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Mars Rover Spirit Down a Wheel
riflemann writes "NASA is reporting that two years into its 90-day mission, Spirit has lost one wheel and is now running on five wheels, dragging the broken wheel. With this reduced mobiity, the rover still needs to make its way to a slope where it can catch enough sun over the Martian winter to keep it operating. 'Even though the rovers are well past their original design life, they still have plenty of capability to conduct outstanding science on Mars.', says project leader Dr. John Callas."
I've had worse.
I still believe both rovers will be alive
when and if Vista is ever released.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Aha, but will they still be functioning when Duke Nukem Forever gets released? I mean, 2514AD is a long ways away!
I don't think their hardware meet Vista's specs.
Then I remember a story Spider Robinson told about a cheap digital watch that died on him. He was pretty pissed off, but then he remembered that:
a) it was originall a Crackerjack prize or some other freebie.
b) it was 5 years into it's projected one year battery life.
At this point he gave it a solemn memorial service and kept it in a revered place (I think he may have buried it).
Whenever they finally die, I hope that they find an honored place in whatever museum the future Mars colonists decide to set up.
R2.0
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
If a dog can walk on two legs you better hope this thing keeps going, otherwise it's pretty embarassing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=OZqVvYkCe68
The NASA engineers always triumph!
I think its great that the mars rovers lasted as long as they have. when you consider the failed mars mission attempts, spirit and opportunity are huge successes that have long outlasted their expected lifespan. The new mars orbiter "MRO" is sure to provide more information about the surface of mars, and possible landing sites for even more capable landers in the future. my question to /.ers is this: should we be focusing so much on mars or should we be looking toward other possible outposts/life harboring worlds like europa. and the new horizons mission to pluto - a waste of time, or an exciting new learning opportunity?
personally, i doubt life will be found on mars. and i'm doubtfull any significant life will be found anywhere in our solar system. but, we are natural explorers who will continue to explore, even with a bum wheel.
Its almost winter in the southern hemisphere of Mars. I wonder if there is a chance that a contact has contracted in the cold enough to break off power to this motor. Who knows? Spirit has been lucky before. Perhaps this wheel will start working again in the summer.
Failing that I am available to fix the broken motor, assuming that NASA can provide transportation :)
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Martian1: It broke it's leg. I say we shoot it and put it out of it's misery.
Martian2: nah. It seems to have such a drive for life.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Doesn't really LOOK like it's free spinning:
1 /2F195698779EFFAQ15P1210L0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/2/f/78
Hmmm, typical NASA project, 21 months late and far over budget. :)
Oh well, what the hell...
A sense of triumph swept our fair red world today when reports came in that the Grand Army of the Council had damaged one of the robotic invaders from the evil blue planet. K'Breel, speaker for the Council of Elders, made the following comment:
When a journalist suggested that the terrible monstrosity had merely worn out one of its locomotive rotators, K'Breel had the traitor's gelsac mutilated immediately.
Apologies to TripMaster Monkey.
What do you expect? The rover has lasted *8* times longer than design. That's the equivalent of driving 400,00 miles on tires rated for 50,000 miles. It's a heck of an accomplishment and I can only applaud the terrific job the design engineers and builders did.
100 mile free towing too!
(My experience with brushed and brushless motors comes from R/C planes, where a brushless motor is sometimes twice as powerful and 50% more efficient than a similarly sized brushed motor. Of course, a large part of this is that the brushed motor is dirt cheap, made cheaply in every way, and the brushless motors are of higher quality, but even so, even when comparing high quality stuff (and not cheap speed 400 can motors) the brushless are signifigantly better.)
My tricycle had training wheels.
The rovers are interesting critters.. not unlike their older sibling Pioneer 10.
I guess we've given up on artificial intelligence, but I rather think what we altogether thought was a mind of information is actually a mind of situation and evolving spirit that simply exists in the moment. If that be true, even an Ant could have artificial intelligence.
Its interesting we drive these things into the ground, or until they run out of power, or we loose interest.
It may be lame, But I'd think it might be more interesting in the long run to upload a final survival program into these critters and turn them loose.. perhaps in the long run we'll come to those ideas and terms. Perhaps years from now when astronauts decide to land there they really will find martians!
Of course if we have a nuclear or biological melt down, then perhaps they will out live us.
There was a SciFi story long ago called NightFall.. it would make an interesting animated short or story to tell the story from the rovers perspective... and in the end they are given their freedom and continue to look up at the night to the twinkle in the sky where their makers live, and then.. they loose contact, perhaps they merely lost interest in their creations.. or perhaps the makers are no more, and they truly are all alone.. and as the cold surrounds and grips them they fold up their solar wings preparing for another martian winter and the rovers go to sleep.. perchance to dream.. of other worlds.
They made Spirit and Opportunity do some battlebot stuff. And well, Spirit is a puss.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Why would the rover actually permanently die if it ran out of power?
Surely when the Martian winter comes to an end, and the area it's in is flooded with sunlight again, the solar cells could still work, the battery could recharge, and it could wake up?
Or did nobody think about a cold restart?
The computer in each Mars Exploration Rover runs with a 32-bit Rad 6000 microprocessor, a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC chip. This chip is used in IBM's heavy duty computers and is the same family of chip in the pre-intel Macs, Xbox 360, GameCube and the Cell version will run the PlayStation 3.
The chips are fairly cheap and have lightning fast floating point calculations via alti-vec. They are also very easy to program for.
NASA claimed they would only work for 90 days due to the high iron content of martian soil. In 90 days the solar cells were supposed to be covered with magnetized iron dust and the cells would not get enough sun to charge them. That never happened. Considering the cold, dusty, unsheilded environment they are in it is amazing they have lasted over two years.
This little guy seems to make it on his own just fine on one leg. Although, admittedly, he'll prob'bly never take him a wife.
They stopped using the wheel about a year ago for a while because it was having problems as if the lubricant was wearing off, and it indeed did *not* free-spin when power was not sent to it. They simply dragged it around by running the rover backward. They found it easier to control the rover by dragging the bum wheel rather than by pushing it. They only used the wheel for close-up control when rocks were being targeted. Eventually it started working properly for a while, and now won't turn at all. It does not appear they have a "free spin" mode. Dragging is it.
i t01.html
I beleive they have a video about the last time the wheel was left dragging. They did some test-bed simulations of an Earthly rover copy. Page down to the "Driving Uphill Backwards" portion, about half-way down the page:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/video/spir
Table-ized A.I.
Hopefully at the next Pit Stop the guys that are wiping down the solar panels will also jack it up and change out the wheel.
Ten seconds! Go!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
though pain it does not feel.
Now it limps along the Martian soil,
alone in a great vastness of red sand and rocks.
I hope it reaches the top of the slope,
else alas for naught will it toil.
For in that vast desert there's no telephone box.
Nor much chance for hope.
Like the injured lone explorer,
Oh! What a horror!
it will suffer its demise,
Alone on that alien world,
Its nearest neighbor far away,
as no one hears its cries.
The wrath of Mars is unfurled,
And there alone will it lay.
It is so interesting that we leave tire tracks on other planets. They may be that the first signs of life we find, or that other beings find.
Imagine the tension if we found ourselves face-to-face with a foreign martian rover!
One wheel dragging huh? Must be that the Mars rovers are manufactured by the same company that make the shopping carts for Walmart.
Those are very good points, but I think that most of the reason for the unexpected longevity of the mars rovers is that they expected dust from dust storms to critically hamper the solar panel operation. What was a surprise is that the wind quite effectively kept the solar panels clear of dust, giving a much longer lifetime. I don't think that the engineers expected to have to worry about the motors lasting 36 months or more since it was not expected. Mars has quite extreme temperature swings, so the engineering is probably worth what it cost to build the rovers. Mother nature is something that just can't always be anticipated, unless, of course, you anticipate problems due to mother nature. In that case, any positive turn of fate leaves you in the position of underestimating vehicle longevity.
The temperatures, radiation, dust, vibration... these are very harsh environmental variables. It is just amazing that they are still running. I'm sure that NASA is still as amazed as we are, and pleased to be continuing the scientific research at what amounts to a budget bonanza.
You are most probably right in thinking that what was learned this time around will be incorporated in the next planetary exploration vehicles, and a longer lifetime expectation will be part of that. In line with that, recent NASA un-manned missions have been incredibly successful. I look forward to more solar system exploration, and also to commercial exploration based on NASA work.
Now that we know how to build robots to explore Mars, we can build them to explore other planets, and that ion engine thing is a Trekie's dream. The expectation bar is rising, and that is a good thing. The X-prize and similar efforts are creating huge scientific 'wealth' for all to use. Its all very cool.
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Uhm, this gets informative? The Rad6000 chip runs at 20mhz according to wikipedia and 25mhz according to other sources. The chip is based on EARLY power cpu designs (think early/mid 1990s), and most definitely does NOT include any sort of altivec technology.
No radiation hardened space suitable chips are "cheap." Expect to spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per CPU.
That's not to say it's not a great chip for what it does, but come on...
Well, future rovers could carry around little Roombas to run around and vacuum off the top of their solar cells.
"NASA is reporting that two years into its 90-day mission"
Talk about overtime, you think the rover gets time and a half now?