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Mars Rover Breaks Free
QuantumFTL writes "According to an MSNBC story Opportunity, the same rover that scored an interplanetary hole-in-one, has broken free of an interplanetary sand trap. The MER science operations mailing list was abuzz this morning with the news, as soon as the first rear hazcam image indicating success came down. Engineers were praised for working long nights and weekends to make this extrication possible. Good job, NASA!"
Since Mars has a different length day than Earth (40 minutes longer), the engineers are sometimes working very odd hours (since the rover is only active during daylight on Mars).
Aside from that I imagine they wanted to get it out as soon as possible since they have no idea how long its batteries will last, and it can't do any work while it's stuck. Perhaps they spent the off hours doing simulations and tests to figure out how to get it out.
Start by factoring a worst case scenario for all the components on the rover, and come up with an expected mission time of 180 days (assuming a successful landing). Sprinkle in a safety factor of 2, and you have a 'design mission' of 90 days. Plan all budgets going forward with a '90 days on planet' segment for the mission, keeping budget numbers as small as possible, ie easier to get approved, and the likelihood of a 'successful mission' as high as possible.
After a successful landing, and the rovers run around for most of the 90 days, you come to the 'amazing' conclusion that they are still going strong, and could well do so for a long time yet. Re-do all mission life calculations, but, factor in some best case scenarios for component life, rather than worst case, and remove you fudge factor of 2, and voila, you come to the conclusion rovers can easily go another year, maybe longer. Now you go back to the budget folks, and present it as 'ok, we spent 150 million getting these things onto mars, we only need another 10 million to run them for another year after a hugely successful primary mission'.
From a budget point of view, it becomes a no brainer, for a mere 10 million more, you can triple or quadruple the science value of the original 150 million investment, whereas the whole project could well have been scrapped if the 10 million more was factored in from the get go.
Management played the game exceptionally well on this one, they back end loaded the budget with 'extras' that end up impossible to be declined after the rovers actually ended up on planet, and survived the first 90 days of 'primary mission'. They knew this was the plan already prior to launch, but, by back end loading the budget, they kept the initial approval numbers a lot smaller (easier), and left the long running mission plans to be bonus, ie only presented up the food chain after the rovers survived the first 90 days, and then validated the 'real scenarios' for actual expected mission life.
The real problem they have now, rovers are going strong even after the real planned life, and now they are in an ongoing game of keeping budget topped up. From this point forward, it's still going to be a no brainer though, with all the space hype focussing on mars talk, topping the budget for the rovers is the cheapest publicity that can be bought today, and it'll continue to help deflect criticism away from _other programs_ that soak up billions, and possibly even help justify the sacrifice of those programs since mars is now the focus of all the forward looking hype.
There are some politicians that are hoping and dreaming the 2 rovers can go for another year plus, because, it'll give them a wonderful chance to do some funds diversions. You can bet your last dollar that there are plans afoot in washington to divert more funds to the rover operations, and use that as the excuse to claim not enough funding left to service hubble. It'll be a political coup, but it'll only work if the rovers are still roaming mars when hubble service mission gets to a 'now or never' state.