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."
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...
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.
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?
Rover status updates
by
aurum42
·
· Score: 5, Informative
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
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
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!
American Ingenuity
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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.
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).
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.
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
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.
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..."
Slashdot Mirror
Spirit keeps responding with "JOHNNY 5 IS ALIVE!!!"
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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).
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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
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.
I would have hated to have been the tech support guy on that call:
... 45 minutes later ...
:)
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..."
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..."
Dont tell me you don't feel my pain, too.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead