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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."
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.
Even with range limitations they're hardly useless. Both rovers landed in relatively fertile areas for exploration, and Opportunity would have still been a big success even if it proved unable to leave the crater it landed in. The main thing that comes to my mind is to find the edges of the ancient ocean and explore there -- partly because tidepools on Earth are teeming with life, and partly because shallow water means fossils (if present) won't be buried very deep. I noticed very early on that the rocks Opportunity was looking at looked an awful lot like tidepool rocks, at least ones from the eastern Pacific shore (the only ones I've seen firsthand). I knew there was good reason for NASA to be REALLY damn sure before announcing there was a lot of water on Mars at one time, but I pretty well was convinced as soon as I saw those distinctive wormholed rocks.
However, it looks like their lifespan will be determined by a few factors, some of which are within human control and some which are not:
1. Dust storms. Seems to me one good one would pretty well take a rover out of service from dust buildup on the panels alone.
2. Equipment failure, particularly the "always on and draining power" type. One has already made Opportunity a little bit gimpy, but I doubt a single such failure would be fatal. Cumulatively, several would just be too much to bear.
3. Shorter and/or darker Martian days as the seasons and distance from the sun change. This won't take out a rover outright of course, but they could compound the prior two problems. At least these events are predictable.
4. The Martian Defense System finally tracks the rovers down and explodes them. Turns out the reason they didn't shoot the first time is they thought it was just another shipment of punching balloons for their nitrous oxide-fueled nightlife. Once they realize we sent ROVERS and not RAVERS, they're going to be mighty pissed off.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Hi Justin,
How about we get the ball rolling by naming a rock 'Tux', after the Linux mascot penguin?
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