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Mars Rover Breaks Free

Posted by Zonk on from the yay-NASA dept.

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!"

4 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Working Nights and Weekends by CrankyFool · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm really not trying to be a troll here, but I'm wondering: What was the rush? Sure, this needed to get done, but why the need to work extra-long hours to do it? What would have happened if it took an extra month or two? (I read the article linked to with the text 'engineers were praised' and was not enlightened)

    1. Re:Working Nights and Weekends by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I'm really not trying to be a troll here, but I'm wondering: What was the rush? Sure, this needed to get done, but why the need to work extra-long hours to do it? What would have happened if it took an extra month or two? (I read the article linked to with the text 'engineers were praised' and was not enlightened)


      Mars has dust storms. Here's a dust storm report from 2001: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast16jul_1 .htm?aol4257, which says


      Scientists have since learned that huge dust storms, dwarfing desert dust clouds on Earth , are fairly common on Mars.


      If they had waited longer, and a dust storm erupted, the robot might have been buried, or at least accumulated enough dust on its solar panels that it would die.

      Also the clock is ticking, and bills need to get paid, and there is a finite amount of financing with a deadline (before renewal). Just sitting around without resolving the problem would have meant less data collection.
  2. Re:Not screwed up yet?! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I can't understand is, why didn't "management" come in and screw this all up?

    Considering that the last screw up of a Mars probe involves not converting measurements correctly, "management" had a lot of incentive not to screw up this time around.

  3. Re:Additional Discussion by QuantumFTL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    (if we get to sol 1000, just about every piece of ground software will be inoperable)

    Hm, why is that? Will their system clock roll over?

    Well, most of the software developed at JPL for the mission uses three digits to encode the sol number. Once we are past 999, this software, as written, will cease to function properly. This is something that can be fixed, but I believe it would take a lot of effort. It will be a miracle if we need to do that, but it's possible one of the rovers will still be marginally operational at that point.