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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)"
The rover is still stuck.
Wait, I'm getting a newsflash right now... The rover is still stuck.
Oh, wait, here's another update... The rover is still stuck.
More on this as it develops.
There has to be a joke about 4WD enthusiasts, a couple of 12 packs, and an alliance between the Monster truck association and NASA.
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Millions of dollars launched into space, only to get stuck in a Martian sand dune.
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
In other news, the sky is still blue, water is still wet, and heat is still hot. Just letting you know that nothing has changed.
But wouldn't that mean it had to dig it's self into something to be stuck.. like wet mud..?
What is it stuck on?
I like muppets.
How ironic... that you have been reposting that too. But I agree with you. I get random crap emails like that all the time, its so damn stupid. Don't mod the messenger down! Save the points for the real bad guy...
At least it's doing better than Spirit, which last I heard was sliding inexorably into an ominious pit of sand, where it will be slowly digested over a thousand years.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
According to JPL's site the latest move was not an attempt to *free* the rover.
"Opportunity rotated its wheels on sol 463 for the first time since the rover dug itself into a sand dune more than two weeks earlier. The wheels made about two and a half rotations, as commanded, and the results were a good match for what was expected from tests on Earth. In the loose footing, the rover advanced 2.8 centimeters (1.1 inch) forward, 4.8 millimeters (0.19 inch) sideways and 4.6 millimeters (0.18 inch) downward. After further analysis of the results, the rover team will decide whether to repeat the same careful movement again on sol 465."
... and furthermore
The rover managers have successfully tested methods for extracting Opportunity from the sand. Principal investigator Steve Squyres has said all along that it will be a slow process:
http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/
The poster is a repeated troll, not troll reporting as claimed. Ignore.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Opportunity didn't move for two weeks because JPL is being properly conservative and haven't tried until they understood the situation. The first small movement command was given on May 14, and Opportunity moved about the way they expected.
o rtunityAll.html#sol464
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_opp
In other news, a team of NASA's best psychologists is scheduled to hold a meeting where they will determine how to best break the news to Spirit that her brother may be nearing the end of his life.
Mission planners at NASA are concerned about the consequences this could have. While they still want Spirit to remain functional and capable of scientific discovery, they are aware of the moral issues involved and have decided against keeping the news from her, fearing a backlash from the MCLU (Mars Civil Liberties Union).
NASA administrator Michael Griffin released a statement saying the team is carefully weighing the choices and will continue striving to preserve Spirit's technical functionality and psychological stability. Should Spirit become too depressed over the impending demise of her brother and refuse to cooperate, there is talk of calling in a special favor from a nearby resident to cheer her back up. Apparantly Spirit has recently become infatuated with a local hunk named Marvin.
>Before this attempt the NASA JPL team were playing in their own sandpit trying to replicate the conditions on Mars.
Okay, so I gather that the sand was to simulate martian soil conditions, and the radio-operated vehicle simulated the rover's movements. But what was the significance of the tanning lotion and beach umbrella? :P
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.
NASA is just practicing to be on http://www.carstuckgirls.com/
Spirit or Opportunity?
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.
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
Nasa: Hello, my rover is stuck in a dune.
AAA: Where is the dune?
Nasa: On mars.
AAA: What is the make and model of the vehicle?
Nasa: It's a rover.
AAA: What color?
Nasa: Grey.
AAA: What is the license plate?
Nasa: It does not have a license plate.
AAA: I'm sorry, if you don't have a license plate, we can't send out a tow truck. [click].
Fight Spammers!
We should use this as a reason to send a human to mars. The primamry mission will be to get oppritunity out of the dune, using a mars tow buggy. Then if theres time, they'll play some martian golf. The'll need to watch out for those sand traps though.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
those robots should have legs not wheels.
The drive that you are seeing in these images that supposedly did not get the rover out of the dune is in reality a short test drive performed on Sol 463. The response from the rover was roughly what was expected by the MER engineers as you can read on the JPL site.
Considering that the wheels spun the equivalent of a 60 meter drive when they got stuck in the first place. (according to Dr. Albert Haldemann, Deputy Project Scientist for MER) they anticipate a fair amount of driving/spinning to get out. Also obviously if thier testing at JPL was wrong they did not want to worsen the situation to the point of no return on thier first try.
... then the ground will be coldere and firmer.
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Now taking bets at when a Rancor will devour it!
So, it keeps going and going and going until a human gives it the command to make a wrong turn. Maybe, we should upgrade the remaining rover with AI software that will analyze the travel objective and choose the best path to get there.
I mean in my home town if someone gets there car stuck in the snow the neighbors and friends will come out with shovels and the ole heeeeve-hooooe. But where are the locals of mars now, heh HEH?
pifff Martian's who needs um.
Put her in low gear. Don't accelerate hard. Just keep your foot off the gas. Let her ride slowly out of the rut. Once you've move a little bit, turn the wheel, gently, then keep moving a little. Eventually you get yourself out of the rut and back rollin' again.
You can see the head right in the center of this picture, with the head facing up and eyes closed. This story about being "stuck" must be just a cover-up so no one is accused of being a hit-and-run driver.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
and here's my best argument
100X more efficiently?
How much mass, do we have to get into orbit, to get a man to mars and back...
how much mass, do we have to get into orbit, to drop a rover on the surface of mars one-way?
add that to your efficiency calculations, and get back to me...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
is you just get stuck further off the road.
Hey, long time reader first time poster, but NASA's 'recreation' of a sandpit sure makes it look simple to forge the mars surface eh? eh? see where i'm going with this?
Movies at wohba.com... http://wohba.com/2005/05/diggin-out.html
--- gr8s-n-ppppp
And I'm stuck in this sand dune. (Spins wheels fruitlessly) and my solar collectors are getting dusty again. And I have this terrible pain down the diodes in my right side...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Someone buy NASA a copy of this quick!
"veer stuuck!"
That was cool but this is better:
http://headphet.hopto.org/index.shtml
-tom
All this bothering with trying to get it out by remote control is useless. I mean, yeah, it'd be cool to say, "Yeah man, I got that rover out by remote control!" But seriously. Just pick it up and set it down somewhere else.
Uh-oh. Finster must be going crazy again. Somebody call the Rangers before it's too late. /geek
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
This is what still makes NASA great... the engineers' attitude. I (also an engineer) would shrug (or cry, or yell in anger) and assume I had lost it. NASA, meanwhile, says
"The rover team spent more than a week designing and conducting tests under simulated Mars conditions on Earth before choosing the best way for Opportunity to drive out of the dune."
The best way! Even assuming they have more than one way to free the rover, and never assuming failure. Hats off, wven if they do fail. These guys would make great airline pilots too.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars, and they didn't splurge another few hundred bucks for Onstar? What was NASA thinking??
"In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"
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.
Lassie! What, lassie? The opportunity mars rover got stuck in the sand? I'll go get the sherrif.
Looks like they're going to have to send somebody up to give it a shove.
This is why we should send people to Mars.
1. People can can stuck also in various ways.
2. A slightly more expensive rover could also have a shovel arm. Even a juiced up Swiss Army Rover is far less costly than a human mission.
3. A lost rover is far less of a problem than a lost astronaut.
4. These rovers have already "finished" their designed mission. This is all bonus time. Humans have to go home when their water and food runs out.
Table-ized A.I.
A victim of its own success. Check those treads:
Old and Busted
The once new hotness
Ummm... the rover has already far exceeded its design lifetime, so there was no money wasted here... they've already achieved more than what they spent it on in the first place.
Moron. Can't hesitate to knock NASA, can we?
the scientists and engineers working on the problem are being impeded by almost hourly calls from President George W. Bush.
Although they have patiently explained to him dozens of times why his idea won't work, the president cannot understand why they won't follow his suggestion: to simply have the astronauts "get out and push".
Jiggle the joystick back and forth as quickly as possible. Watch the rover struggle for a bit, then break free. It should take 5 or 6 seconds.
...but at least Opportunity herself is keeping in touch through her LiveJournal blog.
the sandworms on Mars are really lazy
In other news, Generalissimo Franco is still dead.
--
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Rock it!
Grabboids! (with regards to Walter Chang...)
I don't get it. Why are they making a sandpit to simulate the conditions on Mars? What are they going to test?
:)
"Okay, now try to make the Rover move forward. Still stuck? All right, put it in reverse and try again. That didn't work either? Well I'm fresh out of ideas" "Perhaps if we put it on full acceleration, and then quickly switch to full reverse?" "You're an idea man, Johnson!"
That's your tax dollars at work
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
How much did that thing cost? I got a Jeep Cherokee with 60000 miles on it (2000) for $8000 US. That thing isn't even designed to go a mile and it cost billions. Geez. Next time send a Jeep, or a Hummer, or something.
Next mission to mars: deploying the tow-rovers, codenamed Redemption and Charity.
if the astronaut gets stuck in the dune then they will send two more
Last I heard the sky on mars is not blue and we can't tell if the water is wet because OUR MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR ROVER that was looking for it got STUCK IN THE SAND.
Tea cozy!
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
I know NASA has had some difficulties, but science fiction has clearly influenced our expectations for the feasible.
For an example of what I mean, check out the DARPA Grand Challenge. That's here on EARTH and they don't get far.
Robotics is an extremely interesting field--one which I've had the pleasure of working in at UTexas, Austin but it is still quite in its infancy.
You say "Oh just give it extra legs like a spider". You have no idea of the shear logistics that go into something like that. Giving it a system like that would be another expensive project by itself involving years of work on control mechanisms, sensor mechanisms, PID controllers for feedback to every joint, swivle, whatnot. If one TINY thing is mis-anticipated; if the sand has a little bit more friction or a little less; if the wind blows it into the joints of your spider; if the system has to rely on hydraulics (lord have mercy on you) the entire thing can grind to a hault.
Surely they could use the arm as a kind of pushing/stabilising arm to help move it out instead of down.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
They're doing it for the babes.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Maybe that will attract the roving bands of Tuskan Raiders and they'll move it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We could have spent this much closer to home, examining vehicles that only moved a few feet since april on LA freeways!
hawk
Oh, come on, moderators... my comment wasn't insightful... sheesh.
Just by looking at the sandpit photo you can notice that the wheels get covered with sand. Proves that testing is best done before you launch millions of dollars of equipment to a faraway planet.