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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.
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)
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.