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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."
How even though given the anti-intellectual culture of the US we are still the only ones able to land this very successful rover, and I feel the world actually respects the US for it(almost makes up for the other stuff), unfortunately, unless we get more kids interested in science, and more funding for research, the rest of the world will quickly catch up and surpass the US. Hopefully having this mission be more than anyone ever imagined, it will counteract both of these things.
I don't think you understand how these robots actually work. They could not have been debugged and fixed if they were "unfunctioning" or "unresponding".
Actually this is just a game to set the right expectations. They designed whole thing with a much larger project life right from the beginning.
But, given the fact that the rover technology is low-cost and still unproven, they expected a certain risk for various glitches. So, a 250 days "published" interval followed by a deadly clitch would mean a very bad image for NASA.
NASA played the same "stay on the safe side" tune on many otehr missions - see for example the Voyager missions, etc.
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
There are some really smart and talented people at NASA, and it's nice to see that their work has finally been recognized after a period of NASA-bashing. It really peeves me that people have settled into this anti-American groove over the last few years.
Some of the top minds in history have been American, few modern scientific or engineering feats have been untouched by Americans in one way or another. Half the people who criticise Americans haven't actually been to the United States. I studied in the US for 3 years, and before I left for the US from South Africa, I had a few pre-conceived ideas about Americans, all of which turned out to be untrue. So before you bash Americans, think about these things, and consider actually spending some time in the US.