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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."
I read Roving Mars a few months ago. It was written by Steven Squyres, the principal investigator for the Mars missions. A very good book with some behind the scenes scoop on the politics and squabbling involved in getting these things build and sent. Highly recommended.
Trolling is a art,
had the spirit to climb husband hill!!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
at livejournal.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/opportunitygrrl/
and
http://www.livejournal.com/users/spiritrover/
What ? Me, worry ?
Not to be cruel and kick up their bandwidth, but is a larger version
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.
fak3r.com
"...and scientists confirmed that those rocks were similar to rocks found along the side of the hill..."
The bot went over the crater, the bot went over the crater
The bot went over the crater, to see what he could see.
And all that he could see, and all that he could see
Was the other side of the crater, the other side of the crater
The other side of the crater, was all that he could see.
I read
Maybe..
For two reasons:
1. It raises the expectations for the duration of unmanned missions. If future missions don't last as long people will obviously compare it to these.
2. Funding. If the perception is these craft last a long time then maybe people will say you don't need as many.
I wonder if there are any realistic estimates on how long it will take to properly digest the data that has been sent back by these robots. The original estimate was for the rovers to survive 90 days and they figured that the data received would occupy planteary scientists for years to come. The data they have now ought to occupy scientists for decades.
They didn't even Photoshop out the tennis courts on the right. I knew these things were faked!
Haida Manga
I wonder if NASA accidentally used months instead of years when calculating the lifespan of the rovers.
Somehow if we ./ them they will quit??
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!!
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
Oh, that's right... NASA's main purpose isn't exploration or science, it's to preserve its own existence. New projects mean new money, and old sucesses are only good for arguing for more funding for new toys.
Erik
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!
And they said zombies weren't real!
I dunno , some robots , just no consideration for those left on earth.
to the guys responsible for the whole mission, from cleaners to engineers to management. Surpassing a mission duration by at least 700% (*knock on wood*) is a nice change from all the missions Mars has claimed so far.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
It's called Gusev crater.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Can you really tell the difference between all of the photos that are released by the little dudes? I think NASA is photoshoping and then releasing the same photos every so often, saying it is really a new place on Mars. It's a giant conspiracy I tell ya.
But seriously, Way to go little dudes. You have more energy than me. I get bored by my second bowl of cereal let alone doing the same thing for months on end.
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
This is nickel and dime stuff. And for those nickels and dimes we get over a year of solid planetary science? Where's the down side again?
And the expected lifespan might have been a lower limit on their MTBF analysis. Those are always lowball because reliability engineers like to cover their butts. ;-)
When we finally colonise Mars, I guess we know the right spot to practice husbandry.
Did she ever get the opportunity?
Does anyone have any information on how exactly these Rovers are powered? When the Rovers exceeded expectations by a couple of months, I was under the impression the end was nigh due to inevitably failing power supplies. But now it's been a couple of years and the things still have juice. What gives?
"Rovers that won't quit"? Is it really Fitzmas already?
--
make install -not war
Rover's Daily Schedule
OK simple theory; the guys that build these things aren't stupid, they know how long they'll last. they also are aware of the political budget process. so tell em 90 days to get the budget, then say geez its still running! youre not gonna make us shut it off? job security! profit! fame! pick one (or all 3!!!)
While all this longevity is great for science, i just hope the space community doesnt start to actually rely on them just as they are most likely to die.
In this age of cameras, no. Unfotunately, the cameras ont there were designed quite awhile ago. IIRC, they're .5 megapixel cameras.
The european rover was a 'cheap' model (10 times less than the yank one) and look what happened to that Sometimes overengineering is worth it
I know that you are being funny, but this is the same work as Voyeger. Basically, they tell the politicians that the mission will last a short time, so that they appear to be relatively low-cost missions and that all objectives were met. Now, it appears as though these are wildly successful so the pols keep the money coming. smart engineers, dumb pols.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Haven't you seen this?
I wonder how much better a job would have been done if something like this were handled "x prize" style.
Take all of the money in the budget for the project, and offer it as a prize to the first person to accomplish all of the goals.
This sort of space exploration is realively cheap, considering the payoffs involved. I suggest we knock off a couple "bridges to nowhere" from our budget, or ask for some money back from the Big Dig, instead.
Cornell/Athena Updates (Pops)
1. To keep the funding flowing, or to encourage space exploration by private enterprise, the rovers simply need to find some gold.
2. Now that we have the technology worked out to make a hardy, long lasting rover, can we do something about the cosmetics? Who are we kidding. These things are Imperial Probe Droids and should look the part.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
And he tells me that they have funding till end of next September for the rovers.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
Number Six is DOOMED?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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.
VStrider.
Do you think if NASA had a choice they would have stuck with the Shuttle? They were stuck with a 30 year old (flawed) design because it was the only option available.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
The first year was kind of exciting beacuase everything they were finding was new. However Spirit is pretty much just seeing the same slightly altered basalt rocks on Sol 600 as it was on Sol 10, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500.
Ditto for Opportunity. It found those hematite blueberries and sulfur-rich layered rocks in the first crater, then saw them again in the next five craters its visited.
Some of the other things were interesting too- the dust devil movies, eclipses of Martian moons and so on.
One Martian year is 669 Martian days (Sols) or 686 Earth days, or a little under two earth years. Sol 669 is around Nov 18. Happy birthday Spirit.
Maybe my HTML skills are leaving me... not sure, but the link works.
Another example of "Made in America', but the daily operating it OUT-sourced, not only overseas, but to an outside Plant, Mars. Seriously this project's succes has exceeded even Nasa's wildest hopes. Well done guys.....
But, but, but... if we get rid of pork barrel projects how will senators in powerful positions be able to keep their bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions coming in?!? Man, you REALLY don't understand American politics!
If anyone is curious check out: Two Bridges Too Far
Basically, Ted Stevens is a putz.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Yeah, especially considering the fact that it took me just a second to download the picture here, several million lightyears away from Mars!
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
...I squandered all my mod points on various topics, when I could have used all them them on you: -5, Lame
Dark Reflection
I think a celebration is in order for their birthday. My vote goes to a NASA driven, Martian version of Battle Bots between the two rovers!
Cheesy Movie Night
The Energizer bunny thing is a bad analogy. Duracell and Everready advertise their batteries constantly, and try to ensure they are prominently displayed at counters, kiosks, etc, but everyone knows that they deplete quickly. In the case of modern high-drain electronics like cameras, incredibly quickly. If the rovers used their chemistry, they'd have been dead within days. And would just have been more toxic landfill, like all the useless short-lifespan cells the batery companies sucker people into buying instead of investing in a few dozen NiMH cells and a quick charger that will last them a decade or so....
The current splendid Rovers use Lithium-ion chemistry.
Da Blog
Actually, NASA has a tendency to create planetary exploration vehicles that greatly exceed their required life-span. Specific examples are the Pioneer and Voyager space craft.
When you're sending some gizmo umpty million miles away, it's a good idea to make sure that everything "just works" or has a backup. It's kind of hard to get a repairman out there to fix something.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
No, it's a Good Thing. Do you honestly think the cost would have been
significantly less had they engineered as you wished? As opposed to
the assuredly higher costs had they intentionally diesgned something
to last a long time.
Besides the general repulsiveness of disposable production, good
engineering tends to last, period. Consider Building 20,
which would have lasted even longer had it been maintained a little.
But hey, enjoy your single view DVDs and planned obsolence consumer
goods with engineered failures.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Opportunity was the rover that got stuck in a dune, took a few weeks to finally get it free. Here's a nice time-lapse movie (MPG) of the rover getting out of the dune. The movie actually spans about 3 weeks.
Opportunity has also been down inside a large crater (endurance crater) and the engineers were worried it might not be able to get back out again.
One of Spirit's 6 wheels has been acting up and drawing too much current, so they decided to disable that wheel and drive that rover backwards, dragging the disabled wheel-- which it has been doing for at least a year I think!
Both rovers have had several spontaneous "cleaning" events that cleared off the dust. It was later confirmed that the dust devil whirlwinds we've seen in pictures from Spirit occasionally hit the rover and blow off the dust.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Actually, they are MASSIVE 1 megapixel cameras. The reason I said MASSIVE (in CAPS!) is that the CCD on them is .5 inches square, which is HUGE for a 1 megapixel camera. That means it captures a lot of light and there is very little 'bleed' from one pixel to the next, and it cuts down on the noise in the image. Not only that, each pixel is single color and there are ELEVEN (!!) color filters that can be put in front of the CCD to capture different wavelengths and generate amazing true color images. Their cameras are very very cool.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
If NASA run out of tasks for the rovers, they could always send them to find Beagle 2.
If NASA calculated that the rovers would only last 3 months, doesn't that bring into question there ability to make calculations? I'm sure they were just covering there ass but still, awful proud of being 17 and counting months off in your calculations aren't you NASA? aren't you?
Yep. Because it's so easy to predict exactly what hazards a probe will encounter on another planet millions of miles away that has swallowed up half a dozen other probes before they could start transmitting. And God forbid that we encourage people to build things solidly. Let's make the next one out of papier mache so that we don't have to worry about it anymore.
Seriously, I suspect they'd save more money by just decommissioning the working rover than they would have saved by making the probe cheaper, but still solid enough to survive the mission.
They didn't even Photoshop out the tennis courts on the right. I knew these things were faked!
Oh it's Mars. What do you think the rovers are doing during the eight minute delay it takes us to tell them do do something? Naturally they'd develop a hobby.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe these things will last a long time but the guys here on the ground are still drawing salaries, etc. Surely a mission that was spec'd to last a few months can be a budget item forever?
In the case of Spirit and Opportunity, they'll probably close down the project the day before the rovers valiantly climb over a crater rim to see a vast Martian city spread out beneath them. Some nerd with a low-power radio telescope made from a Pringles can will pick up the data, but nobody will believe him...
You must think in Russian.
I'm seeing a t-shirt:
Space Flight: hard. Landing on another planet: hard. Driving around on another planet by remote control: hard. Redundancy and robustness: priceless.
didn't we just read that nasa is laying off 300 at JPL because priorities are shifting to manned missions? Thats a pretty shabby reward for such a fantastic engineering team.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
It's a martian university information technology research project. the local martian college geeks have hacked into the systems and are feeding them a virtual reality data stream of what they want us poor earthlings to receive as data. The trick is to see how long they can keep us going.
the two systems are actually sitting inside a research lab in separate rooms in a cave someplace on the northern slope of Valles Marenaris [sp?]
Everything is simulated in glorious high precision detail. Everything.
Quite an exercise in engineering, actually. The kids are getting good grades.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Any links to true-color images? I thought they were all Photoshopped...
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
They didn't even Photoshop out the tennis courts on the right. I knew these things were faked!
Worse yet, I went to play tennis (on earth) and found the court replaced by solar panels. The nerve!
Table-ized A.I.
Some nice stuff here.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Look at the middle of the picture, it looks like some of the engineers have been doing some "circle-work" http://www.australianbeers.com/culture/circlework. htm with the rover...
don't we all wish that the things we
drive here on earth had half the
over engineering features that these
peppy little scooters have?
GM ought to take a lesson in
how to build things that work
and get itself out of the
low sales crater.
Always always, Under Promise - Over Deliver.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Maybe you'll see this reply.... maybe you won't. Sorry it's late. The filtered images the rovers capture are post processed by the JPL at NASA after they've been received. Basically, each layer is an additive... all done with some fancy image software. It's very much like that Russian who took some great color photos in the early 1900's (yes, early 1900's). Actually, it wasn't until recently that the actual color filter plates were combined to create color photos. Check it out! http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
Interesting pics. Somehow color seems to transform photographs from abstract to concrete. For me anyway. Just as true with photos from millions of miles away as those from a hundred years in the past.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere