Mars Rovers Still Going Strong, Mission Extended

Loconut1389 writes "The Mars rovers' missions have been extended from 90 days to about 250 and have been upgraded with some new software to give them extended single run distances as well as other features. Yahoo has a similar article, also at Reuters. I think it's great that these initially plagued robots are doing more than expected and are still going strong, mostly thanks to engineers figuring out how to make the most of the software and hardware onboard and figuring out how to diagnose an unfunctioning, unresponding machine millions of miles away. The whole project amazes me and I'm happy for NASA to be getting some good news for a change."

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[BoldAC]

My whole kid's class is using Maestro to view the Mars photos in a similiar fashion to the NASA engineers.

Great science... and great learning as well. It's java driven... and crunches older computers. However, it really shows the excellent work that we are doing there.

AC

It's all lies! Lies I tell you!!!!

[Paul Townend]

Oh no! Another 160 days of cover-ups and conspiracies! Well...perhaps, anyway! :-)

Red dust makes me cough

[Kryxan]

I find it amazing that NASA put something together that can last 3x as long as they required it to last. I never expected it to last the full 90 days, thought at least one of them would have just died out by now and the other would be moving along at a crippled pace trying to get everything done. But it appears my early misgivings about the mission were completly unfounded.

So far everything about this mission has shocked me, at least to some extent. We havnt just been rovering around mars to say we could do it. Thats what the previous mission felt like. But we have found amazing signs of water and the conversations around what has been found has sparked for many a rekindeled interest in our favorite planet. Since the rovers have gone up I have been watching slashdot more closly for news from these bots.

I have seen reports of evidence of water and watched as we all ooo and aaa over what that could mean. I have read the debates on the possibility of methane producing microbes in the soil of mars, or the cows hiding out in a hidden green pasture. We have all wondered about the possibility that we could jumpstart the life on mars or make it inhabitable for us with teraforming. Basically I have seen more interest in the red planet in the last few months than ever before. I cant wait to see what another 160 days can do for our imaginations. Do you think anything new and amazing will be found as this trek on the red planet continues, I certanly do.

Re:It's amazing

[JaredOfEuropa]

How even though given the anti-intellectual culture of the US we are still the only ones able to land this very successful rover

I think one of the factors contributing to the success of the US, is the mindset of its people. Unlike most other countries, the US is a 'nation of winners' as someone put it once, where people celebrate success, are proud of their achievements, and not afraid to be #1. (disclaimer: yes, it's a generalisation, not all Americans are like that, and these qualities can be found in people of other nations as well).

Americans have the will to risk money and lives on visionary stuff, on going somewhere first. Looking in and around my own country in Europe, I do not see this drive for success. We'd rather spend our money on health care, railroads, and other such mundane things. We do not have grand visions, and if anything, success is scorned. "These people may be sooo proud of their little rover, but they still shit the same color as we all do. They're no better than us". Discuss the history of our country with others, and everyone will focus on the bad stuff (slavery and such), on how much we suck, rather than the things we did well (and our country has plenty to be proud of). Such a nation will never put anything on Mars.

There are other nations with the drive to go to Space, though. They have some catching up to do in terms of technology, and they are certainly not as rich as the US, but they'll get there.

"initially plagued robots"?

[cmacb]

To further pick apart the wording of this summary...

I'd hardly describe them as "plagued". Both landers have been astonishingly successfull. They did suffer what MIGHT be characterized as a minor glitch and that was quickly circumvented.

Really the hardware and software have worked fine. I'd be more interested in seeing some reporter cover the people aspect of the mission, which I don't think has gone perfectly, but maybe with so many smart people involved couldn't have. Consider:

(1) Reporters early on asked how soon Opportunity would leave the crater it landed in to explore other areas. The scientists seemed to be unable to tear themselves away from those rocks and go topside and peek around. Had they done that they would have discovered several other outcrops like that in the area they characterized as flat an uninteresting. They could have always gone back into the crater, but it was almost as if they were afraid the rover would topple over on its way out and didn't want to run any risk. I wish they had been more open about this. Even Spirit spent way too much time hanging around its landing platform IMHO. Spirit had the misfortune of landing in a less interesting place than Opportunity. Still they spent days taking pictures of the lander. I think they could have done better by driving farther, sooner, and they'd bee almost to those hills by now.

(2) It was announced with great enthusiasm that the rover teams were going to "go to mars time" which meant each person would report to work during the Martian day for the rover they worked with and go home for the corresponding Martian night. Within a couple of weeks they were all complaining about how horrible this was. It's called jet-lag otherwise, but most of the staff seemed unable to cope with it. So why hadn't they experimented with that during the several years it took the rovers to get to Mars? It's almost as if they didn't actually expect both landers to land successfully, so they never bothered with the logistics that would be involved. Now, according to the last press conference they have had to re-invent their planning process so that more can be done during the Earth day and they seem willing to sacrifice some downtime for the rovers activities when the Martian day and Earth day don't coincide. At least that's the way it sounded to me.

(3) Personnel changes: The director of the mission (I forget his name) got promoted several weeks after the landings. Couldn't that have waited a few more months? I rather know how government works, and this promotion thing is just about all they think about, but why shuffle everyone around now? I would think maybe after both rovers had passed the 90 day mark would be a better time for any discretionary staff changes.

(4) Reporting to the public. It really started out great, with live video of the control center during both landings, daily press conferences and a great web interface for making pictures available to the public. But I really don't understand why you get different content if you go to http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ than when you go to http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html Seems clear to me the first one should just point to the second one. Looks like a case of dueling webmasters to me. But my real gripe is how quickly the coverage has scaled back. The press conferences went from daily, to 3 times a week, to once a week to every other week, and then turned away from raw information sharing to more dramatic presentations from the east coast. Other forms of communications rapidly tapered off too. For example the simple two minute long flight directors update is now much less frequent. At least the text based updates are still daily, almost. I've wondered whether this was more a burn-out issue or if public interest has dropped off that fast. In either case, Americans sure have a short attention span these days. You would wonder whether the expected "lifetime" of 90 days for the landers didn't almost

Re:"initially plagued robots"?

[snake_dad]

1) The outcrop in the crater shows deeper layerings and thus were more interesting than the few patches of outcrop on the plain. They did peek over the rim rather early, remember the parachute pics?

2) They have tested working on "mars time" before the landing. The longer working "day" was needed because planning each sol was pretty difficult in the earliest sols. Now, with over 90 days of experience running the machines they can do more in less time, hence the switch back to normal time.

3) It was time to get more work done on the next mission. It makes sense to take experienced people from projects where their involvement is no longer absolutely needed. If they don't a lot of people will be ready to complain (and rightly so)about human resource management when the next lander fails because everything had to be learned from scratch by the people on the team. IIRC this was determined to be one of the factors in the failure of the Mars Polar Lander mission. The project manager did a great job with the MER's, left it in capable, experienced hands, and moved on to make sure the next project would be just as successful.

4) Agreed. I'd like to see things like maps with each days planning and progress, and maybe some more daily notes from the scientists. I can understand about the daily briefings getting fewer tho. The room where they were held was emptier each day, and I'm sure it was a burden for the scientists and techs to prepare and conduct a briefing each day, or every other day. Personally a weekly briefing is fine with me, just wish they'd do them an hour or two later :)

Re:Stuff like this really bugs me.

[ultranova]

Well, it depends. If that life is a few bacterias, then no, it won't make any difference here. On the other hand, if that life is a bunch of bloodthirsty technologically advanced aliens waking from a million-year hibernation and setting their sights on Earth... Then tadah, we now have a common enemy, and humanity will immediately unite since we now have better targets than each other for our homicidial tendencies.

This has nothing to do with idealism, it's simple survival. We root for ourselves first, our kin second, our tribe (nation) third, and humanity in general fourth. If we have no accomplishments of our own to feel pride over, then we are proud of our family/nation.

Nothing would pacify the world like an alien invasion.

And nothing will enrage humans more than competition. "How dare they take our jobs/homes/solar system !?! DIE ALIEN SCUM !!!"

Re:The real problem is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't play Trivial Pursuit with a German. Don't argue about equations with a Japanese engineer.

I have done both of these things and won. Education is a tool; you can do as much or as little as you want with it. The engineering education that I received (admittedly, 30 years ago) was as rigorous as any that I compared notes with from European engineers. I have worked with many foreign engineers that I wouldn't accept on any team that I was a part of and I have worked with some that I respected and admired.

I now have a son in high school and have argued with his teachers on several occasions. The real danger to our educational system is the latest round of teachers that seem determined to indoctrinate their students with what they perceive to be the correct stance on social issues rather than concentrating on giving them the tools to make up their own minds.

Re:It's amazing

[Phisbut]

Americans have the will to risk money and lives on visionary stuff, on going somewhere first.

The NASA is american, granted. However, just because the NASA succeeded in something, it doesn't mean that it's an all american success. NASA is just a name, the name of a group of people. It's the people inside NASA that count. And somewhat (not based on any real numbers, they didn't allow me to walk in there to count heads), I doubt that every single engineer or other innovative guy in NASA is american.

Just because something happens in the US, the Americans take it for their own and tell the whole world they were the first one to do it. What happens really is someone thinks of something (either an american or someone from anywhere else in the world), then the United States have the money to do what the guy was thinking about, and all of a sudden, it's American Genius at work.

The USA were the first country in the whole world to have the technology to build and use an atomic bomb. But did the americans have any idea on how to build one and how to use the energy that was concealed in atoms and such? It was all Albert Einstein, a German. A guy from Germany had the brains to innovate, and the US had the money to make it happen, without caring about the consequences (that we all know today).

There are other nations with the drive to go to Space, though. They have some catching up to do in terms of technology, and they are certainly not as rich as the US, but they'll get there.

Fighting or running a race to figure out who can reach Mars first is ridiculous. When a scientist from another country (with some exceptions) figures out he could help mankind set foot on Mars (or anywhere else in the universe), he doesn't try to start his own space program in his country. He goes to NASA, which can provide the funds, and then works there with a whole bunch of other geniuses. He does that because he doesn't care that the piece of metal he'll be shooting up comes from the USA, from Canada, from Spain, from China or whatever. He just wants to help mankind achieve something.

When Christopher Columbus came to America, he was from Spain. When Jacques-Cartier came to America, he was from France. From one continent to another, it's on the same scale. But when someone goes to Mars, whoever that is will be coming from Earth, not from the USA, or from Russia, or anywhere else. When we meet a martian, we won't tell him "Hi, I come from Canada", he won't care what a country is. We'll tell him "Hi, I come from Earth, that big rock over there".

For years and years, we've been saying that in the end, we're all the same no matter where we come from, we're all human beings. When it comes to space exploration, it can only be more true. We are not americans or canadians or french or japanese, we are earthlings.

foreign education + immigration = USA innovation

[Myrmidon]

American education has, in my lifetime, been a lot less rigorous than European or Asian education. Don't play Trivial Pursuit with a German. Don't argue about equations with a Japanese engineer. Yet most of the innovation has come from the USA.

Yeah, that's because both the German trivia master and the Japanese engineer are living in the USA and are working for innovative American companies and universities.

Or at least, they were back in the 20th century. Now the Department of Homeland Bureaucracy imposes vast amounts of red tape on foreign nationals. (Don't you dare go home to Germany for a visit - you might not be allowed back into the US.) Meanwhile, foreigners (as well as American citizens) can be imprisoned without trial. And the President has declared war on stem cell research.

I wonder which nation will become known for innovation in the 21st century?

If I were in charge...

[rice_burners_suck]

I'll tell you how things could get really innovative. Instead of sending one little rover here, one little rover there, why not send many little rovers, each of which can, once on Mars, attach to the others, to form a really big rover. You don't have to send all the rovers at the same time. It's enough that you launch them so that when one runs out of power, the next one arrives, attaches to it, gives it more power, and continues to operate. Within 10 years, you'll have a huge rover the size of a building driving around with tons of equipment measuring everything. When people land on Mars, they could use this bigger rover as their temporary home, while additional materials are sent to build a big dome, which would house a big nature scene. It would work because it would be cool. It would cost trillions of taxpayer dollars.

Rovers to become Flying Dutchmen of Mars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a thought.

Remember that movie Silent Running? Or the tribute at the end of Babylon 5 to Silent Running where they blew up the station because of Navigational Hazards?

I was just wondering if there was a 'kill' switch or plans to Euthenasia the two rovers when they're crawling across the mars scape with a half productive wheel drive, or a crotchy old camera arm trying to fullfill their latest commands?

Its kinda sad..

When the Pioneers and Voyagers crawled across deep space with stiff fingers as it were.. they got a second chance.. and proved they could make it to Galactic frontier before going silent.

But on the other hand.. if they're never silenced.. will the martian rovers become the new Flying Dutchmen of mars? The Mary Celeste where future travelers will listen for whispers from corners of mars long since abandonned.. but pleas for new commands go unanswered?

Once every Summer season when the Sun rises in the murky Martian sky.. and the sandstorms have accidentally swept their solar panels clean.. will they wake like the Ghosts of Mars and call
home?

Sounds silly.. a martian Ghost story..

I'm sure NASA will carefully park them in some well known crater.. and generations from now they'll wind up in a Martian Smithsonian Annex exhibit near Gustave Crater.

- john