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NASA Extends Rover Occupation of Mars
iocat writes "Reuters reporting that NASA is extending the Rover missions on Mars by another five months. However, they point out that while the rovers look poised to greatly exceed their planned life cycle, they could basically die at any time. Still, it will be cool to see a little more exploration."
no one is shooting at us there.
I hope.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
I wonder how much terrain these rovers can explore in 5 months, or if they're basically useless because of range limitations?
It's "liberation" instead, people.
Hate me!
It's an occupation of Mars now? I thought the were just tourists.
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
"However, while Spirit is past its 'warranty', we look forward to continued discoveries by both rovers in the months ahead."
Maybe they should have gotten that rust-proof coating after all.
Unmanned missions are great. Humans can run out of food and air, and get tired and homesick. Robots can run basically forever, until something breaks or they run out of juice. If these things prove 1/50 as durable as Galileo did, they'll provide science more than we ever could have hoped for.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Who would have thought they would extend it again this soon after extending it the first time?
Burn Hollywood Burn
That's a bit of a loaded phrase, isn't it? "Oh, Bush is President, and the rover is on Mars! It's an occupation! Free Mars!!!"
Its always good for future missions if the current ones exceed expectations.
Looking at Mars, now a distant orange glow in the sky, it amazes me that we have intelligence there.
Good job NASA.
More exciting information here
This was posted on JPL's rover site on Thursday. It's got a lot more info.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The durration of their "Occupation" isn't changing. They are there to die and be buried in dust. Their operation limetime has been extended!
Whatever happens, I think they've found a lot of useful data that will take months to analyze. Hopefully they'll have continued success for as long as they keep the mission going. I look forward to seeing the final analyses from these observations.
For more comments, see this article from the 11th.
End the occoupation of mars! We are the ALIENS HERE, violating the privacy of our neighbors by sending back constant images of their sacred homeland. this calus discregard for intergalactice rights is appauling!!!
NASA said it would spend $15 million more to keep the rivers exploring the planet's surface through September.
A bit optimistic about the discovery of water on Mars, aren't we?
Hubble's life should have ended a while ago, but nasa keeps on extending it.
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
Were we planning to send them back at some point?
wouldn't it make sense to initially plan the mission for as long as the rovers remain operational, however long that may be?
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
I wonder how long until the native get restless, and we get the Martian equivalent of Al'Sadr resisting the occupation?
I would have e mailed the editor. The USPS is notoriously slow.
I expect at least part of the reason is because it is inexpensive. According to the Reuters report, "NASA said it would spend $15 million more to keep the rivers exploring the planet's surface through September." Can you think of a more cost-effective way for NASA to spend that money?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
> Maybe they should have gotten that rust-proof coating after all.
You must mean "dust-proof coating". Given that there is no water on Mars and almost no oxygen, rust would not be much of a problem.
Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has done it again, it would seem. When the Voyager 1 and 2 missions were launched in 1977, they estimated that they would only last until the encounter with Saturn roughly four years later. Now, in 2004, they are still returning useful data, at a distance of over 90 AU from the Sun (in comparison, Pluto is only 40 AU from it). Sure, they had their problems during the mission, but it looks like Spirit and Opportunity may share a similar quality construction. It's definite that they won't last 27 years, but with how well they are functioning, I think the only limit will be the Martian dust collecting on their solar panels. When they Next Generation Rover lands on Mars in the latter part of this decade, it will hopefully use nuclear power, and overcome this obstacle.
maybe this time we'll get to see more pictures of rocks that they can crash our bazillion$ enterprises in to...
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
yes, girls read /. too...
No, it's a "stabilization."
Now they can go look for Beagle
Unmanned missions are great.
So Are manned ones in the right context like Mars.
Humans can run out of food and air, and get tired and homesick.
On Mars humans can make their own air water and food provided a power source like a portable nuclear reactor and the air and ground around them. It's called living in-situ. As long as you don't send flakes, the homesickness isn't an issue. They're allowed to sleep and would have more waking time than the rovers so I wouldn't worry about them getting "tired".
Robots can run basically forever, until something breaks or they run out of juice.
You just contradicted yourself there.
If these things prove 1/50 as durable as Galileo did, they'll provide science more than we ever could have hoped for.
Perhaps but humans on the surface would have been able to work faster and smarter these probes. Galileo was well suited to its mission and a human would not have been. In the case of Mars, humans are much better suited.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Can you think of a more cost-effective way for NASA to spend that money?
Hire a better administrator.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Do they have an exit strategy? I thought it was 'Mission accomplished,' but still there's no sign of those Little Green Men (LGMs).
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Can you think of a more cost-effective way for NASA to spend that money?
They could publish another report that says "saftey is great. Let's be safe."
Blaze a trail to the New World
All the scientists here at JPL are very happy to see that we'll be getting more science, however one of the issues is that we're going to be moving to a less efficient planning cycle, planning for two days per rover at a time. Also it will all be being done on earth time, which is nice for scientists, however it means things have to be planned very far in advance.
Also one of the problems we are experiencing is that a lot of the mission software was originally designed to only run at JPL on our computing environment, and is very difficult to take back to home institutions because it is so specialized.
I'm currently working on making the Science Activity Planner (the tool used by all scientists to do high level planning before they start sequencing) work collaboratively over the web. It's exciting because we're dramatically increasing the amount of people who can participate in high level planning. You can grab the public version, called Maestro, here.
One of the other challenges is the bandwidth and latency associated with transfering autogenerated data products (imagery etc) to all of our satalite institutions. I'm currently working on ways to reduce the necessary bandwidth but without lossy compression there's only so much one can do.
Anyways, this part of the mission will test out a paradigm known as "Distributed Mission Operations". You can download a paper written by my supervisor about how this was used on Pathfinder here.
Future mars missions will last far too long to bring scientists away from their home institutions and pay for temporary housing etc (which is a significant cost). Scientists want to be with their collegues and families during the long periods of exploration.
Hopefully this will prove that it is both feasible and desireable. There are several studies going on about this, but I'm not aware of any relevant links.
Cheers,
Justin Wick
Science Activity Planner Developer
Mars Exploration Rovers
I wonder what could be done with them when they do fail?
... Russions pickup worlds most expensive a door stop...
my top picks in no particular order:
1.) Auction them off on Ebay (like that channel drill) and make the buyer pick em up. that may help finace the manned mars mission goal
2.) Call AAA for a tow, membership has its rewards.
3.) File insurance clames on the loss. Perhaps NASA could cite water damage.
4.) But probably the best use, 3 words, "interstellar p0rn server". Lets "spread" our culture among the stars. That of course would require NASA still be able to upload a "firm ware" upgrade.
*brain is: [ ] in, [ X ] out to lunch, [ ] gone home for the day
Well I mean c'mon ... if the solar panels are really dusting over - just put a scratch resistant coating on them, and toss some windshield wipers on those bad boys.
I mean hell we already use airbags to land 'em, before too long we'll just be strapping a Ford to a rocket and sending it on it's way.
Though the martians may be really pissed off when we start leaking oil all over the place...
while the rovers look poised to greatly exceed their planned life cycle, they could basically die at any time.
Kinda like Dick Clark?
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
Every day or so, I head over to this site to check out the latest images. Some of the high-res color photos look like something I could have shot with my digital camera out in the desert somewhere, but then I remember: they were taken on ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET. It really is a amazing thing to be alive to see. The folks at NASA and the JPL should be proud of themselves.
If dust buildup on the solar panels is such a potential problem, why didn't NASA design wipers for them? Just make sure you use 'em before there's no power to run the wiper motors. 'Seems like a simple solution to me.
Why do I have these mental images of Huey and Dewey wandering around, planting trees...?
"Just because you're a genius doesn't make you a smart guy!" -- Narrator, Powerpuff Girls
Personally I'm sort of tired of all the "cute" stuff. Like the wakup music and the rock names.
It's like reading a wedding announcement or something. "And the chief scientist wore a stunning black outfit, and his research maids wore matching green shirts with long sleeves rolled up. Custom pencils were used by all. The guests were delighted to see palm pilots made available for everyone, each customized with a charming orange Mars theme!"
Some of the high-res color photos look like something I could have shot with my digital camera out in the desert somewhere, but then I remember: they were taken on ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET.
Were they really taken on another planet? Pasadena ain't too far from some good desert country...
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
So what are they going to do? Lift them from the martian ground? pfft
a) They fould Oil ...
b) They fould Bin Laden
c) They found WMDs
d) They found a cure for Bush
e) They saw the rabbit (again..)
f) The engineers want to draw playing chicken with Spirit and Oppurtunity
See here:1 0/2039207&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
Mars is George Bush's Moon.
mmm so the project is basically limited by how much dust collects on these panels?
sheesh, i doubt it would have been that hard to implement a rail along each solar panel, with a brush that could clean them every now and then.
it just seems a little wasteful to spend as much money sending the damn thing up there, and then let it die because some dust collected. talk about narrow sighted.
p.s. i am 100% for space exploration, and feel funding for nasa should be more in line with what the military gets, and the military more in line with what nasa gets.
but thats is just me.
Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
Here is my list (they are even slightly descriptive)
1. First Post
2. Troll
3. Hot Grits
4. The Insensitive Clod
5. Anonymous Coward
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Mozilla is red like Mars. Mozilla is strong like a rock. Scientists know Mozilla. Mozilla will go to Mars, and followers of Mammon will cower in horror :-)
Hey no fair, you logged in AND used Karma bonus to artificially inflate your score. I did the noble thing and posted anonymously!
MARS - Martian insurgents have taken Europe's Beagle 2 lander hostage, MartianTV reported, in retaliation for the United States' refusal to leave the region unoccupied...
...yea, it's time for bed...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
/i>"NASA Extends Rover Occupation of Mars"
The director of NASA, however, assures us that Mars will revert to it's own sovereignty by September 30th. An unnamed United Worlds representative noted that "it's going to be very hard to hold Martian elections by that date, and NASA seems unprepared to set up an interim government which the average Martian can put his faith in."
Russian scientists recently announced a humanitarian aid mission could be active on Mars in 10 years, but Russian officials were quick to deny "any plans to interfere in NASA research."
-Adam
An RPG would be much more effective for getting samples inside rocks than that wimpy drill. Bruce Cockburn would be so proud...
Jpl seeks bandwith solution would get a very strong responce on slashdot I can imagine. But I just wanted to suggest that if you use a ATM MLS type protocal I think you wouldn't need worry about the bandwith.
;)
This assumes I have my technology correct, that was the name assoiciated to what I think it is. A technology that can be used to multicast a single packet over a vpn framework (and ofcourse uses atm). Im not sure what your network looks like or if atm mls crosses traditional networks using software but, im sure what the real question is "Which technology do MultiMedia content provider's use to distribute live broadcast so that they are not sending redundant traffic"
Anyhow, if I dont know wtf I am speaking of, I will go RTFM (IS RTFMing), im sure that plenty of web op's would offer mirroring of data okay doke. I hav offered my idiotic suggestion to geniuses enough for today
The Troll Coward,
Kerpal
However, you wouldn't exactly want it lying around and getting thrown in landfills, either, so I can't imagine it being used in consumer products any time soon. At least Pu-238 can't be used in nuclear weapons (a big enough piece of the stuff to make a bomb out of would be too hot to be stable).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Hi Justin,
How about we get the ball rolling by naming a rock 'Tux', after the Linux mascot penguin?
# grep slashdot access.log | grep html | sort | uniq | wc -l 2604
but don't the rovers already use radio isotopes to maintain the temperature for the internal electronics without costing battery power?
Man, having a Tux rock would be so freaking cool, and funny :)
---- Take the Space Quiz!
After Plutonium gives off it's alpha partical it becomes radiactive Uranium which in turn gives off gamma rays. The alpha partical cannot make it through the casing, however it will be absorbed by the casing, in turn making the casing radioactive. So, yes a RTG is completely harmless, if you ignore the rest of the nuclear reactions involved.
Also, consider that Plutonium is on of the most dirtiest and most expensive substance to make. Tonnes of nuclear waste are produced in the process to purify it from reactor cores.
You are to physics what Rosie O'Donnell is to "sexy".
Honestly, its people like you who give the environmental movement a bad name. Hopefully, you won't be entering any science or science related field any time soon.
When Bush saw the the Martian pictures of the desert, he thought NASA was helping him in Iraq. Then he ordered NASA to stay longer there!
The Russians kept their lunar rover moving for almost a year, partly because it used nuclear power rather than the less reliable solar power. NASA's Galileo and Cassini probes also used nuclear due the weak sunlight in the out solar system and decade- long missions. These probes almost were not launched due to environomentalist fears that batteries would leak into earth's atmosphere in the event of an launch accident.
The discoveries said there _was_ water on mars, not that there is any now. It might still be there somewhere, but not in any quantity that can rust a gram of steel.
You'd have to get these idiots that design products to design a standard, interchangeable battery. i.e. a standard cell phone battery, used by all brand of cell phones or the same for laptops. I don't see this happening, because they like to charge a hundred bucks for a replacement laptop battery and 25-30 for a cell phone battery. The laptops actually use batteries that you can replace from Battery Patrol, if you don't mind cutting all the hotglue off and soldering your replacement batteries back in.
Make it the last battery you ever buy.
--Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.