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Mars Rover Opportunity Still Stuck In a Dune
Maddog Batty writes "The mars rover Opportunity, which has been stuck in a sand dune since the end of April, is still going nowhere after wheel spinning attempts were made to free the probe. It did manage to move a very short distance as can be seen in the difference between these two images. Before this attempt the NASA JPL team were playing in their own sandpit trying to replicate the conditions on Mars. (older coverage)"
Maybe an underground water source? From those 2 pictures, the sand looks like wet beach sand.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
It always seemed to me that a good way to avoid getting robotic vehicles stuck would be to have thin, strong arms that go up and out, like cranes, and can simply extend down to lift the body of the robot out of whatever's sticking it. It's a bit of extra stuff, but it makes for an unstickable robot.
I thought about this when I was considering how to make an autonomous RC car that could cross the country without interference. It has to be able to get out of a lot of different things.
Anyone know of links to ways robots unstick themselves?
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I still have this question: if they do manage to get it free, how long until it just gets stuck again?
From the pictures it looks like Opportunity is entering a Martian dune sea, which will offer many more opportunities (npi) to get stuck once more. Do they have a plan to identify/avoid soft spots like this one in the future?
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
... then the ground will be coldere and firmer.
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This is why we should send people to Mars. While more expensive and potentially dangerous, we won't have to deal with bonehead stuff like this.
Sorry, you haven't convinced me.
The rovers, IIRC, have exceeded their planned mission length. The original mission was justified on a 90 sol duration basis, although more was hoped for. Opportunity got stuck on sol 446. Your hypothetical astronauts wouldn't have been able to deal with this "boneheaded stuff" because they'd have been on a very expensive return trip months ago.
If anything, the success of the rovers have really reduced my enthusiasm for a manned Mars mission, at least any time soon. I think it should happen eventually, but there's a lot to be learned from robotic missions, both scientifically and from an engineering standpoint. Engineering failures on robotics missions provide us with an opportunity to learn at a much lower cost, both financial and human, than manned missions. A later manned mission will be both safer, cheaper, and better focused scientifically on things humans can uniquely do.
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Would a human really make things that much easier? I imagine humans would use some sort of wheeled rover to get around on Mars... and that could get stuck in a dune as well. I've been stuck in sand and mud a couple of times, and getting out can be a major ordeal, even without the constraints of a heavy space suit and limited oxygen.
The other thing to keep in mind is that Homo sapiens is a "mature technology"; we haven't undergone any large changes in 100,000 years except for the software upgrades. Robots are a technology that is in their infancy, and in the next 10-20 years will make major advances in their capabilities. Which makes it all the more remarkable when you consider that robots are currently ahead of humans in many departments. Maybe humans really can do "100x more than a rover, and more efficiently", but robots can travel to Mars and explore it for under a billion dollars, and do that now, and humans can't.
I don't, wait, what? Why is this flamebait? I am totally baffled.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Or maybe it is stuck in fine, granular and very dry sand which would perhaps be even worse than wet sand.
Every time you try to move, the sand is quickly displaced so the vehicle stays put.
Its a shame they can't use the trick from Ice cold in Alex where they put it in reverse (lowest gear) and move it using the starting handle as not to displace the sand too quickly.
Of course, this would rely on:
A) Opportunity having a starting handle.
B) A friendly passing Martian offering to wind it.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
I concede that the cost of sending people to Mars and keeping them alive is high. And we're still a little "fuzzy" on how to do it. But.
1) How much time went into designing the rover and what-not.
2) How much info have we gained over MONTHS of use?
3) How much can saidd rover actually accomplish.
4) How many different rovers will we send to accomplish what a person (or team) can do in one shot.
5) A person can do a lot more a lot quicker than the rover. Example, want to dig a hole? Use a shovel and maybe pick-axe. In a very short time you can get a couple meters down as opposed to waiting for our rover to spin its wheels just to see a few cm.
I'm not saying we shouldn't use these drones for now. They're an obvious stepping stone to learn what we need to. But at some point we have to say "These things are only doing so much. Let's send some people there."
I think we should start looking into the sending of people more seriously, instead of some people (that I know) whine and moan that it's not worth their tax dollars.