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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."
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.
Or conservative estimates. I've had hard drives rated for around 3000 hours that lasted more like 60000.
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.
That is good engineering!
:-)
Kodos to the designers !
Ditto on that. I've long complained that they didn't use an RTG or SRG on the craft. It seems that the engineers did such a good job that it was unnecessary.
I *still* think that probes should use RTGs, though, so that we can get the best bang for our buck.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
In other news, NASA plans on visiting all 3,158 Starbucks locations on Mars.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Kodos to the designers !
Kang to everyone else !
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
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
I destroy stickers trying to peel them off. Imaging a robotic arm doing the same. It would be more retarded-looking than those Skill Crane games at the bowling alley trying to pick stuff up.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
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...
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
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.
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.
You are too late. You have obviously forgotten about the little pieces of Beagle which are randomly strewn about the Martian surface.
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.
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.
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.
I'm all for using these folks as our first conscripted astronauts in such a project.
Screw that. I'm keeping the RTGs to myself. These guys don't realize that ENERGY is what keeps you ALIVE in space. (Technically here on Earth as well. We just happen to have taps on a nice Fusion generator sitting next door.) I'd send them up with a few cell phone batteries and see how long they survive on breathing lithium after they're no longer able to crack water or CO2.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So the OP was correct, for X == 0.82.
That puts the 300 meg one at ~12 years old, and the 1.6 gig one at ~9 years old. Both drives are never turned off.
.. onto current media. ;)
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
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!
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
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
One of the team leads called Cartalk a few weeks ago. They asked about building something to clean off dust, and he said they get asked that ALL THE TIME. They looked at a variety of solutions, from windshield-wipers to peel-off stuff to blowing compressed air across it.
In the end, all of the solutions weighed more than just making the photocells 50% bigger to allow for dust build-up, so they did that. They were very tight on launch space and weight.
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.
welcome our new martian enhanced overlords
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.
The thing is, NASA really needs the rovers as long as possible, so NASA engineers them the best it can with the resources we give it.
Then, when it comes time for NASA to apply for a budget to run the rovers, the agency gives a conservative estimate on the rovers' lifespan. It gives an estimate they are confident they can deliver on.
This accomplishes two things: First, it keeps the budget request relatively low, which makes it more likely that the budget request will be approved. Since there's no mission at all without the budget approval, it makes sense to give a conservative cost estimate and a low budget number.
Second, it makes it easy for NASA to deliver on what it promises. If NASA announced that the rovers could last as long as six months or more, and one of them broke early on, NASA would get no credit for making it as far as it did. Rather, you and thousands of other asshats like you--including several asshats who have some direct authority over NASA's budget--would excoriate the agency for falling short of its goals.
Better to engineer the best rover you can with the resources you have, and give a conservative estimate of the mission's lifespan. If it exceeds that estimate, bonus! NASA goes back to the budget authorities with a clear win under their belt, another project delivered as promised, and some solid results to show that an addtional budget allocation is justified to continue the mission past the lower time limit and towards the upper end of the lifespan estimate.
What's more, by doing the budget approvals in stages like this, it gives you and I (and the budget authorities, of course) an opportunity to judge the value of the first 90 days before committing 250 days' worth of budget to the mission.
And the best you can come up with is "those NASA assholes must have been padding their engineering estimates! Unacceptable!"
Another thing: You don't win any credits by quoting "scotty" in "tng". Consider this: NASA is a government agency. It has to deal with politics, bureaucracy, and the human error that attends on every complex undertaking since the dawn of time. You yourself can't spell, punctuate or use basic grammar with any consistency. Yet you presume to criticize the methods NASA must use to achieve great feats of engineering and exploration. What is wrong with you?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I've long complained that they didn't use an RTG or SRG on the craft. It seems that the engineers did such a good job that it was unnecessary.
How about that. Do you suppose that there might be reasons why the engineers chose not to use them?
Do you know what one of those weighs? There are very good reasons not to use them. The usual reason is dry mass, and power per unit mass - solar cells are much more effective in both regards, so when designing spacecraft, solar usually wins out, if you have access to the sun.
RTGs are not the solution to every extraterrestrial power problem. Some, but not all, and apparently this wasn't one of them. How about that.
Believe it or not, I do understand the tradeoffs. The reason why I keep pushing for RTGs is that they are a necessary component to *long lasting* probes. The current Mars probes are doing well, but their batteries will eventually start to decay. When that happens, they'll go dead as soon as nighttime hits. With an RTG robot, you can have an explorer as rugged as the Hubble telescope. Scientists could rent time to use the rover as it passes by various points of interest. So what if it takes years for the Rover to move thousands of miles? Slow and steady, it will get there eventually.
;-D
RTGs are not the solution to every extraterrestrial power problem. Some, but not all, and apparently this wasn't one of them.
Of course, you're right. We need to start using Nuclear Power Plants. Think of the engines and science packages we could power!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The mechanics for the rovers were built inhouse at the JPL in Pasedena. JPL has a rather extensive machine shop with many expert machinists trained for exactly this kind of thing. As far as the instrumentation, several parts of it (such as MINI-TES) were developed at other universities, then integrated at the JPL facility.
Unlike the two previous failed missions (Polar Lander and climate orbiter) which were built under contract with rockwell, these were built in-house, so as to avoid the problems that sank the previous missions.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Think about it: when NASA says they expect a rover to last for (say) 90 days, they don't know that for sure. They can make an educated guess, but it's based on a whole bunch of uncertainties: the chance a major component will fail, the weather on Mars, the specific nature of the mission once they see what's around, you name it. So, really, when they say it will last for 90 days, they mean there is a 99% chance it will last at least 90 days ... but that also means there is a 99.9% chance it will last 60 days, and a 50% chance it will last at least 200 days.
I'm making those numbers up, of course, but that's the basic process. In statistical terms, the lifetime of the rover is a random variable whose distribution NASA estimates before launch. Because mission failure is such a disaster (you can't repair the rover!), NASA has to define mission success as something they have a good chance (say, 99% or better) of achieving. That means that the stated duration of the mission is the 1% quantile of the lifetime distribution of the rover (still with me?). That's a pretty small quantile -- by definition, there's a 99% chance the rover will last longer than that, and a very good chance it will last much longer.
So, we shouldn't be surprised the rovers have lasted as well as they have, and we shouldn't accuse NASA of being overly conservative. They're being exactly as conservative as they need to be to have a good chance of mission success.
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.!
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
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?