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Rovers May Survive Martian Winter
yokem_55 writes "According to this article on Yahoo News, Mars rover engineers are beginning to consider the possibility that the rovers may be able to survive the oncoming Martian winter in a hibernation mode, and then return to activity when spring returns to the red planet. The article ends with a quote from Steve Squires speculating that, 'we're looking at the final demise of these vehicles perhaps as late as the onset of our second winter on Mars.'"
Always nice to see the reminder that NASA can do great fucking engineering when the mission is properly separated from politics.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
A dust cleaner would be another thing that could fail... as would anything else to extend the mission time frame. Instead of a more complex system that could run a year, they made a simple system to last a couple months. Simple seems to be a really good thing when you can't go over and kick it if it gets stuck.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Does anyone else get the feeling that the rovers were actually designed to last this long, but the lifespan that was published was a PR version that was extraordinarily short, so that in the event the rovers didn't last this long, they could save having to answer questions?
... until after we've had the experience to back up the assumptions made about the longevity of the hardware.
Yes. Two words: Insurance Policy.
NASA can't keep paying insurance on the rovers for years and years, so they plan (in the budget) for limited life times. Set your targets low, get as much done as you can within the limits of those targets, and get out.
But we should never forget that our estimations for how long things last are completely arbitrary
The lifetime of the rovers is not so much about science as it is about beauracracy and politices, and ultimately 'responsibility'.
Personally, I don't see why we just kick out the beauracrats entirely, throw all Insurance premium mafia ripoffs to the winds, and build harder rovers.
Maybe we don't need to keep going to Mars, maybe we just need to 'learn to stay there' technologically longer than our society is currently capable of supporting. (Insurance is a 'society' thing, it isn't technological...)
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
These things are engineered to last a certain ammount of time, as component specifications are generally conservative equipment will often last longer than it was designed for.
Take the voyager 2 probe, this was launched with the intent of exploring Jupier and Saturn. But they managed to extend the mission out to both Neptune and Uranus.
Of course they thought about these posibilities, they chose the launch date such that they could continue their slingshot in that direction :-)
I know i'm asking for the imposible here, but couldn't you have read the article first before asking us to spend time telling you things that are already in the article? WTF makes our time so cheap, and you so precious that we have to digest this short article for you so you dont have to read it!
Anyhow to awnser your question, allow me to quote the article: "Part of the wintering over strategy will involve positioning the rovers to soak up as much continuous sunlight, even as the Sun moves low in the martian sky, Bell said. Secondly, the robots are to be oriented so that communications links with orbiters zipping overhead is maximized, he pointed out."
In otherwords, they will go into low power mode, but not be switched off, and hopefully be positioned so that they wont loose communication for very long, if ever
Try
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9000ms, Maximum=10000ms, Average=9100ms
Reminds me of a Scotty quote, I can't seem to find it online, but it had something to do with him always telling the captain that it would take 10 hours to fix something when it would really take 5, so when Kirk told him to do it in 5 it would make him look brilliant. The rule of halfs I guess. But what if your superior asks for it in 4 hours? I guess you're screwed then.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I think they could both be in the northern (or southern) hemisphere and still be on opposite sides of the globe. Eg, Russia and Canada or Australia and Argentina.
NASA also used to historically "overbuild" these machines to as much of a degree as they possibly could too, within the bounds of such parameters as launch weight, power consumption, budget, etc. Surely these "overbuilt" qualities are a significant factor in the machines' ability to far exceed their original intended missions.
Nowadays, the beancounters have much more say over the engineers, and the "overbuilding" is done to a much lesser degree.
NASA does a ton of incredibly good things to encourage science and technology.
They supported over 30 FIRST teams when I was in FIRST - I would bet they support more now. Look at the link, it's an incredible program. If possible, get your company or school involved in it. FIRST was one of the best experiences of my career.
Note: FIRST stands for:
For
Inspiration and
Recognition of
Science and
Technology
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.