The Rovers That Just Won't Quit

smooth wombat writes "Like the Energizer bunny, the two martian rovers just won't quit. Spirit, after climbing to the top of Husband Hill during the past year, spent two months examining rocks at the top of the hill and scientists confirmed that those rocks were similar to rocks found along the side of the hill indicating that Husband Hill is probably the result of an impact crater. It will take about two months for Spirit to make its way down the hill after which the next target will be a feature called Home Plate located about a half mile away. Opportunity is exploring the northern rim of Erebus Crater, the largest crater between already-explored Endurance Crater and its next destination, Victoria Crater. The rovers were only supposed to last three months but have been operating for almost two years. NASA has also released a 360 degree panorama of images taken by Spirit as it explored Gustav Crater."

Comments

Larger pictures?

[fak3r]

Does anyone have a link to LARGER pictures of what the rovers are seeing? The linked to 360 view [http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/sp irit/20051021a/site_A114_880_navcam_360_cyl-A627R1 _br.jpg%5D is cool, but too small for details. Looking for a nice one to span two monitors for a nice desktop. I remember some of the first shots showing the side of the landing craft, some tire tracks and such were just amazing.

One thing no one is really talking about...

[hcob$]

While it's outstanding that these things are running so well for so long, it's amuzing that people haven't thought of this from an engineer's perspective.

These things are horribly over-engineered. Not that it is a bad thing they are proving so resilliant, but we're now at 8x the "designed" life span. In my mind, that means they could have probably built it half as robust and still been outstanding pieces of machinery(and alot less expensive).

I know that hindsight is 20/20, and I'm not judging the engineers poorly on this feat(quite the opposite in fact). I just thought someone might want to point that little tid-bit out...

Now, FLAME ON!!

Re:One thing no one is really talking about...

[AndersOSU]

One of my Mech Eng profs liked to tell us that robustness is marketing-speak, it has no real meaning to engineers.

For example you don't talk about robustness of a strut, you talk about strength and fatigue. You don't talk about robustness of an robot, you talk about manuverability and degrees of freedom. You don't talk about robustness of a Mars Rover, you talk about sensors, speed, solar panel life, etc.

Now before you poo-poo this, name one parameter that is best described by robustness, rather than an actual engineering term with real units.

(of course we filled the final presentation for that professors course with all forms of the word, including robustitude)

Testament to JPL

[Sierpinski]

I think this is a testament to the folks at the JPL. Those rovers have lasted way longer than anyone expected, and probably hoped. In the early stages of the project, I heard a lot of criticism from the standard armchair astronauts saying about how they could get so much more done if they didn't go 'so damn slow' all the time. I've read about times where haste would have probably halted the program in its steps, like when there was concern about traversing the side wall of a crater, worried that the rover would tip. Its a testament to their planning, skill in design and execution of their plan, and of their patience in their procedures.

Good work JPL!

Re:Could be a problem?

[jfengel]

It definitely puts pressure on future mission designers to manage expectations as carefully as the rover mission designers. Fortunately, as long as the technology keeps improving, they'll continue to get better.

But perception of "how much we need" is a much thornier problem for the administrator of NASA. Success is always good; few people have any idea how much this costs, and most are sort of resigned to the few bucks per person this mission costs. In return they get to be The Country That Explores The Planets, and people are willing to pay a lot for that kind of pride.

What gets people ticked about the price is failure. It maakes people feel like laughingstocks in front of the world. Few people really understand the science, or benefit directly from what we learn about Mars, but they feel good that it's us who discovered it. They feel like the most advanced country in the world.

So I wouldn't worry about people saying, "Yeah, we know quite enough about Mars." That's a mission people can get behind, as compared to (say) a war costing 1,000 times as much. The war may accomplish more (depending on whom you ask) but Science (with a capital S, the vague and mysterious one, as opposed to the lower-case-s "science" where we actually learn stuff) is always popular. At least when it wins.

maestro

[VStrider]

I just found out about maestro(Google cache) It's basically the software NASA uses to control the rovers and process their datasets. Looks quite interesting. I'm getting the datasets as I type this.(200MB)

If you're on gentoo,
emerge maestro maestro-data
If not, check your distro repos or get it from here.

Re:Read this book.

[BTWR]

Dr. Squyres was a professor of mine at Cornell. He was one of the best professors/teachers i have EVER had. I have rarely, if ever, seen someone infuse so much enthusiasm into a class. He'd tell us all of these "secret stories" from Cold War NASA, and I remember him coming 15 minutes late to class one afternoon after he had literally landing in the local airport from NASA, when he told us about how the Rovers had JUST been funded. It was so awesome hearing his enthusiasm about Spirit and Opportunity's 3-month mission prospects (of course then, the rovers were unnamed). He had told us about this about 3 days before NASA announced a press release.

In fact, the first day of class, he said that the entire class was "off the record" and I don't think he even wanted the college newspaper students in there. (and i'm only disclosing that above story because it's obviously ok to say now. but... his others stories stay with me!). - All Cornell Ugrads - make sure to take his classes! (and Jim Bell, another AWESOME astro prof - wrote me my recommendation for med school).