People are always complaining about all the species going extinct every day... well, how about a few new ones near the crash site? (Ok, that was a joke;)
Back when I was in school, around the time Cassini was launching, a teacher stated to the class his opinion that they could have a nuke explosion on the pad. I had to inform him that it is very difficult to get radioactive material to fission, and not only was it likely the wrong type, but that the chances of an explosion were next to nill.
IMO, someday we will overcome this ignorance and fear of nuclear power... same way that early man overcame his fear of fire. It will be great to see the kinds of things we can accomplish then, with proper care and safeguards.
Re:Great -
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 3, Informative
But to supply a generator large enough to obviate the need for solar cells most likely would blow the weight budget (soft landing, remember?). Just my guess.
BZZT. 2.5 pounds of Plutonium per 75 watts of electricity. That's probably not that much heavier than the solar panels. The best part is that you'd need less battery with an RTG (just enough for large power draws) so you can save more weight there than your RTG costs you.
You don't need the staff on hand because it's all in the 'hands' of the rover.
I think you underestimate how many people are involved with the operation of the rover. Even to recieve the transmissions, you need a very powerful reciever, because the transmissions from the rover are on the order of a Watt. This means time at a radio antenna must be spent. Furthermore, you must carefully craft the intructions to be sent,you must monitor the status of the rover (without human intervention Spirit would have been dead), not to mention all of the support staff for these people to get their job done.
The rover wasn't designed to do much more than very menial tasks without further instruction. I doubt that the rover could operate autonomously for more than a couple days. If there was a way that they could cost-effectively get additional data after the primary mission, wouldn't you think that they would do it?
-- Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Congrats to NASA - robust programming
by
192939495969798999
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· Score: 5, Insightful
That is a herculean programming effort -- it's not like you can go up there and push "reset" on the robots when something doesn't work. NASA continually pushes the limits of computers to make these projects work within budget, and I look forward to the public release of some new tools and data from the rocks! I hope for their sake, we find a fossil or something like that -- no more budget problems for NASA...or would there be?
Re:Power leak
by
Tablizer
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· Score: 5, Informative
So, is the power leakage on the Opportunity rover also fixed or are they just going to put up with a shorter lifespan of the machine?
My understanding is that it is still not resolved. Appearently the rovers can still work in the day with a dead (non-rechargable) battery, but the cold from lack of heaters eventually damages electronics. Thus, one way or another it will probably shorten the mission (assuming something else does not bust or dust-up first).
if it can dust one thing, why not another
by
rritterson
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· Score: 5, Interesting
From the CNN article, apparantly Spirit can dust off a rock. It doesn't say how though, but I would guess either compressed air brought from earth (unlikely), a little air compressor, or a brush of some sort.
Now, apparantly the lifetime of the rovers is limited by the rate at which dust build up on the solar panels. How hard could it have been to reticulate the arm so that it can bend around and dust the panels off themselves? Even if it were to cost $1mil, it'd still be worth it as it would extend the lifetime of the rovers indefinately.
(Personally, I'd still like to see a better solution- have the rovers shake like dogs do when they get wet)
-- -Ryan AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Re:if it can dust one thing, why not another
by
Thagg
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· Score: 4, Informative
I have heard that it's really important that space probes -- especially ones that have large staff to run them like the MER-A and -B -- need to have some kind of life-limiting feature. Otherwise, you could never realistically budget them. Also, you have to consider the strain on the shared resources -- the Deep Space Network in particular. There are quite a few systems that depend on the Deep Space Network, which is monopolized to a large extent by Spirit and Opportunity today.
The other major life-limiting feature on Spirit and Opportunity are the batteries. They can't be cycled indefinitely. Opportunity, in particular, with its arm heater always on, is going to overtax its battery system relatively quickly. It will probably get to its 90-day design life, but not much further.
Spirit will likely go quite a bit longer. It's warmer there than expected, which means that they don't have to run the internal heater at night as much as they thought. They are seriously talking about an extended mission for Spirit -- maybe up to 180 days. This would give it time to drive quite a long ways, maybe even up to the nearby mountains about 1.5 km away.
thad
-- I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Re:if it can dust one thing, why not another
by
krlynch
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· Score: 5, Informative
My understanding from earlier articles is that they aren't "brushing off" the rocks, but rather "grinding" off a circular area of the rock so that they can get to the unmodified interior of the rock. So, even if the arm can reach up to "scratch its own back", so to speak, you probably wouldn't want to use the grinder to dust off the solar panels:-)
Re:if it can dust one thing, why not another
by
hayesjaj
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· Score: 2, Informative
The rovers can either use their Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) to grind a short way into rocks or (leave it to nasa to think up very simple solutions) dig a small hole using one of its wheels if the top layer is too deep to penetrate with the RAT. They are considering doing this at the Opportunity site.
-- The world is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.
Re:if it can dust one thing, why not another
by
valkraider
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· Score: 2, Funny
The other major life-limiting feature on Spirit and Opportunity are the batteries. They can't be cycled indefinitely.
What, no $99 battery replacement plan?
Re:if it can dust one thing, why not another
by
danlb2000
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· Score: 2, Informative
On this close up picture of the RAT:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/oppor tunity/20040202a/2_rock_abrasion_tool-B009R1.jpg
you can see a small (probably metal) brush that extends out further then the cutting blades. This must be what they use to dust off the rocks.
The problem with cleaning off the solar panels is that you have to be aggressive enough to clean the dust, but gentle enough not to damage the panel. This is not a problem when dusting off a rock.
At one of the press conferences they said they explored a couple options for cleaning the panels but it was decided that it wasn't worth it. One of the problems they mentioned was that the dust on mars is extremely fine and would become elctro-statically attached to the solar panels thus making it even harder to get off.
Although dust on the solar panels is the most common "life-limiting" problem you hear about there are others. For example amount of sun light they get per sol will go down due to normal movement of mars thus making it harder to keep the rover warm at night, and leading to damage of other components in the rover.
stateside however
by
way2trivial
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· Score: 3, Funny
freedom and privacy have both died.
-- every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Window for Opportunity?
by
ferralis
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Anybody have an update on the heating problem and how that affects the longevity prospects of Opportunity?
-- Any generalization is a stupid one.
More, nearer.
by
LoudMusic
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· Score: 5, Interesting
I heard rumblings a while back (may have been on/.) about alternative space exploration to our current methods. Basically launching hundreds of smaller robots at a task rather than a single highly developed bot. They mentioned lots of benefits, like 80% failure rate would still generate something. Additionally they would be near eachother and possibly work together and even repair one-anothother.
Has there been anymore talk about things like this?
-- No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Re:More, nearer.
by
plopez
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There are other advantages as well. Suppose you were to build 8k explorers in batches of 100. Suppose 80% of the first batch failed. Taking the information from the failures, the second batch could be better as the bugs would be found and reduced. Say a 50% failure rate for the second batch. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Instead of 'one offs' a standardized product would be developed, built on the learning of the previous batch. Once the failure rate was below a certain percentage, say 1%, some (maybe 10%) could be used as beta testers of new equipment.
In addition, the manufacturing process would become standardized allowing for lower costs. Since the contractors know that there is at least 8000 units in the pipe, they can reduce thier profit margin saving even more money.
Cheap commodity robots could make good sense.
-- putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Erosion caused by water
by
nycsubway
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I have seen many many pictures of the erosion and channels and lake beds on mars over the years. Many many pictures... and they all looked very convincing, because it was so similar to the effects that water has on earth.
Then at the start of the Spirit and Opportunity landings, I started to think about it more. Something bothered me about the way the erosion appeared. It seemed there was no source for the water. I started thinking what might have caused features similar to that caused by running water. I think it is caused my lava flows. I could be completely wrong, and probably am, but maybe what I interpret as not being features caused by water, are really features that were caused by a very early and short-lived time of running water.
Without Spirit and Oppourtinuty functioning
by
KarmaOverDogma
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· Score: 2, Funny
The world would be a pretty ho-hum and stagnant place.
please don't punnish me for this.
.
-- uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Check for root kits
by
Westech
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· Score: 2, Funny
I think they'd better run chkrootkit just in case...
American Ingenuity
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
Of course.
You're talking about the nation that invented the telephone, the airplane, radio, television, the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, landed a man on the moon, has sent probes to every planet in the solar system, the modern computer, the internet, and WMD in iraq.
Do you think two pissant little rovers on mars are a problem? We did this already almost 30 years ago.
People. Hello. This is the US of A. Everybody else talks a good game, but we kick ass.
Joke
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
Why did the US invade Iraq?
Where else can you fake a Mars landing?
Re:Sorta OT, but still relevant
by
preric
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· Score: 2, Insightful
here is a website with more of that stuff... personally, i see it as a 'seeing what you want to see' syndrome, just like the 'face of mars'.
Props to NASA
by
smittyoneeach
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Pretty easy for the armchair engineers to opine, but I wonder if all non-trivial projects simply paraphrase Clausewitz to read "No non-trivial project survives contact with reality".
Props to these guys for having a design that allows remote repair in the event of the unforseeable.
-- Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Why the hell not? Just remember, those fourth graders will one day be adults. Adults that are going to have influence, one way or another. Perhaps the child in question, inspired by this, will go on to be an astronaut?
While the great scientists of old (and young) have their place, we have to think of the future, too.
-- "...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Re:Name gripe
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
I must admit, I am disappointed that NASA didn't use the name submitted by Ms. Henderson's 4th grade class at Remedial Elementary.
This is Houston. We're ready to roll Stinky Ga-Ga onto the Martian surface.
Anonymous Kev Proudly posting as AC since 1997
Robot Wars
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
After Spririt and Opportunity complete their missions....assuming they have enough juice in their batteries left over, I think Nasa should have the two robots meet each other and duke it out. If they are each at opposite ends of Mars, how fast can the rovers move?
The launches are clustered so tightly (2 weeks) because the optimal launch window for mars occurs every two years. Otherwise, it might make sense to do a yearly launch so that design problems (like the flash memory error) can be thoroughly tested and fixed.
Having two rovers operating at the same time might cause a reliability problem... if spirit had kept randomly transmitting at odd times, it might have interefered with good data being sent from opportunity. Nasa thought of that, and that's probably why the two rovers are on opposite sides of the planet - hence, only one is visible to earth and/or the relay satellite at a time, so they can't interfere.
Uh, that doesn't make much sense- I really doubt the two rovers would be interfering with one another if they were in the same area, as they could simply use different frequencies or cooperate on when they were going to transmit data, or work as master/slave...
There's a huge number of ways they could be working in the same area. The reason they're not is because there would be no point to it.
Master/slave would have less than one quarter the reliability, and cooperation doesn't work if one is going haywire (as did Spirit).
Different frequencies is good, but if they are close together and picked up the the same transponder (a likely scenario), a difference in amplititude could mess up the auto gain control and you'd lose the quiet one. A difference in amplitude could be caused by a number of reasons - poor aim, weak transmitter batteries, haywire transmit power setting, or a special max-power emergency reach-home mode. If the transmitters are frequency-agile (by design or accident), then they could still accidently transmit on the same frequency.
Physical seperation is your best bet if you want signifcant bandwidth and want the most flexibility to recover from a variety of failure modes.
Something I've been curious about, and I'm sure there's a reason for it, is why the landers don't use signals to an orbiter, which then can use higher power to transmit back to earth? Is this just too complex or is there another reason this scenario won't work?
Did a little research on this specific mission (before I was just talking based on my experience with the much smaller satellites I worked on), and I learned some stuff:
The forwarders are much better (bigger antennas, more solar cells = better power budget, higher orbit means the earth is visible for a bigger portion of the day), but they're another link in the system and prone to failure. (I'm guessing that they don't provide as many emergency debug options, either)
This page includes a description of the low-bandwidth control channel that communicates directly to the DSN.
I couldn't find mention of how much use the high gain-to-DSN path gets vs. via-relay-satellites path - does anyone have this info?
Actually, I'm an EE who has has some on-orbit hardware and software. Your examples are kindof primitive because these instruments have been implemented in a variety of very different ways, but I'll run with them.
Cell phones use a range of frequencies. Sometimes these frequencies are reused, and this is either CDMA or TDMA. TDMA is essentially cooperation; CDMA will suffer the same power differential problems that near-frequency transmissions will.
Cordless phones are similar - either multiple FM frequencies (49MHz), or some form of CDMA/TDMA (2.4GHz+). CB's use different AM channels and also use a form of TDMA (you don't start talking until the other guy says "over"... thus, you are time-dividing a single chanel).
Even at different frequencies, transponders* need to have realively close amplitudes- that's what I was saying in a previous post. TV-relay satellites can well-control their uplink power; cell phones are commanded to vary their power by the towers. These options may not be available to mars rovers, where you want even more reliability and have little ability to change the ground stations (i.e. if a tv uplink is wildly putting out too much power causing other uplinks to be lost, you can bet someone will drive there pronto and pull the plug. Or, if the signal is too weak, someone will realign the antenna or replace the power amp)
(*This is probably not a problem for the DSN, where they can much better filter the signals for special situations. Assuming, of course, that a fault hasn't put the signals on top of each other.)
water source
by
Shooter6947
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The water source for the Martian channels is weird. It is certainly not rain: the channels don't spread out enough and there are closed drainage systems. Planetary scientists (I am one) think that the channels might have been formed by sapping: the water comes out of the ground in a spring.
NASA discovers Martian New-Age gift shop!
by
AndroidCat
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· Score: 3, Funny
For those wondering what hematite looks like, you can drift over to your
local New Age shoppe to take a look at the hematite
jewelry as well as find out its alleged properties.
Hematite is a good stone for those born during the Moon of Renewal - (22
Dec- 19 Jan.) Its grounding and soothing energies can help you relax and
unwind both physically and mentally. Hematite's renewing qualities also
make this stone an excellent match for those born during this time of the
year, but everyone can benefit from this stone.
Hematite is a good choice for those born under the zodiac sign of Virgo.
Opportunity's landing and "birth" on Mars are a bit late for Jan 19th, but
close enough. Renewing properties might help the flash memory and
batteries, and if there's one thing a Mars rover can always use, it's
grounding!
(Be warned: Valentine's Day is coming up, and you can never go wrong with
cutesy jewelery, but remember that some hematite is magnetic.)
-- One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Re:So, how long 'til they meet?
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pokeyburro
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· Score: 5, Funny
What the hell are they gonna do? Take samples of each other?
"Spirit just detected iron in Opportunity's left solar panel! Advantage Spirit!! Oh wait, here comes Beagle... DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!" *wham*
-- Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
Re:What's the underlying technology?
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TheOnlyCoolTim
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· Score: 2, Insightful
They're generally rad-hardened and tested not to fail it, which means they don't launch with cutting edge technology. On top of that, the time between building one of these and it landing is years...
Tim
-- Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Re:What's the underlying technology?
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RailGunner
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· Score: 2, Informative
No, you're not being cynical, but there is a valid reason - the testing and burn-in phase, which can take months if not years. If memory serves me correctly, there was a recent probe that ran on 4 Intel 486 processors. Why didn't they use the then available Pentium 2? Testing - the 486's they had were proven to work in the extreme environments and it would have caused unneccessary delays to test with a new processor / motherboards.
Personally, I wouldn't be that surprised in the Rovers were running Red Hat 6... or similar, due to that long test cycle.
Re:What's the underlying technology?
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aurum42
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· Score: 4, Informative
They run on Vxworks, a real-time operating system (RTOS) which has been used by NASA for several years now. You have to remember that these aren't run of the mill systems, but ones that need military grade radiation hardened components, and it's amazing what can be done even with a simple embedded system (I wrote a minimal TCP/IP stack and ethernet driver for an 8-bit processor once, the 8052, and while complex). It's mostly technology that has proven to be reliable time and time again, but not all codepaths can be explored even in a simple system. The problem with spirit was apparently in the flash filesystem implementation (sounded like they ran out of inodes, but I haven't seen a detailed analysis).
-- "The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
Cool Details on Color Calibration
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Mean_Nishka
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· Score: 4, Informative
Not to bring up the color calibration controversey again, but Nasa has published a detailed two-part feature on calibrating the pancam. The first part can be viewed here and the second can be found here.
This feature was presented to the mission managers during one of the 'lunchtime lectures' they present in the MOC. I caught a glimpse of this presentation the other night while watching the NASA TV stream. The presenter mentioned/. during his presentation and talked a little bit about the color debate started here a few weeks ago.
Interesting rock formation
by
polyp2000
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· Score: 3, Funny
I just noticed this rather interesting rock formation on one of the latest mars pictures..
I get the impression someone got there first;)
nick...
-- Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Re:Name gripe
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Tenebrious1
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Am I the only one disapointed by the names of these probes? When I think about space projects, I think they should be named after great scientists...not names generated by 4th graders as part of a contest.
Can you think of a name that *hasn't* already been used at some point in the last 40 years? Yeah, names of great scientists would be nice, but any name that could be remotely related to the mission has already been used. It seems kinda pointless to have named the two rovers "Salk" and "Pasteur" simply because they were important scientists...
-- -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
The problem isn't with the 4th Graders but with the adults who picked these particular 4th-Grader-generated names.
I'm sure that there were some great names amongst those submitted.
-- You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
Is it me or could this have been debugged on earth
by
thbigr
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· Score: 2, Insightful
From what I have read Spirits problem is ALL software. It sounds like this could have been tested by driving around in a parking lot and taking lots of pictures.
Signed, a grumpy old programmer.
-- Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
The tool that does the grinding (Rock Abrasion Tool aka the RAT) also has a brush mechanism so they can brush dust fromt he surface of the rock before taking measuremnet of the rock. They'd like to take readings from the rock surface as that might give information about how the rock has weathered which might in turn give clues to past environments. Dust particles could obscure the readings from the actual rock surface hence the brush.
After they take the surface reading they can use the RAT to grind off the surface to look at the interior of the rock.
What I still haven't seen is a full, technical explanation of what went wrong in the first place, and (more importantly) why it wasn't caught in ground testing. One would imagine that flash-contention issues would be relatively easy to bench test.
As with Pathfinder, NASA seems to have run into testable software issues only after the hardware is on another planet. I'd like to see more morning-after analysis on this both so NASA can improve its process for future missions, and so that we can all learn something about software testing for our own projects.
Does anyone know of place (web page, mailing list, whatever) where this is being discussed on a deep technical level?
-- When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
I don't have a link handy but the reason it wasn't caught in testing is because the longest test they ran was 9 days. The errors started to happen (IIRC) 18 days into the mission.
SP
-- "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." - Voltaire
Re:Name gripe
by
RetroGeek
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Am I the only one disapointed by the names of these probes?
Well, we are not there in actuality, but in Spirit
And NASA had the Opportunity to build and send two.
--
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Another geeky thing to enjoy is Maestro, software that allows anyone to download real data from both landers and observe in exhaustive detail what the JPL guys see (they use a much more complex version of the package). It's Java.
-- Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
Re:The Site to Visit & Software to Play With
by
Spencerian
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· Score: 2, Informative
-- Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
It vindicates "them"
by
FreeUser
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
people who don't seem to have read anything by George Orwell?
"They" have almost certainly read and understood George Orwell only too well. "They're" simply counting on relatively few of the unwashed masses having read George Orwell, or to have comprehended it if they have.
Given current political events in the United States, and the persistent popularity of its president among said unwashed masses despite his appalling history in office thus far, "they" seem to be quite correct in this assumption.
What difference does it make if you and I snicker at the Orwellian names our space missions are routinely given, or the pithy propoganda that accompanies every "3...2...1...ignition" sequence (the "of [whatever] in another [whatever] for [whatever]" that always gets tagged on to the countdown these days), so long as 9 out of 10 vegitative Americans take it seriously, and more than half of America is vegatative?
To summarize: "TERRORIST TERRORIST TERRORIST, 9/11, 9/11, God Bless America"
Re:what about gulls?
by
Cyclometh
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· Score: 2, Funny
Heh.
"Aw, would you SHUT UP?! You're rats with solar panels!"
Re:Name gripe
by
wizarddc
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So you're telling me Hubble was a household name before that big lens in the sky got there? Hell, call them Tycho and Brahe. Leonardo and Michaelangelo. SOMETHING. Bill and Ted comes to mind as the perfect example.
care and feeding of rovers
by
CleverNickName
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· Score: 3, Informative
Also why dont the rover have some kind of wipers to stop the buildup?
I wondered the exact same thing, and asked all the scientists I spoke to at JPL (for TechTV) that very question. They said that the added weight, and potential for joints and servos to fail outweighed the possible benefit of wiping off the solar panels. One of them told me that they were effectively routing out milligrams of weight from various areas of the rovers to get the total down.
I didn't ask about the base station (because I didn't think of it -- that would have been a good question) but I imagine they'd say the same thing about weight vs. benefits.
I started a petition a week or so ago to suggest to NASA that they might supplement their coverage of the MER missions with additional live JPL Mission Control feeds.
If you're interested in reading the petition and possibly signing it, please see:
fault-tree analysis
by
iamr00t
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Because all systems in space research become so complex, you can not have error, and you only have one chance of running the program (or system), NASA started using special techniques, that allow them to formally verify every state of device in advance.
I remember reading article about that around Pathfinder time, when Polar Lander crashed because of software error. Here is that article from Wired. 50 man-years to verify the system, eh?
There is formal verification of algorithms in CS. However, in case of spacecraft it's more than software, it's hardware too, as we can see. And hardware does get included in verification too!
As a business software programmer, I find that fascinating. I can only imagine what the life would be if we used verification. Of course, the reality is that it will never happen, we are not rocket scientists:)
Weird object spotted by Opportunity
by
jfoust2
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Woe be to the guy that said, "woah, I dropped the Rover..."
Uh oh.
-- This is my sig.
You have it backwards
by
thebigmacd
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· Score: 2, Informative
The telephone was invented in Boston, and the patent specification was written in Brantford.
I live one hour away from Brantford and would love to support that claim to fame, but according to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, NS (a Canadian National "Park" which I have also visited), the telephone was not invented in Canada.
Not a comlete rover
by
GQuon
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· Score: 2, Informative
That's true, and FYI, they actually built three rovers, just in case there was an accident with one of them before launch.
Yes, but they didn't duplicate all of the most expensive equipment. I know this because I saw a TV program about the project, and there they worried about running a possibly destructive test on a camera they were sending to Mars. If they broke it they wouldn't have time to build a new one.
-- Irene KHAAAAAAN!
More MER Info (AXCH)
by
dekashizl
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· Score: 2, Informative
Re:Armchair Engineering
by
thbigr
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· Score: 2, Insightful
For the record I have worked on embedded systems for 6 years and PLC controlers. What we are talking about is the Extreem testing. When we worked on these things we always made sure that MAXIMUM memory usage was tested.
I Realy don't see why this is not on the list of things to test.
I do think they are doing a great job, considuring the amount of systems that are being controled and the added issues of radiation, cold, etc, etc.
-- Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Slashdot Mirror
Spirit keeps responding with "JOHNNY 5 IS ALIVE!!!"
I guess the idea of a redundant rover is to make sure that errors are not a total loss. But it's nice to have both, especially since Opportunity seems to have found evidence of water. This has been really exciting to follow.
Imagine the latency on your SSH session while fixing Spirit. I thought 300ms was bad!
The problems the rovers have had have cut into thier research time - due to the dust build up on thier respective solar panels.
Nasa, next time take a lessen from the past and harness the power of the atom - the Viking probes lasted for years.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
That is a herculean programming effort -- it's not like you can go up there and push "reset" on the robots when something doesn't work. NASA continually pushes the limits of computers to make these projects work within budget, and I look forward to the public release of some new tools and data from the rocks! I hope for their sake, we find a fossil or something like that -- no more budget problems for NASA...or would there be?
stuff |
Battlebots, Mars Edition, here we come.
The two Rovers are on opposite sides of Mars? How long will it take them to reach a common arena, at which point...
"Battlebots: Martian Showdown"
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Okay, it's fully functional, but is it programmed with multiple techniques?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
I've found this site very informative, with frequent rover status updates, links to images, NASA press releases and details of rover activities.
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
So, is the power leakage on the Opportunity rover also fixed or are they just going to put up with a shorter lifespan of the machine?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
From the CNN article, apparantly Spirit can dust off a rock. It doesn't say how though, but I would guess either compressed air brought from earth (unlikely), a little air compressor, or a brush of some sort.
Now, apparantly the lifetime of the rovers is limited by the rate at which dust build up on the solar panels. How hard could it have been to reticulate the arm so that it can bend around and dust the panels off themselves? Even if it were to cost $1mil, it'd still be worth it as it would extend the lifetime of the rovers indefinately.
(Personally, I'd still like to see a better solution- have the rovers shake like dogs do when they get wet)
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
freedom and privacy have both died.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Anybody have an update on the heating problem and how that affects the longevity prospects of Opportunity?
Any generalization is a stupid one.
I heard rumblings a while back (may have been on /.) about alternative space exploration to our current methods. Basically launching hundreds of smaller robots at a task rather than a single highly developed bot. They mentioned lots of benefits, like 80% failure rate would still generate something. Additionally they would be near eachother and possibly work together and even repair one-anothother.
Has there been anymore talk about things like this?
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I have seen many many pictures of the erosion and channels and lake beds on mars over the years. Many many pictures... and they all looked very convincing, because it was so similar to the effects that water has on earth.
Then at the start of the Spirit and Opportunity landings, I started to think about it more. Something bothered me about the way the erosion appeared. It seemed there was no source for the water. I started thinking what might have caused features similar to that caused by running water. I think it is caused my lava flows. I could be completely wrong, and probably am, but maybe what I interpret as not being features caused by water, are really features that were caused by a very early and short-lived time of running water.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Who the hell comes up with these names?
The owls are not what they seem
The world would be a pretty ho-hum and stagnant place.
please don't punnish me for this.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I think they'd better run chkrootkit just in case...
Of course.
You're talking about the nation that invented the telephone, the airplane, radio, television, the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb, landed a man on the moon, has sent probes to every planet in the solar system, the modern computer, the internet, and WMD in iraq.
Do you think two pissant little rovers on mars are a problem? We did this already almost 30 years ago.
People. Hello. This is the US of A. Everybody else talks a good game, but we kick ass.
Why did the US invade Iraq?
Where else can you fake a Mars landing?
here is a website with more of that stuff... personally, i see it as a 'seeing what you want to see' syndrome, just like the 'face of mars'.
Pretty easy for the armchair engineers to opine, but I wonder if all non-trivial projects simply paraphrase Clausewitz to read "No non-trivial project survives contact with reality".
Props to these guys for having a design that allows remote repair in the event of the unforseeable.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
people who don't seem to have read anything by George Orwell?
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Why the hell not? Just remember, those fourth graders will one day be adults. Adults that are going to have influence, one way or another. Perhaps the child in question, inspired by this, will go on to be an astronaut?
While the great scientists of old (and young) have their place, we have to think of the future, too.
Bill Nye?
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
This is Houston. We're ready to roll Stinky Ga-Ga onto the Martian surface.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
After Spririt and Opportunity complete their missions....assuming they have enough juice in their batteries left over, I think Nasa should have the two robots meet each other and duke it out. If they are each at opposite ends of Mars, how fast can the rovers move?
The launches are clustered so tightly (2 weeks) because the optimal launch window for mars occurs every two years. Otherwise, it might make sense to do a yearly launch so that design problems (like the flash memory error) can be thoroughly tested and fixed.
Having two rovers operating at the same time might cause a reliability problem... if spirit had kept randomly transmitting at odd times, it might have interefered with good data being sent from opportunity. Nasa thought of that, and that's probably why the two rovers are on opposite sides of the planet - hence, only one is visible to earth and/or the relay satellite at a time, so they can't interfere.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The water source for the Martian channels is weird. It is certainly not rain: the channels don't spread out enough and there are closed drainage systems. Planetary scientists (I am one) think that the channels might have been formed by sapping: the water comes out of the ground in a spring.
(Be warned: Valentine's Day is coming up, and you can never go wrong with cutesy jewelery, but remember that some hematite is magnetic.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What the hell are they gonna do? Take samples of each other?
"Spirit just detected iron in Opportunity's left solar panel! Advantage Spirit!! Oh wait, here comes Beagle... DEATH FROM ABOVE!!!" *wham*
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
They're generally rad-hardened and tested not to fail it, which means they don't launch with cutting edge technology. On top of that, the time between building one of these and it landing is years...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Personally, I wouldn't be that surprised in the Rovers were running Red Hat 6... or similar, due to that long test cycle.
They run on Vxworks, a real-time operating system (RTOS) which has been used by NASA for several years now. You have to remember that these aren't run of the mill systems, but ones that need military grade radiation hardened components, and it's amazing what can be done even with a simple embedded system (I wrote a minimal TCP/IP stack and ethernet driver for an 8-bit processor once, the 8052, and while complex). It's mostly technology that has proven to be reliable time and time again, but not all codepaths can be explored even in a simple system. The problem with spirit was apparently in the flash filesystem implementation (sounded like they ran out of inodes, but I haven't seen a detailed analysis).
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
This feature was presented to the mission managers during one of the 'lunchtime lectures' they present in the MOC. I caught a glimpse of this presentation the other night while watching the NASA TV stream. The presenter mentioned /. during his presentation and talked a little bit about the color debate started here a few weeks ago.
www.lonseidman.com
I just noticed this rather interesting rock formation on one of the latest mars pictures..
;)
...
I get the impression someone got there first
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Am I the only one disapointed by the names of these probes? When I think about space projects, I think they should be named after great scientists...not names generated by 4th graders as part of a contest.
Can you think of a name that *hasn't* already been used at some point in the last 40 years? Yeah, names of great scientists would be nice, but any name that could be remotely related to the mission has already been used. It seems kinda pointless to have named the two rovers "Salk" and "Pasteur" simply because they were important scientists...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
I'm sure that there were some great names amongst those submitted.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
From what I have read Spirits problem is ALL software. It sounds like this could have been tested by driving around in a parking lot and taking lots of pictures.
Signed, a grumpy old programmer.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
The tool that does the grinding (Rock Abrasion Tool aka the RAT) also has a brush mechanism so they can brush dust fromt he surface of the rock before taking measuremnet of the rock. They'd like to take readings from the rock surface as that might give information about how the rock has weathered which might in turn give clues to past environments. Dust particles could obscure the readings from the actual rock surface hence the brush.
After they take the surface reading they can use the RAT to grind off the surface to look at the interior of the rock.
What I still haven't seen is a full, technical explanation of what went wrong in the first place, and (more importantly) why it wasn't caught in ground testing. One would imagine that flash-contention issues would be relatively easy to bench test.
As with Pathfinder, NASA seems to have run into testable software issues only after the hardware is on another planet. I'd like to see more morning-after analysis on this both so NASA can improve its process for future missions, and so that we can all learn something about software testing for our own projects.
Does anyone know of place (web page, mailing list, whatever) where this is being discussed on a deep technical level?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Am I the only one disapointed by the names of these probes?
Well, we are not there in actuality, but in Spirit
And NASA had the Opportunity to build and send two.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
When I think about space projects, I think they should be named after great scientists...not names generated by 4th graders as part of a contest.
Beavis and Butthead?
Christina and Britney?
Frodo and Samwise?
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Most news sites are too damn slow for news on the rovers. Hell, Spirit was fully up and running over two days ago.
Visit the official MER web site from JPL for at least better day-to-day detail.
Another geeky thing to enjoy is Maestro, software that allows anyone to download real data from both landers and observe in exhaustive detail what the JPL guys see (they use a much more complex version of the package). It's Java.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
people who don't seem to have read anything by George Orwell?
"They" have almost certainly read and understood George Orwell only too well. "They're" simply counting on relatively few of the unwashed masses having read George Orwell, or to have comprehended it if they have.
Given current political events in the United States, and the persistent popularity of its president among said unwashed masses despite his appalling history in office thus far, "they" seem to be quite correct in this assumption.
What difference does it make if you and I snicker at the Orwellian names our space missions are routinely given, or the pithy propoganda that accompanies every "3...2...1...ignition" sequence (the "of [whatever] in another [whatever] for [whatever]" that always gets tagged on to the countdown these days), so long as 9 out of 10 vegitative Americans take it seriously, and more than half of America is vegatative?
To summarize: "TERRORIST TERRORIST TERRORIST, 9/11, 9/11, God Bless America"
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
The Flash RAM file system overflowed, and they didn't test long enough to catch thise because they had a launch window to meet.
--- Ban humanity.
really doubt the two rovers would be interfering with one another if they were in the same area,
Mine? Mine! Mine.....mine!mine!mine! mine!mine!mine!mine!MINE!mine!
So you're telling me Hubble was a household name before that big lens in the sky got there? Hell, call them Tycho and Brahe. Leonardo and Michaelangelo. SOMETHING. Bill and Ted comes to mind as the perfect example.
Th
Also why dont the rover have some kind of wipers to stop the buildup?
I wondered the exact same thing, and asked all the scientists I spoke to at JPL (for TechTV) that very question. They said that the added weight, and potential for joints and servos to fail outweighed the possible benefit of wiping off the solar panels. One of them told me that they were effectively routing out milligrams of weight from various areas of the rovers to get the total down.
I didn't ask about the base station (because I didn't think of it -- that would have been a good question) but I imagine they'd say the same thing about weight vs. benefits.
If you're interested in reading the petition and possibly signing it, please see:
l
http://www.petitiononline.com/mercov/petition.htm
... until our replicators wipe out the Asgards.
Poor little guys.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Because all systems in space research become so complex, you can not have error, and you only have one chance of running the program (or system), NASA started using special techniques, that allow them to formally verify every state of device in advance.
:)
I remember reading article about that around Pathfinder time, when Polar Lander crashed because of software error.
Here is that article from Wired. 50 man-years to verify the system, eh?
There is formal verification of algorithms in CS.
However, in case of spacecraft it's more than software, it's hardware too, as we can see. And hardware does get included in verification too!
As a business software programmer, I find that fascinating. I can only imagine what the life would be if we used verification. Of course, the reality is that it will never happen, we are not rocket scientists
NASA's press releases aren't mentioning a strange object spotted by Opportunity. It's no face on Mars, but it's just as ripe for imaginative interpretation: A snail's eyestalks? A rabbit head? A sea serpent? Under "As Far as Opportunity's Eye Can See", on http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/oppor tunity/20040202a.html
there's a large panorama at: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/oppor tunity/20040202a/MSPan_B1_2x-B009R1.jpg
and look down under the sedimentary outcrop at right.
You can also see that NASA was looking at it on Sol 2,
on a series of four images taken on Sol 2, 2/3rds of the way down at: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportu nity_p002.html
but strangely it looks like those pixels are whited-out
Curator of the Jefferson Computer Museum http://www.threedee.com/jcm
'Spirit is willing but the flash is weak' over and over again...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Man, THAT'S what we need -- a mini-robot piggy-backed on the rover who's sole function is to hit the reset button!
Woe be to the guy that said, "woah, I dropped the Rover..."
Uh oh.
This is my sig.
The telephone was invented in Boston, and the patent specification was written in Brantford.
I live one hour away from Brantford and would love to support that claim to fame, but according to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, NS (a Canadian National "Park" which I have also visited), the telephone was not invented in Canada.
Government of Canada's version
the Europeans "invented" America.
So there!
That's true, and FYI, they actually built three rovers, just in case there was an accident with one of them before launch.
Yes, but they didn't duplicate all of the most expensive equipment. I know this because I saw a TV program about the project, and there they worried about running a possibly destructive test on a camera they were sending to Mars. If they broke it they wouldn't have time to build a new one.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.
For the record I have worked on embedded systems for 6 years and PLC controlers. What we are talking about is the Extreem testing. When we worked on these things we always made sure that MAXIMUM memory usage was tested.
I Realy don't see why this is not on the list of things to test.
I do think they are doing a great job, considuring the amount of systems that are being controled and the added issues of radiation, cold, etc, etc.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!