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Mars Rovers Alive Until 2005?
maggeth writes "The BBC is reporting that negotiations are under way to extending funding for the Mars rovers beyond this September. Originally designed to work for 90 Martian days, they now predict they may last well beyond the 250 Martian days they had announced previously." hoferbr writes "A new analysis by Phil Berardelli at the United Press International quotes Steve Squyres, chief scientist for the Mars rover mission, in which he says that the Mars rovers '... could go into 2005'. Spirit and Opportunity will complete six months on the Martian surface on July."
That is good engineering!
Kodos to the designers !
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
This is great news. Not only for the science, but it also adds to NASA's credibility. Sure, they thought it would only last 250 Martian days, but when it comes to funding in the future, this may help, however little.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
A Martian day is not much longer than an Earth day - 24 hours, 37 minutes as opposed to 23h, 56m.
The Raven
I read that last line as " Spirit and Opportunity will compete six months on the Martian surface on July."
I hope they do. Might as well go out with a bang after such success. Might be a way to get funding too.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
Just one extra mechanical arm with a small wisk broom to brush dust off the solar panels, and those rovers might last for a decade.
I'm glad that NASA and JPL have had such a great success with the two rovers. Maybe the amazing results of this will inspire manpower and funding for future missions.
Unmanned robotic missions are great for doing science work, and they should definately continue without scaling back funds. However, it is equally important to continue working on human space flight simply to prove that we can do it and to prepare for the time when a human colony on the moon or mars is paved by the groundwork of unmanned missions.
If anything it'll give us some good data on what Martian conditions do to hardware in the long term.
I know that right now one of Spirits wheel motors was starting to act up a bit.
As Martian "Winter" approaches, it'll be interesting to see what really cold weather does to the rovers (other than breaking them).
However, with that all said, I think we should be vigorously working on putting a colony on the Moon.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Starbucks have just opened on Mars and the helpful staff have offered to clean the rover's solar panels once a day and stick in a couple of extra AA batteries.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
But for 900 million bucks, you'd expect they could do just a little better than 90 days :). In all seriousness, though, good news for NASA, and it might raise morale in the organization while they try to re-organize to become a bit more effective. Re-orgs always hurt morale - at least they're standing a little higher when they take the hit.
:).
This is the first of many such outstanding successes, I hope
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Now we get to hear more meaninless info about red rocks for even longer!!
In other news, NASA plans on visiting all 3,158 Starbucks locations on Mars.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
LaForge: "Yeah, well I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."
Scott: "How long would it really take?"
LaForge: "An hour!"
Scott: "Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did you?"
LaForge: "Well of course I did."
Scott: "Oh, laddie, you've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!"
-- "Relics", Stardate 46125.3
How come they didn't put some of those NASCAR windshield type plastic overlays on the solar panels they could just peel off after a couple of months to keep the panels clean?
Seems like it is doing pretty well without doing that but I wonder if they thought about doing something like.
Inquiring minds want to know.
"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life." -- Marcus Aurelius, _Meditations_, Book 9, 37
Johnny Five is Alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
...the second they release Mars Rover: Longhorn.
Can that be right? 23:56 for an Earth day? Where are the extra 4 minutes? That's two hours a month of slippage--that can't be right.
Having spent $X billion so far, (and worth it, imho), the worst blunder possible is to deny the additional funding. Now that the probes are up and operating, a dollar spent here is worth ten (if not more) spent tomorrow, because the risk phase is over. Everything we get now is bonus.
<semi-sarcasm>Anyway, most of our politicking seems to be based on "not telegraphing weakness"... So, don't cut short the mission, or else the terrorists win.</semi-sarcasm>
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
isn't it convenient that it will work for way longer... and NASA will get more money? not to badmouth or anything, I personally think that NASA is a great agency for our country, and space is important, once we run out of resources we hopefully want to be able to go into space and get resources from other places, and NASA is definitely helping us out there, although other non government companies are doing things, space is a very expensive deal, and it is hard to do, which is why NASA needs so many resources. But it definitely would make sense if NASA underestimated purposefully just so that they could be able to impress, but that is just my opinion
It's a good thing that the piece of crap space shuttles aren't launching anymore. NASA now has a pretty hefty wad of cash burning a hole in its pocket, which it can throw into programs like this. It's also putting out a whole bunch of proposal requests for all types of really cool, and far more useful research. Now if only the ISS would be abandoned too.
You'd think they could come up with some better names for things up there in space. Patio of the Gods is pretty cool, but naming a rock afer a state? Please...
This is another example of NASA doing the technical stuff right (rovers that can last much longer than the original project speicifications required), but bad budgeting. They pay huge amounts to build the rovers and rocket them to Mars, but then they have to negotiate whether they can fund continuing to use them once they're already there?
The real headline here is "NASA considers turning off working rovers because they project budget was exeeded."
His website offers insight into why he does this ('to be different') and has pictures of the 4000+ craters he's visited.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
Isn't this overkill? Doesn't this mean they spent too much money on engineering this thing?
Not to be too trollish, but if you are building a bridge to hold 10 tons and it ends up holding 100 tons, you are wasting resources.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
If only...
They also announced in the same conference that the rovers would be renamed to "International Space Stations" and that "Mars" was now to be referred to as "In Orbit Around Earth." Sounds like somebody wants to decommission a program without giving back the budgetary funds.
I only wish that marsnet had been establish first so that we could have done more science at a faster pace.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The hardware may work or may fail, workarounds for errors may be found or not, things may be fixed, with cautious use the rovers may last for years...
Until a storm comes.
Martian dust storms come with wind at 200km/h or faster, carrying sand and smaller rocks, picking anything that isn't attached to the ground and carrying it for hours. One storm, and the rover is past, pieces of it scattered over several thousands of kilometers. And a storm will come sooner or later.
That's why there was a design of "tumbleweed" style rovers: they never deflate the airbags and let the storm carry them, letting them travel for half the planet in random direction, gathering data, until the storm weakens and leaves the "tumbleweed" in place until the next storm comes.
Current design... may live until 2005 or longer... if the storm doesn't come.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Able to salvage parts from the Beagle wreckage then? :)
A goal is a dream with a deadline
The parent refers to the length of an Earth day when the planet's rotation is measured against the "fixed" stars (sidereal time). More precisely, this "sidereal day" is 23 hours 56 minutes 4.091 seconds. Measured against the sun, however, the length of an Earth day is 24 hours. When you use the fixed stars as a frame of reference, the motion of the entire solar system puts a little extra "English" on the spin of the Earth.
Jesus Christ. Not only did you NOT get first post, you missed it by 6 posts! I think you are the most miserable fucking failure I've ever seen. You failed it so fucking bad that it is almost a waste of my time to inform you how much you fucking failed it. If you were in the army, they would send a 4-star general to your mother's home to sadly inform her that you fucking failed it in action. Your failure is of such a magnitude that fusion energy pales in comparison. There are really no words that can describe your utter failure to achieve the coveted first post. So I will leave you with a haiku:
You fucking fail it
First post is just not for you
Death is the answer
the location of beagle. I know we're probably talking a long distance, but its not as if we're doing anything else with them.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Why didn't they use them instead?
Even if the mechanical elements of the rovers were to break or become unusable and they couldn't drive around or dig, it would still be very valuable to have functioning cameras and other sensors on Mars for some time to come.
It just seems odd to spend so much money and take so many chances flying something to Mars to not do everything possible to ensure that the device worked for a long, long time.
I'm very impressed with the Rover program, but I don't believe their engineers really expected the rovers to just die shortly after 90 days. At this point, that seems to be too big of an "error" in their calculations. However, in successful business and successful PR ventures, you promise low and then deliver high, so to speak, to impress. I'm guessing that NASA has been promising below their internally known ability to guarantee restored public confidence in their operations and organization. The new announcement may have been a surprise for them... but I'm guessing not. NASA needs a bevy of widely known successes to convince the American public that it should be kept afloat. So far, so good!
How do we know that NASA didn't just make them to last 250 days and said 90, and then when they lasted over 90 days they will be geniuses?
But the real logic is along those lines. NASA doesn't want to over promise, that will lead to trouble for them. If they say they'll get six months out of a device and it dies of normal wear and tear after 3, well then people are going to want to know who fucked up.
I'm sure NASA figured that, to a high degree of certianty, the rovers could pull 90 days no problem. So you report that as the expected life. If they last longer, great, but if they don't no one is going to bitch. Given the big unknowns of a mission like this, you want your estimate to be nice and conservative.
Also, you want to priortise your research. If you put a 90 day cap, you make sure to priortise the most important stuff to happen in that window. Then you can move on to other stuff, even if that's not the most efficient way of doing it. Even if you have to sacrafice some efficency, yuo don't want to do low priority stuff first because that's more efficient, only to find that your hardware broke so you never get to do the high priority stuff.
there is still a LOT of money going into shuttles.... they keep spending money trying to retrofit and update them.... with the last accident they have spent even more trying to update the design.
besides if they abandoned the shuttles tomorrow, it would take a (to me) staggering amount of money just to mothball the fleet. i guess it's not like taking your old car and leaving it in a shady neighborhood hoping the situation will resolve itself.
Having spent $X billion so far,...
The total cost of the Mars rovers (combined) was $820 million, including operations for the first 90 days. The extended mission - another 150 days - was budgeted at $15 million.
They didn't expect the rovers to die after 90 days, the engineers just guaranteed that parts wouldn't fail within the first 90 days. A warranty of sorts. When they launched, they said there was a good chance of them working beyond the first 90 days.
Gives him more time to turn pictures of rocks into alien temples and vehicles. Im sure he will claim it was his dillegence that got NASA to extend the program....right after he slams NASA for covering up the image of a dinosaur on Mars.
Although the NASA coverup about Saturn has his attention now.
Originally they predicted 3 months, extended to 8... now they're talking about over a year of operational time. Is anyone else concerned about the extreme miscalculations that must have taken place to result in such a poor estimation and re-estimation? I realize this IS NASA, that these scientists are brilliant and that there are many factors that I do not know that come into play, but I also realize this is a group who smashed millions of dollars of equipment due to use of improper units. The end result is great, but we really should wonder whey the initial estimates were so bad.
So the OP was correct, for X == 0.82.
I mean...obviously the sturdy and simple soviet engineering caused their Mars Rover to last much longer than the over-designed USA rover...right?
Blar.
All NASA needs to do is find some evidence of materials that could be used in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and we'll have Rovers all over the red planet.
Of course the new Rovers will be contracted out to the biggest campaign contributors and NASA will quickly be integrated into the Department of Homeland Security and tasked with finding fossil fuels throughout our solar system...
ANWR, hell! We got Jupiter!
I ferment meat and I'll have the food groups wired...
However, with that all said, I think we should be vigorously working on putting a colony on the Moon.
Not to be a knowitall but it's actually going to be a lot easier to develop a colony on Mars than on the Moon.
- Mars has vast, known supplies of water on the poles and there's good evidence that it can be found in the ground too.
- The Moon has temperatures both a lot higher and a lot lower than Mars. That makes it harder for equipment to work and us to live.
- The Martian day is tailor made for Humans, just a little over 24 hours. The Moon has a day lasting weeks (pretty sure about that)
- Mars has an atmosphere from which we can extract oxygen with a little basic chemistry. You can crack oxygen from Moon rocks too but it takes a lot more energy.
- The Moon has a lot more radiation hitting the surface than Mars. Mars is still worse than earth but there are little baby magnetic poles to mitigate that.
I could go on and on but really the only drawback of a Mars colony vs a Moon one is the travel time. Given that humans can survive 0g for longer than the trip would take and we have proven life support systems that will work that long, all they should really need is a deck of cards to keep busy for a few months.
Blaze a trail to the New World
As far as the rover's longevity, it's a simple matter of underpromise and overdeliver. This is typical behavior of anybody setting performance review goals and objectives. It's also done by middle managers when they discuss departmental goals with upper management.
Self awareness - try it!
The longer mission means they can accomplish everything they'd hoped to, not just everything they needed to. This means there's less of a case for "We need to send another rover to do more of this" in the future, so either another mission may not be needed or a future mission will not need to waste resources (especially weight, in space exploration mass is money) duplicating the instrumentation and capabilities of these rovers.
Also, since we know the rover design appears robust and successful, it could potentially be reused for another mission without designing a new rover. Let's send one to somewhere like Europa. That'd probably require a larger solar panel or some other power source but the rest of the design could be kept the same, saving the R&D budget.
If we're actually going to do a manned mission to mars, it's also a good idea to test our electronics and mechanical engineering for the environment BEFORE the people get there and depend on it to breathe, so better we learn how to build reliably for mars now.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
I hope that the Huygens probe gets an extra lucky landing spot and provides us with the maximum data possible...
And motivates NASA to send rovers there, and elsewhere!
This has been debated a few times here at slashdot. I learned everything I needed to know from the following NASA report:
PDF file here
I lived in tennessee for close to two years and now feel that it should be where we do our future nuclear testing.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
all they should really need is a deck of cards to keep busy for a few months.
Did you every see the Holloween Simpson's where the family was watching Mr. Burn's ski resort for the winter? (The Shining spoof)
"No beer and no tv make Homer something somthing..."
"Go crazy?"
"Don't mind if I do!!!!"
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
ok, so it was short circuit. brain farts can happen this early in the morning
If funding is tight in the US budget why not let the Europeans take the reigns/pursestrings for a while?
They want to explore Mars but can't seem to get their own experiments to land successfully. By leasing time on the US mission, they'll get to do the science and not have to worry about the harder details.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
What! Are you telling me the present Rovers have lasted that long already? And the Hubble also? Well, then, looks they should be abandoned or we won't have enough money to start the new version with real rubber wheels. Keeping a staff of NASA data-takers costs a lot of money. That comes right out of our budget plans for new projects.
Budget deficit you ask? Well, I'll tell you this. The only way we are going to solve that budget problem is to get it to the attention of the American voters, and what better way than to have the media report on it's enormous size every day. Now if we just give one more tax rebate of $500 to $2000, everyone will be happy and the next administration will have the problem of solving the budget deficit. Sooner or later the Democrats will be in office and will get the budget back to a place where we can manage it again.
One out of two planets relies on solar electric power for 100% of its transportation needs. The other is pumping out so much CO2 that its temperature is rising. It seems like they need more CO2 on Mars and we need more solar electricity here. Ah, humans, doing things backwards.
Why not rent time to the Brits - they should have some leftover budget available.
This has been done before. The original Viking missions used RTGs, with the Viking 1 lander lasting 6 years. The main problem with RTGs is that they require an enormous amount of red tape to go through in order to launch them, drastically increasing their cost.
Ok, this isn't founded on anything but wild speculation, so here goes:
What if the NASA managers told engineers to design rovers meant to last for 2 Martian years, but only told public/congress/funding agencies they were meant for 90 days or whatever? They could go in the hole for a short while on costs, and then "miraculously" extend the life of the rovers and get people to be impressed with their technical savvy. A new funding cycle is approved because the NASA folk "outperformed" their projections, and the real project costs get covered, with some extra money not otherwise available.
Tin foil hat-ish, I know, but given how many stories have come out criticizing the fiscal irresponsibility of NASA, is this completely far fetched?
welcome our new martian enhanced overlords
Sooner or later the Democrats will be in office and will get the budget back to a place where we can manage it again.
You don't actually believe that do you? The only reason there was a budget surplus in the late 90's is that the Tech. Boom was unforseen by the politicians and a lot of taxes were pulled in because of it. Congress quickly realized their mistake of not spending fast enough to maintain the budget deficit.
Until Congress realizes that expendatures and income need to be tied together (ie. projects get X % of the budget not X billion dollars), there is no way in hell the budget will be balanced. As I said before the budget surplus was (from their point of view) a miscalculation by congress and was remedied.
No political party currently in operation in the can or will balance the budget over a long term.
Kind of surprising to see everyone's response so positive. We built this thing with the intention that it'd cease to function after a certain length of time. It roams around a distant planet pretty much doing as it pleases ... usually letting us know what it's up to ... but every once in awhile it neglects to check in.
... it's not going to turn off.
... but keep in mind how congratulatory you were when one of these things on Earth decides it's not quite ready to turn off.
Now it's decided it's not ready to "die". It likes being alive, and whether we want to or not
Anyone else see where this is going? Give it another decade or two
The Mars Extended Service Plan:
3 (Earth) years or 36,000,000 miles...
Both rovers are on opposite sides of the planet, aren't they? So why not sending them on a trek on opposite directions, so that they might meet someday at about 45/-45 degrees of their actual longitude, and have them play destruction derby????????!!!!!!!
Well, look on the bright side. It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with, and it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear. But it absolutely can be stopped if you pour the contents of a Dustbuster over its solar panels.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
That would be the $ in the "BUDGET". I wonder what the real total costs were... money doesn't always flow in the straightests of paths.
If the design life is 90 days, and you design for 115, and you miss miss and only get 60, the project fails in many of its requirements. And it's not like you can go to the corner store and get a replacement part. This isnt like a light bulb, where if your 2000 hour bulbs last an average of 2005 hours, you are ok.. even if some of 'em only last 800 hours. This ONE has to last at least 90 days. Period. If your mandate is to guarantee a very high probability of a 90 day life, it isnt at all unreasonable that if things dont go wrong, you can get 4-5 times that.
If the public weren't so scared and misinformed about "nukyoolar" power then we could power these beasts for a long time. The Cassini spacecraft, the size of a large truck, runs on nuclear power and will survive the cold, dark reaches of space around Saturn for half a decade thanks to this.
Both Galileo (Jupiter) and Magellan (Venus) lastest triple their nominal design time. But parts started failing. They could have each gone on somewhat longer, but NASA felt the science return versus personnel and deep-space communications cost was deteriorating.
My prediction is they pull the plug when the next generation of Mars probes (2006 orbitor) arrives.
Judging by the "made in china" floor fan I bought last summer (that leaks something that looks like motor oil) and the "Silver" tech support I get that is in broken english and nearly incoherent, I would be interested in knowing where the rovers were made. Surely they outsourced to keep costs down.
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So actually they've been there at least 200 months Martian time!
Its real cool to see them have such a success. They should keep this project up as long as possible. Hubble too. To do anything else is to waste our money.
Squirrel!
Wait, you mean Russians designed Beagle?
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Does anybody know of a map or photo with the path of any of the rovers? It would be great to know where they are and the miles they have already covered.
Maybe this sounds childish, but I'm really amazed what now is out of earth's orbit and (still) working:
- The 2 rovers and numerous orbiters @ Mars
- Cassini/Huygens @ Saturn
- Both Voyager missions at the edge of the solar system
- Rosetta
etc.pp.!
I wonder if the Martian atmosphere is dense enough to use an ion-wind fan, and if the draft from it would be meaningful at keeping dust off. And, for that matter, how much power would it take to run?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Recent hypenosys released by the ReFudlicking PartIE indicates likely cancellation of the proposed flight which was to have been manned buy the illegal Aliens & the won-eyed girl, due to a reprioritization leaning towards glowbull WARMongering.
All is not lost.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... successfully traveling throughout the Universe since/until forever. see you there?
As someone who works on systems for the rovers project for JPL, I can safely say that all the specs for the ground control systems and data capacity sets were planned for 90 days of data.
There have been massive upgrades done to the systems recieving data from the rovers to cope with the extended life cycle. This was not a case of over engineering, it just so happens that the rovers have held up on Mars a lot better than we expected.
Remember this is a different planet we are talking about. . .
We should look for Mars Polar Lander and the DS2 probes.
Maybe the Soviet landers...
NASA couldn't get funding for the "Grand Tour" of hitting all of the outer planets (except for Pluto)... all they could get approval for was Jupiter and Saturn.
And so design of the probes and trajectories were done for the full "Grand Tour", but the engineers only published trajectories for the abbreviated mission. Once they got past Saturn (already on the trajectory they needed for the rest of the tour) they started talking about how they just happened to be on course and suddenly the money appeared.
--Rob
If they'd gone in and said "we need $1 billion for these rovers" they would have gotten shot down. Instead they go in and say "we only need $800 million".
Then once they get the rovers up there and they're still working they go back and say "Hey, we've got more science to do. You can give us $200 million to continuing to operate these rovers, or we can spend another $800 million a couple of years from now for another pair of rovers". Guess what? They get the $200 million.
And it's good for the finance people too... because the probability of success on that $200 is almost 100% (the most dangerous portions of the mission are launch, cruise, and landing), while the probability of success on that new $800 million mission is much less than 100%.
--Rob
Now for the budget reason you commented on. Do you think for a minute that tax rebates of $500 to $1000 for each tax payer did not contribute heavily to the increased budget deficit? What do you get for $10 billion or more in interest over four years?
Do you wonder why you pulled out just one line of a satire to comment on?
You forgot your tags ;-)