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Spirit Marks One Martian Year

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the peace-and-long-life dept.

hrayr writes to tell us NASA is reporting that Spirit, their proclaimed "wonder child", sent to explore Mars has just wrapped up its first Martian year, equivalent to two Earth years. Originally designed to only last 90 days the small six wheeled machine has lasted far beyond the original scope to bring us immense amounts of data and some 70,000 images. There is still great hope that this data, and more to come will bring us one step closer to Mars habitation.

24 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Why Mars? by n0dalus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More importantly, hopefully this data will bring us one step closer to habitating Earth effectively.

    1. Re:Why Mars? by Markus+Registrada · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes. Jesus, what a dump. You wouldn't bid a nickel an acre for a place like that if it was right off a major freeway, and actually had air besides.

      Asteroids, particularly the ones (almost) sharing Earth's orbit, might be useful someday, and be worth visiting on that account. That is, if we don't blow ourselves up, or poison ourselves to death, or wipe out our biosphere first. There's nothing like starving in the dark with your hair and teeth falling out to make you lose interest in the finer points of space exploration.

  2. Powered by... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Linux :-) http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7570

    1. Re:Powered by... by ggvaidya · · Score: 1

      Driven by Linux. Powered by Sun.

  3. Re:and by Spudley · · Score: 1

    Bah! They've done lots of useful things....

    Like.... uh.... proving that Mars really is orange... ...and... uh.... proving that solar power works even that far away from the sun... ....and.... uh.... naming dozens of insignificant boulders after members of the research team.

    --
    (Spudley Strikes Again!)
  4. How many Martian years until... by Errandboy+of+Doom · · Score: 1

    ...it starts flipping out and killing people?

  5. Cool... by Mad_Rain · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now comes the cultural aspect of Spirit's research on Mars: Do the Martians bake it a birthday cake? Or do they now call it an adult and let it drive the family UFO?

    --
    "What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
  6. Misleading blurb by Sebilrazen · · Score: 1

    ...equivalent to two Earth years...

    Should be 'roughly,' 'almost,' or 'close too, but not quite,' + equivalent...

    FTFA: "...has completed one martian year--that's almost two Earth years--on Mars."

    --
    "There are no facts, only interpretations." --Friedrich Nietzsche.
    1. Re:Misleading blurb by Mr2cents · · Score: 1

      One word: significant figures. ... D'oh!

      --
      "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
  7. Question: by imstanny · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why would it only last 90 days? I dont have expertise in battery power, but I figured that since it has solar panels it can recharge its batteries. Having said that, I would imagine the battery would last longer than 90 days. So what's the dilly?

    1. Re:Question: by xenocide2 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because its made of several parts intended for space grade usage and cost millions of dollars. Nobody wants to face owing the space research center their money back because their part failed first, so they set a number as a minimum. Clearly they aimed too low, although I've heard unfounded assertions that the 90 day target was because it was easier to budget the manpower that way.

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    2. Re:Question: by Mr2cents · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's just the warranty, or mission success criterium. If you look at the specs, there isn't a single part of the rovers with such a limited lifetime. For example, the batteries have a 1000 cycle lifetime. The big problem is that there were many unknowns. Landing on mars is a tricky business, two out of three missions failing. They sent two rovers to maximize the chance of at least one of them reaching the surface intact. Further bad luck (a global dust storm, or landing in the middle of a nasty dune field of for example), could further have limited the mission lifetime. And they really needed succes, so they set the goals to "realistic" levels. (Or put another way, they over-designed the robots).

      But once they had the two rovers safely on the ground, you could already tell they were going to outlast the warranty. Why even try to reach the Columbia Hills if the rover is near the end of it's lifespan?

      I still remember a comment by Steve Squyres not that far in the mission stating that the rovers could still be be going "next summer". He wasn't specific (on purpose, I guess), but I think he didn't mean the next earth summer (a few months), but the next martian summer (it was still autumn on mars back then, so that's more than an earth-year).

      --
      "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
    3. Re:Question: by surfdaddy · · Score: 5, Informative
      Well, once you get through the tough problem of actually landing on the planet, you face a host of unknowns:

      - the temperature is extremely cold, and thermal stresses could crack electronic solder joints and/or ruin components

      - the batteries find it tough going at low temperatures

      - the silicon solar cells degrade over time, losing efficiency

      - an unknown amount of dust collects on the cells, how much and how long can you drive it? One of the surprises is that there are "dust devils" on Mars; some of these have actualy blown over the rovers and cleaned much dust off the solar cells! See the link for an amazing time-lapse movie of such winds caught by the rover cameras!

      http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/me r_main.html

      Bottom line: when you have thousands of parts in a harsh environment, you just don't know. They built them tough but light, and thought they had a good chance of exceeding 90 days. Thankfully, luck has been on JPL's side, and they're still going! What a success story.

      At almost the same time the rovers landed, a European probe was also to land. It was never heard from again, and presumably crashed.

    4. Re:Question: by iamlucky13 · · Score: 2, Informative

      In addition to what other people have said: because the Sojourner rover lasted about 90 days before it collected too much dust and couldn't operate. It was only expected to last something like 2 weeks, at which time the batteries ran out and it had to trickle charge from it's undersized solar panel. I'm sure experience from the Viking missions and the Pathfinder lander was also used in setting the mission-success criteria.

    5. Re:Question: by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Informative
      Why would it only last 90 days? I dont have expertise in battery power, but I figured that since it has solar panels it can recharge its batteries. Having said that, I would imagine the battery would last longer than 90 days.,
      It's the solar panels that were expected to be the maint limiting factor. It was thought that they would get covered with dust and thus be unable to recharge the battery sufficiently as the insolation decreased during the Martian winter. This didn't happen.
    6. Re:Question: by uberdave · · Score: 1

      The stupidest design element of Sojourner was that it didn't have rechargeable batteries. If it had, it might still be going as well.

      --
      "I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
  8. Well done NASA by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It is nice to see successes of NASA for a change. Hopefully, NASA's just in a slump now and we'll see more grand successes like the Mars rovers. First thing is first, lets bridge the shuttle gap with a Soyuz (spelling?) like craft for the purpose of moving materials and people to the space station so we can get that finished. Then, while thats happening they need keep working on designs for longer range reusable veichles like a hybrid between the Apollo setup and the shuttle so we can start working on reaching Mars and maybe hitting the moon again. I think there is still alot of geologic information we can gleen from the moon, especially if we can just drill down a little further. Along with the reusable "mothership" like craft should be smaller, cheaper one time delivery units assembled onsite at the spacestation using materials shipped up in small quantities with other cargo/passengers to the space station. These would be to drop off equipment need for experiments and studies on the moon/mars. But, I'm sure NASA knows what they're doing and I have no doubt they'll accomplish their goals.

    --
    Demented But Determined.
    1. Re:Well done NASA by iamlucky13 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, NASA is hardly in a slump. They've shown a pretty good unmanned mission success over the last 4-5 years. The last major failure was the Mars Polar Lander, which was lost in 1999. Then of course there was the Genesis mission that failed to deploy it's parachute after successfully capturing solar wind particles. The sample was tainted, but not considered completely lost. In the meantime, they've launched the Spitzer, Cassini has arrived on station, Deep Impact smacked a comet, Voyager reached the termination shock, Galileo finished an excellent tour of Jupiter, Stardust is on it's way back to earth with a comet sample, Odyssey is orbiting Mars as planned, and the Reconnaissance Orbiter is halfway there. If you consider the past record, or even the trials of other nations (ESA losing the Beagle amd part of the data from Hguyens, Japan having trouble with Hayabusa and losing their Martian probe, Russia in the doldrums of a limited budget), the success rate lately has been outstanding. I hope this is a sign that we're finally getting the hang of it.

    2. Re:Well done NASA by Leif_Bloomquist · · Score: 1

      In fact, you can view the current "scorecard" here: ;-)

      http://www.bio.aps.anl.gov/~dgore/fun/PSL/marsscor ecard.html

  9. ~2040 by raptor_87 · · Score: 1

    Assuming that nothing slows down or stops the current Space Exploration Initiative. ...anyone feel like giving Robert Zubrin a few billion ;)

  10. Re:and by iamlucky13 · · Score: 1

    I think it would probably be more like a couple of weeks, considering how many measurements and photos it's taken and how fast a person can work when their every move is being orchestrated over the radio by someone else. Still, it's a good point, plus there's input you can only get from a human being. For example, when Opportunity got stuck in a dune, the engineers spent three days trying to figure out things like how cohesive the sand was. A person (one) would have never gotten stuck and (two) would have simply said "it's like beachsand/flour/clay/the balls in the McDonalds Playplace."

    And if you're interested in furthering manifest destiny (in a more polically correct form...there's no Indians on Mars), there's other things you can only learn by putting a man on Mars, like learning the long-term health concerns.

  11. Not to be a cynic by PresidentEnder · · Score: 1
    How, exactly, will data collected on Mars help us get to Mars? We know that:

    1. It's a long way off.
    2. There's not enough air.
    3. There's a whole bunch of not enough air between here and there
    4. Radiation and meteoroids are a problem.
    5. There are dust storms

    From the rover, we've learned that.... we can have a rover up there for a long time. And where some rocks are. Did I miss anything? I love the idea of going to Mars, but until we can send some very capable robots or humans to do more in-depth geological analysis, I don't see how this will help us get there or build there.

    --
    I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
    1. Re:Not to be a cynic by exi1ed0ne · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Aside from all the hard science things we've learned that may not be immediatly exploitable, we now know there is water. At an insane cost per pound to throw stuff out the gravity well, any resources you don't have to take with you reduce the mission scopr a lot. Think about it - extra fuel to boost the water, extra fuel to boost the extra fuel, ad nausium.

      I've read (too lazy to find a link) they've even figured out how to make fuel for the return flight from elements the atmosphere. That's some amazing stuff. Six months there, six months back, and a year on the planet is the minimum time a human mission would need to make the trip worthwhile. If we don't find resources there, then the mission would be one way or no way.

      Geologic knowledge about what resources there present and how easy it will be to extract them is essential to the sucess of a human mission. Right now that knowledge can only be retained from robot explorers. It's limited, but they answer one question: What do we need for humand to be sucessful there?

      --
      Pessimists.net - as if life wasn't depressing enough.
  12. Re:and by Thundersnatch · · Score: 1
    And if you're interested in furthering manifest destiny (in a more polically correct form...there's no Indians on Mars), there's other things you can only learn by putting a man on Mars, like learning the long-term health concerns.

    A bold experiment with a human life... why don't we send a chimp first instead? NASA got that part right the first time around.

    Note to PETA members: I am not joking, a chimp's life is worth less than a human's life, at least to me. And to just about anyone else with common sense.