Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
Did she ever get the opportunity?
"Rovers that won't quit"? Is it really Fitzmas already?
--
make install -not war
Rover's Daily Schedule
These babies are solar powered and NASA figured that dust from the atmosphere would render the solar panels useless after two months. The wind kept pushing the dust off the panels so.. there they go again.
believing the big bang requires a certain amount of supernatural faith
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"