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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." '"
They have. The problem is that the batteries also are providing power for heaters to keep the rover warm during the night. They probably won't (especially the batteries) survive a deep-freeze to -40C, so when sun starts shining again there may be too many things broken to start the rover up again.
Then the storm came for Kingston upon Hull, but I live on a hill on the other side of England and it did not worry me.
Then the storm came for the Mars Rovers, and I was really quite worried about them. What a relief to know that I'm not sociopathic.
Pining for the fjords
Damm trans-global warming, ever since Al Gore invented it there has been nothing but problems, look even Mars is having problems now with record storms.
09-f9-11-02-9* (G^GCA_++{>. RV>>>>+++ NO CARRIER
So, its not that the battery won't come alive again later. Its that the cold will do serious damage to the electronics on board. Without power, there's no way to keep them warm. Nights on mars go well below -25C (in the winter, the southern hemisphere can get as cold as -120C).
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.
"KEYBOARD NOT FOUND. PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE"
The lameness filter lacks humor.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
The difference being that almost no light for too long of a period of time, not allowing the rovers to keep warm. They've always used batteries & solar power to keep the circuitry just warm enough to keep them from being damaged. Without that warmth, circuits can crack.
Age is compounding the problem. JPL has a good article up at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/20070612. html.
What you do with a computer does not constitute the whole of computing.
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)
Actually, no. It was designed for three months. They, of course, made any changes that might make it last longer that didn't effect the budget, but they very definitely avoided any design improvements intended to lengthen it beyond 90 days, unless those improvements cost no money. The budget was very tight and many potential design improvements to make the rovers last longer were specifically rejected. (See the book by the project lead.)
The cake is a pie
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.
The next rover mission will no longer rely on solar panels. It will have nuclear reactors as the main source of power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laborato ry#Power_source/