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."

Comments

Normal

[madaxe42]

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.

Re:Normal

[shaitand]

You do understand the rovers have already done everything their supposed to do and everything now is just whatever extra we can squeeze in before they die?

Why would they stop working?

[lancomandr]

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.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[twoshortplanks]

They run out of power. The units are recharged by solar panels which stop working as well over time as they slowly get covered by dust and dirt that can't be cleaned off.

Also every action the rovers take place them in danger, so there's risk associated with every day of their existance - if they get stuck, it's not like there's anyone there to pull them off a rock or turn them back over.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[SB5]

The solar panels get covered with dust, and NASA has investigated solutions to stop that even using windshield washer type things and what not... all the solutions turned out to be worthless, impractical, and a waste of weight... NASA likes to equip multiple backup systems and they simply can't with that. Ultimately the solar panel cannot collect enough power and the battery dies... Mars isn't exactly a very nice enviroment to work in either... dust storms that last for days or longer...

Home robotics kits couldn't do nearly anything these guys do... We would have to send HUNDREDs of home robotics kits to even get close to the results of a couple of our rovers... The failure rate would be higher on those kits too...

Re:Why would they stop working?

[ErichTheWebGuy]

It seems like the expectations for home robotics kits greatly exceed those of the Mars rovers. Hopefully someone can explain it.

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.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[Pete Brubaker]

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.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[Sven-Erik]

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.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[mrright]

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.
--

Re:Why would they stop working?

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Think how many poor people the king of Spain could have fed with all the money he spend on Christopher Columbus' search for a new route to Asia. Had the king of Spain given the money to the poor, and assuming you are an American, I doubt you would be here on Slashdot trolling about the uselesness of science and exploration.

I'm an AC, a proud AC.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[Jugalator]

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".

Why do these comments always come up when NASA's budget is neglible compared to others? In the big picture, NASA's funding has given them a hard time to find things already, since the government need the money for military funding. Oops, weren't you just argumenting against these things?

The Federal Pie Chart

NASA gets in total $15.5 billion for fiscal year 2004. Compare that to the billions in the pie chart above.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[david.given]

hey hey kids, and what happens when;

a) the thing blows up in launch before you get it out into space. = some shit on the bottom of a sea bed somewhere (yes I know there is little risk of it going into the atmosphere.)

They're in really, really tough boxes. If your booster explodes, you comb through the debris, find the RTG still intact in its box, and recycle it --- they're expensive. (This has actually happened.)

b) you get nuclear waste "stuck" somewhere on top of a rock.

It's in a really, really tough box. It's not going anywhere and it won't leak.

c) you use a shortcut with nuclear fuel. Sure it might be better "now" but in principle running things of solar is damned fine engineering. Not only that, but any tech advancements that are made for space (remember the public is paying for all your little space toys, while people starve no less) can filter down to people everywhere.

I'm sorry, this paragraph makes no sense. RTGs are made of nuclear fuel, that's how they work. Yes, solar panels are good engineering, but RTGs are far more suitable for solving the job at hand. Yes, the public is paying, but space exploration is a pathetically tiny amount of money compared to what's spent on welfare or the armed forces, and the extra knowledge gained by extending the lifespan of the probe probably outweighs the (tiny) extra expense. Yes, technology trickles down, but solar panels are fundamentally only useful for certain specialised tasks on Earth, and they're approaching the theoretical maximum efficiency anyway; there are a lot of tasks for which RTGs --- even on Earth --- would be really handy. And there isn't any research being done into those because people think 'nuclear' rhymes with 'evil'.

I'm afraid everything you've said indicates that you've bought into the anti-nuclear propaganda. Try doing some research and getting an opinion of your own.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[HeghmoH]

This has been discussed to death. The people working on these rovers are very smart, and they surely thought of this idea. Wiper blades imply a hefty wiper-blade subsystem, meaning less weight available to devote to other subsystems. Moreover, the solar cells are merely the first system likely to fail; find a way to keep them alive indefinitely, and you find something else that will die (such as the rechargeable batteries) in short order.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[foidulus]

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.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[barakn]

If you try to wipe off the dust without getting the surface wet, you scratch the surface and end up with a worse problem than dust. So in addition to your $20 blades (actually much more expensive because you'd need material that survives extremely cold temp), you'd need to find a fluid system that doesn't freeze at those temperatures, doesn't boil at that low pressure, doesn't interfere with any of the scientific instruments, and doesn't dissolve the panels or wiper components. To save weight you might try to recycle the fluid, introducing a filtration system, but there will be unavoidable loss to evaporation (it has to or it will remain and attract dust), so you'll need to bring more than enough for one wipe. Then one of your fellow engineers complains because the volume, mass, and energy requirements of your wiper system has bumped their scientific instrument out of the final design. An accountant finds your cost estimate was off by some 5 orders of magnitude. You're fired.

Re:Why would they stop working?

[david.given]

Now maybe nuclear tech maybe a way to solve this particual problem better, however in general we know today it's a dead end. Nuclear power does not pay of in the long run! [....] Why do I call it a dead end? Because when economically clalculating nuclear powerplants as project novists always calculate the break-even point. Thats a wrong calculation. You always have to take into account ALL payments that a project involves even those after break even point, and those after closure of the plant. And they are enourmous (e.g. to dismantle a nuclear powerplant costs more than 20 times than the costs to build it first place. Also we have nuclear waste FOREVER, with every year into all future we've to carry the costs. (calculated as irredeemable costs).

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...

Worth It

[ErichTheWebGuy]

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.

Re:Worth It

[Darkon]

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.

I'd like to think that by the time we have people on Mars with the equipment and time to go looking for old rovers and the like, we might have a museum on Mars itself to put them in.

Re:Worth It

[AndroidCat]

People being people, by that time we'd also have protests and demonstrations by the Free Mars Movement over the removing of historic artifacts of Mars' past from their native land.

well...

[Anonymous Coward]

oh it's so frustrating to watch. Its like on horror movies...

Don't go there. oh oh .. awww see now you are stuck with scary martians

Exciting, but perhaps down is the way...

[InternationalCow]

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 :)

Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way...

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.

Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way...

[Sven-Erik]

Well, you have the "deep sea" equivalent of NASA, called NOAA - National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration that explore the deep seas.

Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way...

[InternationalCow]

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.

Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way...

[M1FCJ]

You must be kidding. With all those ships moving around, do you think oceans are nice and clean? The bottom is full of muck, dead animals, plants and lots of junk. Check this Guardian article about what's happening to Titanic because of all the rubbish.

Re:Exciting, but perhaps down is the way...

[pipingguy]

things that have been a direct result of the space program (like ball-point pens)

Huh?

The history of the ball point pen

"By 1950, Paper-mate was making good, cheap ball-point pens, and in 1954, the Parker pen company, which had stood aloof from the fray, brought out a quality ball-point. In 1957, the badly wounded Eversharp sold its pen division to Parker, and Eversharp assets were finally liquidated in the 1960s."

Fascinating facts about the invention of the Ballpoint Pen by Ladislas Biro in 1935.

History of Office Products: Ballpoint Pen

NASA should have consulted Q

[Alain Williams]

Looking at the picture of the crater, the rover presumably may not have enough grip to get out.

If only NASA had fitted the tyre grips used by James Bond in 'Die Another Day', it is not as if they cost a lot .

Falling down?

[anshil]

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)

Re:Falling down?

[Technonotice_Dom]

From the pictures in the link it doesn't look that difficult to get a rover into - I think the main problem is traction when trying to get it out.

According to NASA they're aluminium wheels and their main purpose looks like it was to absorb the shock and go over rocks than get the traction required to climb back out of a crater.

I'd imagine they have quite a bit of weight behind them too...

We're in the future

[aussie_a]

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.

Re:Hmm...

[jeff munkyfaces]

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.

Shadows?

[bigattichouse]

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.