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Mars Rovers Threatened By Dust Storms
mrcgran writes "Space.com is reporting a new potentially deadly weather condition threatening the Mars rovers: 'The first and largest dusty squall has reduced direct sunlight to Mars' surface by nearly 99 percent, an unprecedented threat for the solar-powered rovers. If the storm keeps up and thickens with even more dust, officials fear the rovers' batteries may empty and silence the robotic explorers forever. "This thing has been breaking records the past few days. The sun is 100 times fainter than normal. We're hoping for a big break in the storm soon, but that's just a hope." '"
I'm sure they could have guaranteed that kind of functionality inside of there original 90 day design lifetime. Here we are 3 years later and they're not sure.
I think the designers deserve some credit. If you feel you can do it better I'm sure NASA would appreciate your resume.
This signature would be better if I was creative.
Even if it is the end the people who designed, built, tested and watched over those rovers over the past years should be very proud of their accomplishment. To succeed so well at something that is so incredibly difficult is high praise in itself.
To these talented and hard-working engineers, technicians and researchers (and even the JPL PHBs), I salute you.
while this is unfortunate, nasa expected a failure such as this a long time ago. They have been invaluable source of knowledge-- and i'm sure they won't be the last rovers on mars.
As someone who actually builds things for extreme environments (including Mars), I call BS. Soldering is potentially MUCH more reliable than wirewrap, it's all in the design. Not to mention there are some size and mass restrictions on something that has to be sent to Mars by rocket. You were, perhaps, thinking of wirewrapping the thousands of pins on a multihundred pin FPGA? Oh yes, that wirewrap socket for the part doesn't exist.
But there are a host of other issues. What about glassification temperatures? What about various polymers needed?
There are Radioactive Heating Units (RHUs) to keep the Warm Electronics Box, er, Warm, but there are things on the rovers that aren't in the WEB (wheels, pan cam mast, Xband antenna gimbal) that aren't RHU compatible.
Ultimately, it comes down to cost. How much is Congress willing to spend? Are they willing to 10 billion instead of 1 billion to send a couple rovers to mars? At some point, someone has to say, here's our design life, here's our mission environmental requirements (typical flight hardware would be -55 to +65C), and design accordingly. It's a judgement call, and the folks making that call DO have experience from the 60s and 70s (sometimes to their detriment.. it's hard to get new technology inserted)
A few points:
1. How much is your "other power source" going to weigh?
2. How much is your "other power source" going to cost?
3. Does your "other" power source comply with international environmental/space regulations?
4. How many failure modes does your "other" power source have?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Dust storms on Mars are a known risk. If the dust storms were this bad on the planet when the rovers first landed, the rovers may not have been able to last past the original 90 day mission. Everyone at NASA/JPL will tell you that luck has played a significant role in the current longevity of the rovers due to the lack of dust storms to date and the various cleaning events.
The current rover design can't be used when investigating Mars outside equatorial regions, either.
It's been a great run for both rovers, and it's great to see them provide atmospheric data on opacity of the atmosphere (tau) -- measuring that which may ultimately kill them.