Slashdot Mirror
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."
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."
They might not have for a simple reason. It may originally have been decided that the parts on the rover had a very limited lifespan due to problems like the temperature swing throughout the day. Given the existence of these problems it was probably assumed that the lifespan limitation due to dust collection would never come into play. Now that we realize that the parts have lasted it may be an error, admittedly with hindsight, not to have dealt with the dust.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
200 MPH winds at 0.01 atmosphere aren't that big a deal. There's some dust. Here are Viking lander pictures taken during a Martian dust storm in 1976.
High chance, then, that when you finally do turn it off, they won't come back up. I get a lot of clients that say their ancient servers worked great for a decade and then after a power outage *boom* nothing. Make a backup while it's still running .. onto current media. ;)
:-)
What happens is that the heads collect a lot of gunk that's normally scrapped off when the heads park. If they don't park enough, they can end up "sticking" to the parking spot. Oddly enough, I haven't run into that problem yet. The machine has been turned off a few times over the years (primarily power failures before I got a UPS) and I've never run into this problem. Gotta love quality parts!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade