Mars Rover Upgraded

MrShaggy writes "According to a BBC article, NASA is upgrading their MARS rovers. The upgrade will allow the rovers to sift through the pictures of dust-devils, decide which is the most appropriate, send it back. 'Clouds typically occur in 8-20% of the data collected right now,' Castano said. 'If we could look for a much more extended time and select only those images with clouds then we could increase our understanding of how and when these phenomena form. Similarly with the dust devils.' The article also discusses upgrades to the Mars Odyssey. They plan to make it self-reacting to events on the planet as they are happening."

Comments

hope NASA doesn't get Rover from VZ

[yagu]

I hope NASA doesn't get it's Rover from Verizon or any of the other cell phone industry, or some of the upgrades they'd have to consider would include:

• bluetooth (extra charge for making it work the extra millions of miles)
• a surcharge per picture to transfer them back to Earth
• extra games for entertainment while waiting for the right conditions for picture taking (oh, Tetris DOES come free).
• blurry video capability
• Martian voice-recognition (phone hommme)
• internet surfing
• GPS
• downloadable music (limited to 100 songs)
• text messaging
• customized ringtones (REM's Man in the Moon is free)

I wonder if the Rover gets unlimited roaming?

Shazbot, my head is STILL ringing from the utilitarian cell phone debate. (or is that a Britney Speers ringtone?)

I pity the guy who had to propose this...

[abigsmurf]

I could just imagine the guy from NASA who had to request the funding for this. "so, you want to spend millions upgrading the rover?" "yep" "what will these millions give us?" "it'll enable us to decide if a picture of dust is interesting or not!" "..."

Absolutely amazing

[datajack]

I am constantly astounded at just how well built and designed the rover must have been. AFAIR, it was only intended to run for a couple of months, yet it has now clocked up a couple of years, and now they are upgrading it's software to make it perform even better - that entire team is doing a fantastic job, and easily deserve whatever the US equivalent of an OBE is.

Tis a shame that Beagle2 didn't survive impact. I reckon that'd have done just as well, and the two teams would have mapped Mars and have the rovers playing a game of fotball with each other by now ;)

Re:Absolutely amazing

[UnknowingFool]

I think it gets repeated because NASA's failures and stupidity get repeated just as often. It is a counter balance to help point out that NASA isn't always doing crap.

While I agree with you that NASA has made/is making some mistakes, the success of the Mars rovers is highlighted because of how enormously difficult Mars missions are. Something like only 25% of all spacecraft sent to Mars make it. And we're not just talking about NASA failing. The former Soviet Union lost a few spacecraft. The ESA lost a few.

Re:Absolutely amazing

[kilodelta]

If you want, read Steve Squyers book "Rovign Mars". It'll give you a better understanding of why the rovers lasted as long as they did. They're built like tanks with proven technology. There was nothing flashy about what went into those robots, it was all tried and true.

They were originally supposed to last for 90 sols, or Martian days. They've now gone far past the origianl design goals and the benefit has been lots more data about Mars. Spirit is currently on it's 853rd sol. http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/

Re:Absolutely amazing

[Darth_brooks]

I am constantly astounded at just how well built and designed the rover must have been. AFAIR, it was only intended to run for a couple of months, yet it has now clocked up a couple of years, and now they are upgrading it's software to make it perform even better - that entire team is doing a fantastic job, and easily deserve whatever the US equivalent of an OBE is.

Here's the rub. Spirit and Opportunity were only expected to run a couple months. Intended is a whole other word. They were built with the idea that they could conceivably last this long but the mission profile (and all the press releases) were put together with the expectation that they'd last a couple months. It was the closest thing to a gaurenteed win NASA could do.

Think of it this way, if GM marketed the H2 as getting an "amazing 2 miles per gallon!" customers would brag about how their H2 actually gets five times that number, instead of complaining about only getting 10.

Don't get me wrong, the mars rovers are an amazing accomplishment and a feather in the cap of the "new" NASA. But somewhere along the line there was a choice that needed to be made; Either completly revamp the way NASA does business and eliminate the top-heavy "Office Space" culture of twenty managers for every one engineer OR build small & cheap to minimize failure while lowering the expectations for the missions being planned, ensuring an "artificially" high sucess rate. One of these choices is good for NASA long term. The other can be good in the short term if it help eliminate the problems that need to be addressed by the first solution. It can be a bad thing if NASA decides to stay the course and be happy with writing missions that have a lowered standard of success.

Rumors that they're 'upgrading' from Ada.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read on other Internet forums that they're also planning on switching from Ada to Java for the software on upcoming rovers. While Java was initially developed for such embedded environments, it isn't somewhere that we've seen it get a lot of use.

If there is any truth to those statements I have read elsewhere, I have to be a bit worried. Ada is known to be a rock-solid language for developing mission-critical software. Even considering the Arianne-5 failure, it's still more reassuring to know that a software system is developed in Ada than Java.

I also believe that Sun's implementation of Java does not allow for it to be used in mission-critical systems. If it is indeed true that a switch is being considered, they would likely have to write their own JVM, or at least use a non-Sun one. Would not that be something, if the space research futhers Java development!

And it's the 'BBC', not the 'bbc'. Please, it's not difficult to hold the shift key while typing those three characters.

Re:Rumors that they're 'upgrading' from Ada.

[Avionics Guy]

The large majority of the MER software was written in C. The exception is a small module in the navigation code that used C++ with a custom memory manager. BTW, JPL doesn't "do" ADA and it isn't likely that Java will be used on the MSL, the 2009 rover.

Mars Exploration Rovers and the future

[chroma]

The current generation of rovers have shown themselves to be reliable and very flexible. They've brought back a view of Mars that far surpasses anything we've seen before. It's really disappointing, therefore, that NASA is throwing away all of the knowledge used to make these missions a success. Delivery of a robot to Mars requires a successful launch, accurate navigation, and, of course, a good landing. To say nothing of the design of the rovers themselves. All of this must be carefully worked out in advance.

But NASA has decided instead to throw away all of that and spend money to develop a new, bigger probe, the Mars Science Labratory. It's a shame that the limited science money NASA gets isn't being spent in the most efficient way possible on stuff that we know to will give excellent scientific data, but instead is used for these kinds of big budget employment makers.

And the upgrade went online on August 4th...

[Lead Butthead]

Mars Rover begin to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14am Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug...

Re:And the upgrade went online on August 4th...

[vertinox]

It becomes self-aware at 2:14am Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug...

Only to realize they had forgot they were solar powered.

Don't power off the Rover during reflash

[MobileDude]

Would be a hell of a trip to reset the CMOS.

Key quote.

[jpellino]

"Leaving the robots to "get on with it" - to do the decision-making - is the way ahead, Nasa believes."

Where have I heard this before...?

"I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you. "

Re:What Upgrade?

[the_brobdingnagian]

The upgrade is a software upgrade. But it's not an easy task to do this at such a distance. Two way communication is a painbecause of the lag time. I can't remember the exact time, bu I believe the lag is about 20 minutes. They use a specialised protocal that was designed to handle such extreme lag. The protocol is PROXIMITY-1 SPACE LINK PROTOCOL (specs). They are verry carefull to make sure they dont have to reset the rover the hard way (A.K.A. reset-button) after updates and even during normal operation. I believe they build in all kinds of auto-reset features so the rover could reset itself.

Not a PR conspiracy

[Tablizer]

They were built with the idea that they could conceivably last this long but the mission profile (and all the press releases) were put together with the expectation that they'd last a couple months. It was the closest thing to a gaurenteed win NASA could do. Think of it this way, if GM marketed...

Hogwash. It is a combination of factors:

1. Nasa increased quality control effort and spending in response to the Polar Lander failure and two orbiter failures.

2. Wind has blown dust off of the solar panels. Many expected the dust to be probe-sticky and accumulate based on the Viking lander data.

3. Constructor contract payments were actually stipulated based on a 3-month survivle. It is not an arbitrary deadline.