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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
"...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.
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.
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?
It's called Gusev crater.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The problem is, when you build them less robust, they might not survive the landing, so you would get a zero livespan...
Did she ever get the opportunity?
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
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?
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
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.
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.