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The Rovers That Just Won't Quit

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the still-going-bum-bum-bum dept.

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."

42 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Read this book. by grub · · Score: 5, Informative


    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,
    1. Re:Read this book. by grub · · Score: 5, Informative

      There's quite a bit of coverage of roving the planet. Boring into rocks, getting samples, etc. The reviews are incomplete.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    2. Re:Read this book. by BTWR · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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).

  2. I wish my Wife's Friend by hcob$ · · Score: 5, Funny

    had the spirit to climb husband hill!!

    --
    Cliff Claven
    K.E.G. Party Chairman
    Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
    1. Re:I wish my Wife's Friend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you stopped visiting "home plate" so much, she might.

  3. visit their blogs by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    at livejournal.

    http://www.livejournal.com/users/opportunitygrrl/

    and

    http://www.livejournal.com/users/spiritrover/

    --
    What ? Me, worry ?
  4. Larger version... by JoeLinux · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not to be cruel and kick up their bandwidth, but is a larger version

    1. Re:Larger version... by strider44 · · Score: 4, Funny

      They can put a man on the moon and robots on mars. I mean if anyone can withstand a slashdotting, surely they can.

  5. Larger pictures? by fak3r · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  6. The other side of the crater... by pmike_bauer · · Score: 5, Funny

    "...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 /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
  7. Could be a problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Could be a problem? by jfengel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  8. Hmmmm by Moby+Cock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. WTF? That's NEVADA! by LearnToSpell · · Score: 5, Funny

    They didn't even Photoshop out the tennis courts on the right. I knew these things were faked!

    --
    Haida Manga
  10. conversion error? by lawrenqj · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wonder if NASA accidentally used months instead of years when calculating the lifespan of the rovers.

    1. Re:conversion error? by Surt · · Score: 5, Funny

      In case anyone reads this and really doesn't know, NASA had expected that the solar panels would become dust clogged and stop providing power by now. But as it turns out, martians have been dusting them off every so often, so the rovers have lasted much longer than expected.

      --
      "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
    2. Re:conversion error? by Hussman32 · · Score: 5, Informative
      That is pretty funny, and not untrue.

      One of the designers gave a presentation to our conference the day after they landed. It's easy to say they sandbagged their estimate, but they have had a host of challenges such as
      • In addition to the dust, they had concerns about the batteries freezing. They have a very small bit of plutonium included to keep them warm, but it was a very real possibility that they would lose too much heat and be dead in the water.
      • The firmware for one of the rovers (Opportunity, I think) had to be completely uploaded and rebooted remotely (that's when it was lost for a while).
      • Leaving the landing foam was a pain, I think one of the Rovers was stuck for a while before it got out.
      • The terrain itself is unpredictable, and even though they have six wheel independent suspension traveling at a slow pace, one wrong crater and they are screwed. One of them did get stuck for a while, they wiggled their way out.

      So yeah, say they sandbagged it, but in reality, it was entirely possible that they could have worked only for a day (or not at all) and they would have been ostracized for being incompetent when they actually did a fine job. Congratulations to them.
      --
      "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
    3. Re:conversion error? by Guysmiley777 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They both had a flaw that when their flash memory got too full a buffer overflow in the memory management software would reboot the machine. Spirit had been operating and collecting data first and thus encountered the problem before Opportunity ran into it too. The fix was to disable the flash memory from a safe mode so they could point the high gain antenna and send a fixed software version (once they figured out what was causing the problem). It really was a close call.

      There was no landing foam. There were inflated bags that cushioned the impact as the lander bounced. The bags had cords attached to them that were retracted after landing to pull the deflated bags under the lander out of the way. The retraction didn't work 100%, and there was concern that the rover's wheels would get tangled up in the bags or the cords (which turned out not to happen).

      The rover actually got stuck on mostly flat terrain. It was crossing some low wind swept dunes which the wheels eventually just dug into (think a car on the beach). By wiggling back and forth they were able to back out, and they added some movement rules for the auto drive that if a lot of slippage occurs the move stops so as not to dig so deep into loose sand.

      --
      Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
    4. Re:conversion error? by bullitB · · Score: 3, Funny

      it was a very real possibility that they would lose too much heat and be dead in the water

      THE WATER? See! See! They have been covering up their knowledge of martian water.

  11. One thing no one is really talking about... by hcob$ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by Sockatume · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, look at it this way: the rovers were designed with redundancy and robustness so that if things go somewhat wrong they can still provide their target lifespan. A side effect of this is that when things don't go wrong, they exceed their target lifespan.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    2. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by am+2k · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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).

      The problem is, when you build them less robust, they might not survive the landing, so you would get a zero livespan...

    3. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Funny

      "probably built it half as robust and still been outstanding pieces of machinery"

      Yeah , why did those engineers bother over engineering. They could
      have made them out of some old beer cans and kit from radio shack.
      Hey they might only have lasted 10 seconds but think of all the
      money saved!

    4. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by Rasta+Prefect · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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).

      Thats a problem with your mind, not with NASA's strategy. In short, the actual construction costs of the rovers are a very small portion of the cost of a mission of this nature. Skimping on the construction isn't going to save significantly on design costs, nor is it going to reduce the cost of flinging it halfway across the solar system and monitoring it on the way.

      What you call "Over-engineering" likely only increased to cost of the project by a couple of percent at most, and greatly improved the chances of success, avoiding the necessity of paying all of the overhead costs _again_ to lauch another one because this one plowed into the ground.

      Penny wise, pound foolish as my Grandma would say. :)

      --
      Why?
    5. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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).

      If I may interject, WHO says they're overengineered? In fact, to the best of my knowledge they are anything *but* overengineered. When the Spirit rover had technical difficulties shortly after landing, one of the things that came out was the lack of backup systems and the inability of the craft to keep its solar panels clean. Things that many of us wished the rovers had were RTGs, Solar Panel Wipers, Longer Lasting Batteries, Redundant Computers, Larger Storage Capacity, Anything but Vx[Doesn't]Works, etc. NASA hadn't put many of these goodies onboard because the rovers were built in a relative hurry, with all expectations of short lifespans.

      Unexpectedly, it turned out that pretty much all the components on the rovers far exceeded their expected lifetimes. As far as the engineers are concerned, the solar panels should be caked, the batteries shouldn't hold a charge, the wheels should be gunked up, and the computers should have no remaining capacity. Yet the rovers live on. Very puzzling for the engineers, but very nice for the scientists. :-)

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    6. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by AndersOSU · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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)

    7. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by squoozer · · Score: 3, Informative

      They aren't over engineered for the environment they were expected to operate in. Our understanding of the martian environment led the engineers to believe that the solar panels would become dirty quickly. I'm sure cleaning systems were considered but a desision was made to have rovers that lasted 3 months without a cleaning machanism. Turns out we didn't understand the martian environment all that well and wind is keeping the panels clean enough to power the rovers. That's just shear luck.

      As for the other parts of the rovers out lasting their usefulness - well that just goes to show how good some areas of engineering have become. Yes they could probably have fitted wheel bearings that would seize after 3 months but as they would weigh the same as (or damn near) the ones that have lasted 2 years a desision was made to fit the better bearings. There will always be one weakest component in this case our best guess at what is was was wrong. I'd be interested to know what part eventually fails and kills the rovers. If nothing else this is an interesting experiment into long term rover deployment. I am sure the engineers are getting plenty of interesting telemetry back on what is failing on the rovers.

      --
      I used to have a better sig but it broke.
    8. Re:One thing no one is really talking about... by GileadGreene · · Score: 3, Informative
      In fact, to the best of my knowledge they are anything *but* overengineered.

      Very true. The entire MER program was mass-constrained from the get-go. They barely fit on the launch vehicle. At some points during the design cycle the mass margin was negative, and the systems engineers had to hunt around for things to take off. There was no room to spare for over-engineering, because there just wasn't any spare mass for anything other than the bare minimum to achieve the mission. I speak from direct knowledge here, because I sat through the debates about whether or not to have two transponders (final decision: one - the SDST was considered reasonably reliable), and similar debates about the solid-state power amplifiers (the final word I heard was two SSPAs, due to their potential for failure, but that may have changed after I left the program). We used to joke that the only redundant things in the entire systems were the heaters and the SSPAs.

  12. Why not more? by EriktheGreen · · Score: 5, Insightful
    So, why aren't we applauding these things louder, and mass producing twenty or thirty more? They're a raging success, a proven concept, and surely cheaper than developing a completely new exploration system for other worlds. We should take the plans and use them to build an army of rovers for mars, then put an equal number on the moon... we could explore the moon from laboratories, universities, offices and homes on earth directly.

    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

    1. Re:Why not more? by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 4, Funny
      and nothing to blow it off

      Slant the panels and build in a small vibrator.

      Man, this all sounds oddly offensive. ;-)

  13. Testament to JPL by Sierpinski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
  14. 2 years and still no postcard! by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I dunno , some robots , just no consideration for those left on earth.

  15. Hats off by GroeFaZ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  16. Gustav Crater? by utexaspunk · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's called Gusev crater.

  17. All you fans of sterile deserts say WHOOOP!!! by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny
    How many millions did we spend on this, again?

    -Eric

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  18. Even lamer pun by joggle · · Score: 4, Funny

    Did she ever get the opportunity?

    1. Re:Even lamer pun by Woy · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah but it was lost before entry. Turns out she expected inches and he was talking centimeters.

      --
      "If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
  19. Re:Any ideas? by stickytar · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  20. Two Important Points by Thunderstruck · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  21. maestro by VStrider · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  22. Re:Low Resolution Images.... by cplusplus · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  23. A mission which they may never finish.. by matt+me · · Score: 4, Funny

    If NASA run out of tasks for the rovers, they could always send them to find Beagle 2.