Slashdot Mirror
Mars Rovers on New Missions
mycro writes "According to CNN, the Mars rovers are on a brand new mission. Because the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers are in such great condition and 'keep going and going', NASA will be using them for a longer period of time to study water, rocks, and formations on Mars." An anonymous reader writes "Today NASA has given its Opportunity rover a green light to enter the steep Endurance crater. Looking at deeper martian bedrock layers is considered now a rich enough science payoff to weigh favorably against the real chance that the rover cannot get back out of the crater."
They make it sound like the rover is undergoing a massive risk, and doing something utterly untoward, by entering the crater - this is nothing new in science - the majority of space probes are designed for limited function, and not to survive their missions, witness voyager and the like.
Looking at deeper martian bedrock layers is considered now a rich enough science payoff
In my humble opinion, the geological data that might be extracted fom such a deep crater is more than worth it. Just think, potentially millions of years of Martian history, and who knows, maybe even a fossil or two? Wouldn't that be sweet?
Way to go NASA, for considering the bigger picture in the face of losing such a wonderfully resilient craft. Although, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that a manned mission could someday retrieve the rover, and bring it all the way back to the Smithsonian.
bash: rtfm: command not found
It's really exciting science. I am still marveling at the fact that we can see actual pictures of the surface of Mars, from millions of kilometers away, as if we are looking at someone's holiday snapshots... I do wish, however, that NASA (or ESA) would turn all this ingenuity someday to an area that is even less explored than the surface of Mars or the Moon - our deep sea. Every time a mission goes out there, new species are discovered. The pay-off that may be generated by having a good look at our seas may be much greater than that of space exploration. Some of the reagents we use in the lab are derived from sea animals and have enabled us to gain deep insight into molecular biology. And I should think that the technical challenges of deep sea exploration should be worthy of the best NASA engineers' skills. Come on, guys, down is the way to go, not up :)
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Now, I am not an astronomer, but when I apply common sense to this problem, I can readily see the following points:
- home robotics kits operate on Earth, within a stable atmosphere, relatively shielded from radiation, UV, etc.
- home robotics kits do not operate millions of kilometers from their bases.
- home robotics kits did not make a journey through the most hostile and unforgiving environment known -- outer space. Temperatures that would kill a human within seconds, radiation that would destroy conventional electronic components, etc.
Now trying to flame ya, just my $0.02 is all.bash: rtfm: command not found
NASA hopes both rovers will remain functional until at least September.
As people we often take everything for granted. Unfortunately it's just too difficult to constantly be amazed by everything around us (take a moment to think about how a computer works, it's fucking amazing). But this article really does show this isn't the present but the future. We have rovers on another fucking planet.
I remember thinking that the rovers wouldn't land successfully. But now they have and they're roaming around another planet. I'm sorry, but that's just amazing to me. And the above quote just reminded me.
Seems like a prime opportunity for a nuclear powered rover! I mean seriously, couldnt we have a nice little home base nuclear reactor for the thing to plug into? Perhaps it's or even housed within itself?
That might actually make it more worth the $400m pricetag.
What's a sig? Pete Brubaker
And to avoid the risk of launching rockets with nuclear material, this would be perfect for basing this on a lunar base that extracts nuclear materials, process it and launch rockets with nuclear-powered rovers, probes etc.
This lunar base should probably be based somewhere around Mare Imbrium where there most likely are concentrations high enough.
- "Every demand is a prison, and wisdom is only free when it asks nothing." Sir Betrand Russell
You can thank the fear of everything nuclear for this. Usually you would run a mars rover from a RTG. That way they would have enough power to run the rover continuously for years, and also enough heat to make sure none of the components fails because of excessive thermal cycling.
But since nuclear==BAD, they have to run the rover from a solar cell which gives only a tiny trickle of power during the daytime and none at all during the night. All components are subject to massive thermal cycling. So sooner or later either the solar panel will be too coated with dust to work, or the battery will no longer work, or components will fail because of excessive thermal cycling.
Note that all of these problems would be trivial to avoid if you had 50W electrical power and 1kw thermal power continuously, like you would get from a tiny RTG.
--
Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
I think it's a physical limitation of the wheels more then anything else, the reason they think it might not be able to get out is because they'll just slip on the sandy slope.
I mean, sure, they could've tried tracks on it, but they'd probably have their own problems. There's only so many situations they can guard against before the whole thing just becomes unfeasible.
well they did aim for the flattest bits..
how exactly do you design a robot that can get out of very steep sided craters anyway? grappling hooks?
as for the oppertunity situation, as i understand it there is nothing else in the surrounding area anyway - and plenty within the crater to keep it going for a while.
in my opinion it's pretty well designed for it's situation.
What is even more interesting is that the interest on the debt is about 4.5 times what we spend on education, and about 18 times what we spend on NASA. Maybe we should reduce that number first, gives more money for everything else.
My offtopic 2 cents.
It would seem that the batteries in these rovers have lasted much longer than was originally expected - in a matter of maginitude.
Does anyone know what the science might be behind the battery longetivity? To me, the science of that is equally, if not more, interesting than what might be on the planet itself.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This is a gross simplification, I'm afraid. Yes, you do have to factor in decomissioning costs. But these days people do. It costs vast amounts of money to decommission a sixties-era reactor, sure, because they weren't designed to be decomissioned (despite being lousy ways to design a nuclear reactor anyway --- Chernobyl was such a disaster because its fail-safes were completely useless). Modern reactors are far safer, more reliable, cheaper (apart from beaurocratic and licensing costs) and more efficient --- take a look at pebble-bed reactors, for example.
The numbers I've seen indicate that the overall cost of electricity produced by a modern fission reactor is about the same as conventional power (it depends who you ask, and as you say, it's quite hard to find out whether decomissioning costs are factored in). The environmental cost, however, is far less, because the total amount of waste produced is very small and, let's face it, nuclear waste is just not that dangerous.
Nuclear waste doesn't glow, it doesn't cause three headed fish, it won't kill you if you just look at it. The wildlife around Chernobyl is doing really well. The really dangerous stuff, like plutonium, is far too valuable to throw away (plutonium's mainly dangerous because it's extremely poisonous chemically --- but it's less poisonous than arsenic, and lots of that is pumped into the sea, and arsenic doesn't decay).
There's basically three grades of nuclear waste produced by a fission reactors: the low-grade stuff, like the plastic gloves mentioned above; medium-grade stuff, like the materials that make up the reactor's plumbing, which is been irradiated; and the very small amounts of high-grade waste, your actual fission byproducts. Most of these are recycled because it's too valuable to throw away.
The safest thing to do with the rest is to seal the whole lot up into vitrified blocks and make a big pile in the middle of some desert somewhere. It won't get into the ecosystem, there are no animals or people to interfere, and you've got easy access in case you need it. It'll just sit there.
Alternative solutions are to put the stuff at the bottom of a very deep hole in a subduction zone: eventually it'll get sucked into the mantle and dissipite. Since the mantle is loaded with radioactive isotopes anyway, then it's pretty much gone. Or you could take it off the planet entirely. This would actually be cheap, safe, and would get rid of it once and for all --- but there's perfectly sensible ways of recycling the bulk of it that would be even cheaper.
As for solar power --- yeah, very neat, but you get an absolute maximum of 1kW/m^2, and only during the day when it's sunny. Solar power is no use to me (I live in Britain). Seeing as a kilowatt is about 1.3 horsepower, try calculating the area of solar panel you'd need to run that SUV...
Gee. I'm sure everyone at JPL is kicking themselves right now wishing they'd thought of that. I mean, clearly it's such a brilliant, amazing idea that only some /. troll could think of that. Maybe it turns out that the tradeoff between the 10 kg spent on a compressed air bottle vs. 10 kg of science instruments is such that it's better to go with the instruments... hmm?
Just think of all the children that could have been fed with this $400 million. :( Or all the landmines that could be removed. Instead, we get playtoys for stupid white men. Micheal Moore needs to do his next expose on "science".
Some children were fed out of that $400 million. Where do you think the money goes? To pay for the roughly 10,000 engineers, scientists & technicians who in one way or another worked on the mission. Even rocket scientists have children.
Micheal Moore needs to do his next expose on "science".
Or maybe he should discuss the appalling state of education in this country. Not to mention a discussion of how spending on basic research help bring health & wealth to the world in general.
Dumbass.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Just think of all the children that could have been fed with this $400 million. :( Or all the landmines that could be removed. Instead, we get playtoys for stupid white men. Micheal Moore needs to do his next expose on "science".
Ok, do you think we get anything useful from the rovers?
Ok, should we stop spending $30+ billion a year on movies? (box office ~10, DVD and video sales and rentals 22+) How about what we spend on sports tickets for multi-millionaire athletes? Nah, a healthy psyche needs its recreation, right? So why isn't a productive scientific pursuit accepted in the same manner? Curiosity... the thirst to see 'what is beyond that hill' is part of a healthy psyche.
How about focusing on how much Americans waste on truly useless trash, such as junk food. And I won't even bring up they then spend weight-loss measures...
-Robert