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Mars Rovers on New Missions

Posted by michael on from the keeps-going-and-going dept.

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."

14 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Why would they stop working? by lancomandr · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Because the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers are in such great condition and 'keep going and going'

    Could someone please explain to me what exactly would cause a rover that cost $400 million to develop and deploy to fail after several months? I'm not trying to start a ruckus. Perhaps I should've kept up more but I honestly wonder what causes these rovers to cease functioning. It seems like the expectations for home robotics kits greatly exceed those of the Mars rovers. Hopefully someone can explain it.

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    "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

    1. Re: Why would they stop working? by photonic · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Seems like a prime opportunity for a nuclear powered rover!
      I believe that's exactly the thing they want to do with the Mars Science Laboratory, to be launched around 2009. Some time ago I saw a presentation on Laser Induced Spectroscopy, which they want to include in that mission. Essentially what they want to do is to put a high power pulsed laser with a small telescope on top of the rover mast. Its light can be focused to a tiny spot some tens of meters away. You pick up the light that is caused by the heated/burnt/evaporated rock and analyse it with an optical spectrum analyser. In this way you can remotely analyse a rock in a few minutes, which costs them a whole day right now with the robotic arm.
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      karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
    2. Re:Why would they stop working? by foidulus · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Well, also bear in mind that government debt is not the same thing as personal debt. People/companies/states who invest in government bonds are funding the government debt. Your tax money used to pay interest on government debt, goes to all the old people living off their bonds. If you reduce government debt, it means bonds are called in and paid off. That is not necessarily a good thing, since it increases the money supply, which could cause inflation. The bottom line is that government money/debt is just numbers in a computer...
      You ignored one crucial fact, a large part of that debt is actually owned by foriegn governments. From wikipedia
      Treasury statistics indicate that foreigners bought 58 percent of the securities that Treasury sold to investors. Some 60 percent of that 58 percent was bought by central banks. A large percentage of that went to the central banks of Japan and China. This exposes the United States to financial or political risk that either bank will stop buying Treasuries - or selling them heavily.
      The US economy is now slightly held hostage to places like China. If they decide to sell their bonds, interest rates would rise significantly because the government has to honor the debt and find new investors willing to buy it, and there is a good chance the US economy would slide back into a recession. You are right, we shouldn't sell off all the debt(the debt is almost as old as the country itself, one of Alexander Hamilton's first acts as Secretary of the Treasury was to combine all the state debts into national ones; solidifying the union). It is very dangerous to have these large debts, and programs beneficial to science such as NASA and education get "crowded out" by military spending and interest payments.

    3. Re:Why would they stop working? by SharpFang · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, people keep mentioning dust, solar panels, batteries degrading...
      These can work several years if developed properly.
      What is the worst nemesis that can change the fate of the rovers in matter of hours are the martian storms. With wind blowing 200-400km/h, object the size of the rover without a solid shelter firmly bolted to the ground will just take off and fly bouncing randomly at speed not much lower than the wind. Then just a random rock on route, *smash* and pick the pieces of the rover over next 5000 kilometers of martian desert.

      On the other hand, there was an idea of "tumbleweed" style probes that would travel with the storms, designed with surviving the storm in mind. But Spirit and Opportunity will live only until the first storm and they are extremely lucky it hasn't happened yet.

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      45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  2. Falling down? by anshil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I actually wonder if the only real danger as the story posts constits of never getting out of the crater, but actually also to make a safe journey downward without stumbling, falling and bursting? (Then you've a wreckage without any scientific data to make it payoff)

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    Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
  3. Re:NASA should have consulted Q by mikael · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Or maybe if the rover could carry it's own rock climbing rope (like spiders going down walls). It's got the drill to make holes, all it would need is a climbing rope wrapped around a spindle and a means to release/cut the rope if it was no longer needed.

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    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  4. Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way... by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Did you ever consider that the deep sea is one of the vanishingly few places on the planet that hasn't been destroyed by humans? The sooner we begin "exploring", the sooner the environmental degradation occurs. I don't think we need to work on an aquatic Cortez just to get you some more species to kill and extract chemicals from their dead bodies. Just a thought.

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    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  5. Taking the risk? by SharpFang · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Heh, they risk it won't ever get out of the crater? Now what a pity would that be.
    They shouldn't pack it into the rocket and keep it on earth because here it wouldn't be put at risk of getting damaged.

    Okay, sarcasm aside: What reason would there be for Opportunity ever (before its technical death) to leave the crater? The surroundings are well examined and there's a strong doubt anything more interesting will be found outside the crater, and after all the probes are there not to PERFORM as much examinations and tests as possible but to FIND interesting things. You can ride around in circles and examine the same rock over and over for years finding nothing new, or you can move on into new, maybe more dangerous terrain, but find what you seek in matter of hours. Are we trying to make a progress or just to beat the time record?

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    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  6. Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way... by InternationalCow · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A is for aqua (water) and S is for Sea :). Just kidding. I'm not sure whether there is such a great difference between sea and space exploration. Both envirnoments are not meant for humans and will kill you if you're stupid. Of course, deep sea vehicles will have to withstand immense pressures, but so will for instance any vehicle that is ever to explore Jupiter. There's a great story about this by Arthur C. Clarke (I forget the title - someone?) where this parallel is drawn and a case is made for deep sea exploration as a kind of prelude to planetary exploration. There's not that much deep sea exploration being done that results in observations that the general public can have a look at. I doubt whether military observations made by subs will be made public. The advances resulting from space exploration are a continuing point of discussion so I won't go into that. Re the vast resources - you're right, but we have no idea whatsoever of the resources hidden in our seas.

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    ----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
  7. Hmm... by acceber · · Score: 1, Interesting
    It's great to hear that the rovers are operating well beyond first expectations and predictions, it's sad to think that their eventual death will quite possibly due to the physical barriers of the Mars terrain, rather than because of the end of their "natural life".

    The question is, why didn't NASA incorporate this into the design of the rovers. They have such high tech equipment encompassed such as hazard avoidance cameras, mechanical senses etc, outlined here that it seems obvious that the rover should be able to get out of craters. After all, Mars is full of them, the terrain is very rocky and unstable.

  8. Shadows? by bigattichouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Going down in the crater will decrease the rover's daily income of sunlight, won't it.. granted maybe only a few seconds. But those seconds will add up to shave that lifespan down quite a bit.

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    meh
    1. Re:Shadows? by mrright · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But there is also a positive side: being inside the crater, the rover is not as exposed to the cold night sky as it would be on a plain. And maybe they can drive the rover to a slope where the panels get pointed to the sun to compensate for the shadows.

      The slope will also be a major issue for spirit once it climbs the columbia hills. It will probably avoid the sides that point away from the sun. Maybe it will drive to an especially good spot each day to refuel the batteries.

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      Private property is the central institution of a free society (David Friedman)
  9. were the solar panels made from... by zogger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    self cleaning glass?
    I know there's no rain on mars, but perhaps any high winds, plus this type of glass, might extend the usefulness of the PV panels. Of course, I also don't know how much this new type of glass would degrade the electrical conversion rates with the panels either.

  10. this is the new cheaper idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Not using an RTG was almost certainly not because of nuclear fears. NASA isn't afraid to use an RTG.

    It's most likely because of cost.

    Honestly, I think a solar cell is a better match anyway. Because the unit is going to stop working anyway due to the conditions. Despite what you said, preventing component failure is not a trivial thing.
    Second, the units had to be small and light. These vehicles have to move around. They have to haul that RTG around with them all the time. Making it heaver would make it less agile, less able to climb hills.
    But I think the major reason it isn't there is the "flip-over factor". Honestly, it is very likely these things will end up either trapped by rocks or flipped over. These are some of the first self-driving rovers, so I'm sure the suspicion they would screw up is high.

    Since the units are likely going to be immobile within a few months anyway, why do we need a power source that last years?

    If NASA ever feels they can make a rover that can likely drive around for years, I'm sure they'll consider a more permanent power source.