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
·
· 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.
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
·
· 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
argStyopa
·
· 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?
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
·
· 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...
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?
Congrats to NASA - robust programming
by
192939495969798999
·
· 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
·
· 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
·
· 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
·
· 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
·
· 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:-)
More, nearer.
by
LoudMusic
·
· 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:Erosion caused by water
by
Feyr
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· Score: 4, Informative
the "source" you're looking for is usually the clouds (rain) AFAIK. though i'm no geologist, but i'm pretty sure of that
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.
Props to NASA
by
smittyoneeach
·
· 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.
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.
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.
water source
by
Shooter6947
·
· 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.
Re:So, how long 'til they meet?
by
pokeyburro
·
· 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?
by
aurum42
·
· 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
by
Mean_Nishka
·
· 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.
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.
The Site to Visit & Software to Play With
by
Spencerian
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Most news sites are too damn slow for news on the rovers. Hell, Spirit was fully up and running over two days ago.
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.
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"
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
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)
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!
the "source" you're looking for is usually the clouds (rain) AFAIK. though i'm no geologist, but i'm pretty sure of that
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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
'Spirit is willing but the flash is weak' over and over again...
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"