Japanese 'Minerva' Robot Lost in Space

space_weasel writes "A little Japanese robot that was supposed to land on the surface of an asteroid has accidentally been flung into space by its mothership. New Scientist Space reports that the accident occurred as the data link with the spacecraft was being switched from an station in Japan to one in Australia. Mission controllers still plan to punch a hole in the asteroid and collect samples, which will be returned to Earth."

Comments

High Anxiety

[Doc Ruby]

Dammit, they can't even handoff mission control without losing the probe, and they still think it's OK to go around punching holes in ancient celestial objects? What if they miss?

Re:High Anxiety

[Doc Ruby]

Intelligent Design is the theory that aliens designed life on Earth, right? And the bible is just the old man page, written by a clueless man operator?

Re:High Anxiety

[Anonymous Coward]

You joke, but I know something many of you probably haven't heard of.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics against Evolution. A chaotic soup of particles doesn't just magically tend towards order. For scientists to have any credibility, they would have to prove that there is some sort of huge source of energy external to the Earth. Consider this: according to my calculations, there would need to be at LEAST a few million terawatts of power hitting the Earth's surface, averaged over a year, for any of what we see now to have happened.

What say you now? *Crickets chirping.*

Re:High Anxiety

[cheesygrapes]

But my bible says the sun goes around the Earth! It can't be that important!

What I really dread...

[OakDragon]

...is, after roaming the galaxy for 200 years collecting information, it will come back to Earth to destroy us.

Re: What I really dread...

[Black Parrot]

> even if it traveled at the speed of light, 200 years would not take it very far through the milky way. The Sun is 28,000 light-years distant from the center, and the diameter of the disk is c.100,000 light-years; its average thickness is 10,000 light-years, increasing to 30,000 light-years at the nucleus. Your pathetic chemical propulsion craft would have barely stepped out the door in the galactic neighborhood in 200 years.

And they say Slashdotters are anal-retentive.

what the robots were thinking..

[tont0r]

robot 1 : target acquired, beginning landing sequence...
robot 2 : roger that, beginning land... OH LOOK A STAR!
[all robots turn towards the star]
robot 3 : OOHHHHHHHHHHH PRETTY!!!!

Re:what the robots were thinking..

[Nykon]

this is why I was firmly against implementing the io.add libraries into the APIs of robot code :)

* add = attention deficit disorder

huh

[Lindz]

'Still, he admits that mission controllers do not fully understand how to deal with the spacecraft's motion after the periodic thruster firings' Then why are they mission controllers????

Whoops!

[Skye16]

I wonder how, exactly, the software being used had the capability to allow this to happen. Even if the problem were procedural, I would think that, on transfer of control, you would lock down all non-essential functions - like "flinging" payloads into space - until control has been successfully handed off.

Of course, this is all pointless conjecture on my part - it may have been a hardware malfunction, for all I know. It would be interesting to analyze things like these. Having only a few years real-world experience, I doubt my programming skills would be worth a damn, but I would be thrilled just to have the opportunity to read the code they use before hand. Generally I don't volunteer my time to OSS-like programs, but this is one situation where I could easily see myself helping. Or trying to help, more like it.

Then again, by releasing it beforehand open source, someone else may very well be able to analyze the code and "steal" control of the probe/satellite/whatever-is-using-the-software, possibly using it for nefarious gain, or possibly just being a bunch of dicks. So this probably wouldn't pan out. Still, a nerd can dream.

Re:Whoops!

[Otter]

Even if the problem were procedural, I would think that, on transfer of control, you would lock down all non-essential functions - like "flinging" payloads into space - until control has been successfully handed off.

As I understand the story (which could easily be wrong), they had to issue the release command blindly, because the need to make the adjustment came up precisely when Murphy's Law predicts. Having the flexibility to do so at least allowed them to make the gamble that they wound up losing.

I have a bad feeling about this

[s20451]

If Star Trek has taught us nothing else, it is that probes lost in space are a bad thing. And the fact that it's Japanese means that it's definitely going to come back and go apeshit.

Oh, dear.

[Black Parrot]

When working with the USA, spacecraft get lost due to forgetting to switch between metric and common units.

When working with Australia, spacecraft get lost due to forgetting that their maps of the universe are up-side-down.

Re:Oh, dear.

[jda487]

When working with the USA, spacecraft get lost due to forgetting to switch between imperial and common (SI) units.

Fixed

Cybernature is Cruel

[Anonymous Coward]

"A little Japanese robot... flung into space by its mothership...

Exonature is as cruel as mothernature herself. Obviously, the mothership began to ovulate, and, sensing a potential mate nearby, cruelly cast off her young to fend for itself.

That's why we need AI in space

[MOBE2001]

During this 40-minute antenna change, information about the spacecraft's vertical motion was unavailable to ground controllers.

For a country which prides itself as being at the forefront of robotics technology, this is rather surprising. The latency inherent in space communication over great distances is the primary reason for using intelligent robots in space. If the probe was sufficiently intelligent, it would perform its tasks without supervision from ground control. I hope they (including NASA and the ESA) put a lot more effort into automating their space probes in the future.

Re:That's why we need AI in space

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds good, but apparently doesn't work in practice. See DART. People who who work with space stuff are by necessity very VERY conservative since stuff costs so much (of course, things cost so much because everything is endlessly tested and evaluated which costs a small fortune for each piece of electronics on the vehicle, but that's a different story). But regardless, the managers who have to sign off to take the financial responsibility for a vehicle are going to be highly suspicious of an autonomous vehicle given the limited success we've had it in it so far.

Of course, I understand the russians have been doing it for years (Progress Cargo Spacecraft).

Disclaimer: IWARE (i *was* a rocket engineer)

Had to see it coming...

[Gruneun]

The probe was named Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom and skill. The mothership is named Hayabusa, after the world's fastest flying bird.

Unfortunately, the mission controller was named Bob, after the Roman god of lazy eyes and uncoordinated pitching.

Read a bit earlier -- this was already a kludge

[ianscot]

"But this "dress rehearsal" was cut short because mission controllers could not accurately guide the spacecraft using its fuel thrusters - a contingency solution devised following the failure of two of the craft's three stabilising reaction wheels."

This was a series of truly bad rolls of the dice. Two of their three stablizers failed, they had bad altimeter data because "the slope of the asteroid's surface had apparently caused the altimeter to misjudge... estimates of the craft's altitude," and then they got below 100 meters while the antenna switchover was happening. They sent the separate command without realizing the thrusters to maintain minimum altitude had just fired, because of that break in communications. So the article says, though it's not a sterling example of great science writing, I'll give you that.

The "mission officials are saying "Our readiness was not so complete," to their credit, but it's not like they're complete incompetents. More like they're pushing the technology: the altimeter hadn't ever been used before, for the obvious example.

Sort of fits the cheaper/faster model of robotic exploration. You have your hits and your misses. This isn't a Cassini Cadillac of a probe.

Re:And we wonder why?

[meringuoid]

Somehow this doesn't surprise me. . .

Hmm. Japanese space robot goes bananas, attacks other Japanese space robot, hurls it off into deep space... I've seen that before somewhere.

It was hardware and circumstance

[ianscot]

Of course, this is all pointless conjecture on my part - it may have been a hardware malfunction, for all I know.

You'd sure know more if you went to the (somewhat unclear) article, which would obviate the need for lots of your conjecture.

The main probe has been going on one of its three "stablizing wheels," the other two having failed. There's a sidebar link in the article to an earlier one about those failures. Mission controllers have been burning extra fuel keeping the thing at the right distance from the asteroid, facing the asteroid, and with its solar panels facing the sun; they already had that against them. Then the altimeter data they were getting was bad, they were closer than they thought, because some combination of the laser altimeter (previously untested) and the slope of the asteroid's surface confused the data.

They realized they were within 100 meters and had to send the detach command while the antenna switch was happening. The blackout prevented them from realizing a "keep above minimum altitude" engine thrust had just gone off.

This is much more of a reflection of this model of probe: it's cheaper, it's faster to develop, and there are going to be failures like the Beagle and this.

(Personally I do think there'd be a big gain if, before and after missions like this, the code got reviewed. I doubt very much that hackers in Idaho would have foreseen the failed stabilizers, the workaround, the potential for misjudging the altimeter data, and the combination of the blackout and the necessity for the release command. But in terms of intellectual freedom, it'd be a nice statement, and the Post Mortems would sure feature a lot of people asking Feynman-esque questions about icewater and O-rings.)

Flying Bag of Money

[Puhase]

As a politician instead of a scientist, the first thing that came to mind when I read this story were the faces of the people who made the budget for that robot. They just heard that their spacecraft flung a $20million bag of money into the great unknown. I imagine that feels just about the same as getting kicked square in the nuts.