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Opportunity Rover Encounters Its Own Heat Shield
blamanj writes "Mars Rover Opportunity, a few meters shy of the 2km mark on its odometer, has come across the remains of the heat shield from its landing. This map traces the path of the rover for the past 11 months. It's been averaging about 6 meters/sol.
Spirit, which had to stop to dislodge a rock, is still climbing the "Columbia Hills". It's tough going, and Spirit experiences slippage of up to 80% as it climbs the hills."
Since I assume that they would not know the precise location of the shield, it must have been quite a moment when the thing first slewed into view. It's a bitch getting that Mountain Dew out of the keyboard, isn't it?
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
The crushed-body of an evidently indigenous species was found sprawled in the impact zone of the heat shield....
That stuff is gonna be worth a lot of money some day, when a kid digs it up in their back yard. On Mars. You know, after we all move there.
"It's tough going, and Spirit experiences slippage of up to 80% as it climbs the hills."
Sounds a bit like trying to get out of Gehennom with the amulet.
From the article;
"A potato-sized rock got caught in Spirits's right rear wheel on sol 339"
Come *on* NASA. Potatos vary so wildly in size that comparisons like this are totally useless!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I dont know all that much about these rovers, but jeez... it has only moved 2km in all this time. Surely this is a typo?!
NASA discovered microbes in the immediate area...
Sol 337 was in fact leet, as was this entire mission, dewds.
A "Sol" is one Martian day, btw.
Map
I wonder if these rovers use Energiser (TM) solar panels... they just keep going and going and going :-)
They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera that let them know exactly how far away it was. There's actually been several pictures. I forget how long ago they knew, but they've known for some time where it was.
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long, so it's only now that they get around to looking at it.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Realitives of the dead Martian filed suit today naming NASA in a 10 million wrongful death case. Their lawyers had no comment.
Even if they did not know exactly where the shield was, I'm sure they would have recognized it instantly. There's really nothing else it could be.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
After the heat shield, what will Opportunity look at? There's really not a whole lot--not even very many rocks--on that plain.
Are there scientific targets identified, or are they maybe going to try to "sprint" Opportunity and see how far it can get in the shortest amount of time? Maybe there's other potential sites of interest some distance away.
--
$tar -xvf
...and then the rest of the vets had a good laugh at the expense of the "new kid" they failed to clue in on the location of the shield they had been knowing. Ahh, c'est la vie.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Any insight into this shot yet?
It's not often that we get a chance to examine the integrity of the remaining heat shield in these missions. Let it take a look and see what JPL guys can learn from it for future missions, eh?
It will be interesting to see how much sand has been blown over the shield in almost a year. Might give more insights into Martian weather.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Yeah, I had 80% slippage my first time, too. But you get better after that and it's not as embarassing.
I'd assume the value in looking at the heat shield is to determine how well it performed. I'd guess that's one thing you can never adequately test and maybe getting pictures of the shield can determine if it performed better, worse,or as expected. Obviously this could make future missions more reliable, cheaper, etc.
AccountKiller
Is a sol a day relative to the planet or something? 6 meters seems pretty slow for that, but I dunno.
Adobe put it there.
This is the direct result of p1r4cy...all sorts of dumbasses get a hold of Photoshop and think they can fool people with badly modified images.
Lutefisk is a disgusting Norwegian dish, think of it as fish jell-o. You take some perfectly good pieces of dried fish (yuck) and soak them in lye (yes, really!) for 24 hours. Then you soak the fish in fresh water for 48 hours, before putting it in a pan and letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. Finally you wrap the fish in aluminium foil and bake in the oven at 200C for 30-40 minutes.
The result is a quivering mass of translucent, inedible fish that is served with potatoes, bacon, mashed peas and melted butter (or melted pork fat).
Now, what I want to know is, how did that disgusting dish of spoiled fish end up as the (informal) name of a rock on Mars?
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
heres varios pictures of mars from the lander
So, are these rovers going to make it to being opearional a year after they landed?
I find it amazing that they can throw robots on a rocket, have them land on another planet, and they remain functional for over 300 days.
I hope it knows what to do when it encounters the Sarien Spider Droid.
(Hint: push rock)
If Beagle 2 is not too far away perhaps they can set one of the rovers over and take a looksee at it and determine what happened.
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long...
It seems I hear this just about every mission that doesn't explode/crash within 24 hours of launch. Do you really think that they had no idea how long it would last under ideal conditions?
I dub thee, Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass!
After the heat shield, what will Opportunity look at?... Are there scientific targets identified, or are they maybe going to try to "sprint" Opportunity and see how far it can get in the shortest amount of time?
I have the NASA rover plans right here, and the schedule is as follows:
1. explore Endurance crater (complete)
2. examine discarded heat shield (complete)
3. run rover for endurance trials
4. sprint rover (you called it)
5. race rover
6. jump rover
7. make rover do acrobatic tricks
8. crash rover
9. profit
When (yes when) humans colonize Mars and non-engineer/scientific humans are living there I wonder what they will do with the man made stuff from long ago that will be sitting there inert.
I have a couple of theories as to what the human race will do with this stuff:
a) Cordon off the area around the rovers and heat shields etc. as a "heritage park" for people to visit and think about the events of the past
b) Take the stuff and stick it in a museum on earth
c) As above but create the museum on Mars
d) Melt it down and recycle it
e) Revive the electronics and re-purpose the robots etc.
f) Dump it in the nearest canyon as landfill
Any other suggestions?
"And then I visited Wikipedia
I think what is quoted at the beggining of missions is a worst non-disater case (ie worst case other than a sudden unexpected failure)
they fit the important stuff into that time and then if it survives beyond that they do more stuff
Think of it like designing consumer goods To keep the cost of replacements down you need to make lasting the warranty period almost a certainty. To do that you need to push the mean lifetime way beyond the warranty period.
I heard that, somehow, the rover has been mysteriously dusted off a few times on Mars. - it's been dirty, then cleaned.
My leg was probably being yanked, but has anyone else heard this?
Its a bit subtle, but consider when you drive your RC car around and it hits a rock, flops over, and you walk over and flip it over.
On Mars, theres nobody there to flip the Rover over, or even dislodge stuff from it's tires. They spend all day preparing for a slight bit of movement just so they don't make a mistake worth millions of taxpayer dollars.
Let the alien spacecraft/civilization coverup conspiracy theories commence :)
Does someone knows why the rovers usually take grey scale photos ? Why don't they take them all in color ? To save bandwith ?
Anyone knows ?
The "90 days" was certainly something they expected - maybe even double that. But they also knew that the Martian winter was coming up and that Mars would go behind the Sun, causing Earth to lose contact with the rovers for a number of days.
I think they were really surprised both rovers made it through the Martian winter. That Opportunity is actually back up to the normal output for the solar panels is a welcome surprise.
Spirit doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well. There's problem with the lubrication of the wheels, the brakes may not be releasing - or the circuit that detects them releasing has gone bad, and the dust accumulation on the solar panels has taken it's toll.
There might be more wrong with the Spirit rover, but even I've been skipping some of the updates on the web site.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
We're already trashing up the place!
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
The rock abrasion tool could probably provide some useful dentistry.
--Rob
The rovers have already done their job--they were only supposed to keep working until sol 90! That they're still working is borderline miraculous, and the science they're still doing is pure gravy. We taxpayers got one heck of a deal!
I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long
I was at a presentation by one of the members of the rover science teams six weeks ago.
If there are no surprises, he was talking about the rovers possibly lasting till June or July. By that time, he was suggesting that the rover's batteries would no longer be able to hold enough charge to keep the things operating.
For a while they had been expecting that the solar panels would fail first, but apparently the rate of dust accumulation is less than they expected. (Plus "martian carwash" events seem to have cleared off some of the dust. He felt such events were probably caused by dust devils that happened to cross over the rover.)
Uh, it is explicitly on-topic. RTFA mods
i p00st on your LJ
http://slashdotmirror.cjb.net/
I know it isn't going to happen due to the distances involved, but I'd love it if one of these rovers (or one of the rovers to follow...) were to come across Viking I and/or II. It would be interesting to see how they have withstood the test of time in the last 28 years since their landing. I imagine there is quite a bit of useful science that could be conducted, as both are known variables from nearly 30 years ago, and we have a lot of data from them about their surroundings.
At the same time, Viking I and Viking II are two of the extraterrestrial missions I have early memories of. I was three when they landed, and continued transmitting data until I was nine. So these are old friends I wouldn't mind revisiting.
The current missions aren't close enough to either one to make it, but maybe a future mission will give up a glimpse of these past heroes. One can hope :).
Yaz.
Act 1, Scene 1
Somewhere on Mars, Opportunity crests a rise and sights the Beagle probe. Several hours later, it rolls up to it and begins to extract its rock abrasion tool.
BEAGLE[In British accent] : Is that a rock abrasion tool in your pants or are you just happy to see me?
"Surströmming" == "Pickled Herring"???
Not even close. Pickled herring has a bit of a strong taste that is not for everyone, but it's nowhere close to Surströmming, which you would never believe was meant for human consumption unless you saw people eat it. That is if you managed to stay in the room without throwing up.
It did help to get that "Car Wash" recently from the locals...
Too bad the other is out in the boonies to far for MAA. { Mars Automobile Association } to sprits it also.
Read the submission, not just the emission.
DOJ reports crack is getting cheaper.
Morons.
Learn to read, tards.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Nice, you got me. I should have known better.
the longer the merrier.
[I don't think anyone thought either rover would last this long...] It seems I hear this just about every mission that doesn't explode/crash within 24 hours of launch. Do you really think that they had no idea how long it would last under ideal conditions?
The Pathfinder/Sojourner rover lasted longer than expected, but did conk out after about 30 days. They suspect battery fatique. The new set of Rovers are intentionally better built than Sojourner (which was an experimental probe), but it is basically the same kind of power technology.
Table-ized A.I.
They already knew where the heat shield was. They had a picture from the Mars Orbiter camera
IIRC, the first images of the shield came from the rover's "decent" cameras when it was a few miles high. The images were used by the lander system to correct for vertical motion, which would have otherwise caused the air-bag-encased rover to bounce and roll too much. The system simply kept the adjustment images for later use and they were sent back to Earth soon after landing.
Table-ized A.I.
Thats what she said.
They would last years (assuming the dust doesn't screw up the wheels), be able to travel much farther, and opperate at night.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Just apply a sort of orangish tint in Photoshop.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Yeah, if only. Viking II was accidentally powered down by mission controllers. It'd be a (moderately) interesting engineering exercise to look at the what it would take to recycle the logic in situ. However, even if the two MERs were bullet proof designs, capable of 1k+ miles of travel, they wouldn't be able to make it, Viking II being too far north for the rovers' solar panels to generate sufficient juice.
Luke, help me take this mask off
You asked for it, you got it: 2009 Mars Rover will be Nuclear Powered
http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_2009_Rover.htm
the first images of the shield came from the rover's "decent" cameras
While I'm sure the cameras were more than decent, I'll bet you probably meant the cameras used during the rover's descent to the surface. You had me confused for a short while there.
rather hard to accidentally build the new one better than the old, don't you think?
there can be hours between the so and the what of the so.
To do that you need to push the mean lifetime way beyond the warranty period.
Most warranties don't cover being dropped on an alien planet. Always check the fine print when in doubt.
I do these myself:
Front View
Back view
The impact site
Misc junk just to left of above image
Highly brightened image to show inner heatshield material (looks kinda black).
They usually send down enough data to construct a colour image, but it invovles at least 3 shots with different filters.
Damn, I already moderated this topic. Now I'll have to log in with my sock puppet to comment.
Yes it had to be the wicked witch of the west 'cause Dorothy kill the wicked witch of the east a long time ago....
The pathfinder only went about 110 yards over its two month career. The two Russian Lunakhods lasted just under a year in the harsher lunar climatea and went about 11 km each. The Russians had the advantage of a nuclear power source and semi-interactive remote control (3 second round trip delay).
The MERS had an original operational budget of three months, with two six-month renewals until March 2005. At some point the 2007 and 2009 lander preparations will intrude. NASA cut budgets for Magellan-Venus and Jupiter-Galileo before they completely wore out, but 3-5 times longer than their original design lifetimes.
Recently, the much of the dust was observed to have been removed from the solar panels. Wind is suspected, but not seen. This combined with approaching Martian summer bodes well for battery recharging. There were plans to have rovers "sleep-recharge" every other day or every two of three days, but that isnt needed yet.
The Mountain Dew is only one of the 99 problems NASA is having right now, but a Bitch ain't one of them.
That's how evolution works...
Americans have long dominated the litter industry here on earth. It's encouraging to see their desire to continue that domination on other planets. Too bad their are no Native Martians in need of extermination.
And even when it is on the roll, each rover doesn't move terribly fast, and often needs to navigate around terrain. Nevermind the fact that if you did want to move a long distance, you'd only be able to move a few metres, take a snapshot of your surrroundings, send them back to Earth, and await the next set of movement instructions. Both sending the snapshot and retreiving the next set of instructions takes several hours due to the distances involved, resulting in quite a bit of time spent not going anywhere.
This isn't the whole story. The rover travels in either of two modes: either directly controlled from Earth in complete detail, or instructed by Earth to move to a specific location but allowed to determine its own path (or to give up if there's no safe path). The rovers would not get very far - and certainly Spirit would not have made it the several kilometers from the landing site to the Columbia Hills - if the movement instructions had to be fully scripted from Earth since typically there's only once chance to upload instructions every Martian day.
More information here and a Quicktime animation video here.
According to Steve Squyres.
rather hard to accidentally build the new one better than the old, don't you think?
One can find out after the fact.
Table-ized A.I.
While I'm sure the cameras were more than decent, I'll bet you probably meant the cameras used during the rover's descent to the surface.
I thought that word looked funny when I typed it, but I could not put my finger on the problem. Thanks.
Table-ized A.I.
"Red rover, red rover, send and astronaut over..."
...or something....eh...
_______________
Huh?
(oop.ismad.com) Under W the US is like a big geek: Technically powerful, but not popular.
Well, I would probably have replaced "big geek" by bully. Powerful and unpopular still applies.
I wonder what that thing is just to the lower-left of the heat shield. When I first saw it, the picture was shrunk by my browser, so it looked like a plastic water bottle. On zooming to full size, it looked like some kind of metal spring.
Oh, I just noticed a second one off to the right.
I wonder what it was used for.
WOW!!! That is also how Intelligent design works... Are you saying that Evolution is powered by intelligence?
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Then throw the fish away and eat the foil.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Opportunity is actually back up to the normal output...Spirit doesn't seem to be doing nearly as well.
It is funny how the rovers' names match their situations. Opportunity is lucking out. But Spirit is trying hard against adversity, and its body is weak.
Those kids that named 'em must have been psychic, or something.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Here are links to pictures taken when Opportunity was standing a bit closer:
u nity_n331.html http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportu nity_n332.html
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opport
I always thought that the heat shield should be a little higher on the list of priorities. Examination of how the heat shield weathered the fall would yield invaluable information that could be used to better safeguard future missions.
But that's just one layman's opinion....
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Sojourner was the rover, and the Sagan Memorial Station was the lander/base station. Both the base station and rover had basic, non rechargeable batteries. They were chosen because of the 30 sol maximum mission profile, and rechargeables didn't fit into the "better, faster, cheaper" design.
Actually, Sojourner's mission lasted a lot longer than its batteries. During the last days, it was limited to daytime operations only. The Pathfinder mission was shut down because the Sagan Memorial station stopped transmitting. (The rover transmitted to the base station, which relayed the data to Earth. So, as soon as contact was lost with the base station, contact with the rover was lost as well.) The rover was commanded to circle the base station once they realized that they might lose communications. For all we know, Sojourner is still circling the Sagan Memorial station, on solar power, waiting to hear from Earth.
Spirit, and Opportunity, however, were designed with solar powered rechargeable batteries. They were necessary because the 90 sol mission profile precluded the use of standard batteries.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
They know it's not a sensor malfunction. They can tell by the tracks, and the fact that the rover is veering off to one side. In order to get the rover to travel in a straight line, they have to command some of the wheels to rotate faster than the other side to compensate for the drag.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad