Spirit Outlasts Viking 2 Lander

ScottMaxwell writes "Spirit, the Mars rover designed for a 90-day mission, has now outlasted the Viking 2 lander. Viking 2 survived until its 1281st sol (Martian day); Spirit is now on sol 1282 and counting. Assuming both rovers continue to weather the ongoing dust storms, Spirit's sister, Opportunity, will reach the same age in a few weeks. They aren't breathing down the neck of the all-time record just yet, though — the Viking 1 lander lasted 2245 sols on the surface of Mars; Spirit and Opportunity won't break that record for another 2.7 Earth years."

Comments

Nuclear powered

[FTL]

Mars lander trivia:

• Both Viking landers were nuclear powered (RTGs).
• So are both of the rovers, to a certain extent. Both rovers contain slugs of plutonium which keep the electronics boxes warm and reduce the amount of solar power needed for heating.
• Viking 2 lasted 1281 sols and died when its batteries failed. Although the RTGs would have produced usable power for another ten years, the power levels were too low for 70s electronics. So the RTGs would slowly charge the batteries then the batteries would power up the lander for short durations.
• Viking 1 lasted 2245 sols and lost contact with Earth when a bad command was sent which instructed Viking to point its antenna in a different direction (sort of like typing "shutdown -h now" on the command line of a remote server, there's no recovery short of a house-call).

Re:Nuclear powered

[QuantumG]

sort of like typing "shutdown -h now" on the command line of a remote server More like typing "ifdown eth0".

Re:Nuclear powered

[nelsonal]

From the summary, it looks like sunrise/sunset cycle on the local planet (~24 hours on earth). My knowledge of the solar system is fuzzy (it's been a long time since I was a "junior astronomer" but I think the martian day is about 25 Earth hours (their year is considerably longer, though).

Re:Nuclear powered

[Anonymous Coward]

A 'sol' is a day in local time. Different planets rotate at different speeds making the length of their days different. One sol on Earth is 24 hours. One sol on Mars is 24.5 hours. One sol on Venus is a staggering 243 Earth days.

Re:Nuclear powered

[Corporate Troll]

or even 'suns',

What exactly do you think that "sol" means?

Re:Nuclear powered

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

because not everyone in the world speak english. and nasa colaborates wit the ESA, wich is composed by many countries wich speak latin languages (portuguese, spanish, french, italian,...). and "sol" comes right from latin.

it's all about being nice with their partners.

Re:NASA

[niteice]

Challenger

Columbia

Re:NASA

[Rorzabal]

It's called "managing expectations". Someone at NASA decided, "Let's tell everyone we're only expecting it to last 90 days. If the thing craps out, no one will have expected it to last longer. If it lasts longer, we'll be praised by all the geeks on /."

Re:NASA

[TheSuperlative]

Got me on Challenger, but Columbia, no. The shuttles were all designed with a 10-year lifespan in mind - they have more than outlasted that expectation

JPL Closed, Scientists Search for Nothing

[DynaSoar]

Immediately following the news release regarding the Mars rovers' longetivity, JPL announced its intention to replicate the rover design as an energy efficient and highly durable automobile. As a result, American, Japanese, American, that one German outfit, and American automobile manufacturers forced the entertainment branch of U-global-S business, the US government, to close JPL, claiming violations of monopoly, unintellectual property, lack of unrenewable energy usage, and for no good reason other than they can, Homeland Insecurity.

The unemployed JPL engineers and scientists then gathered their equipment at the Florida shore and launched a rover-based underwater probe to locate the cause of the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately the mission was a failure, as the Bermuda Triangle seems to have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle. This important failure was discovered by the scientists who noted the rover's failure to fail to return. Hopefully the ex-JPL crew will turn their expertise to neuroscience in order to discover precisely why the previous sentence makes my brain hurt.

Finally, a public service announcement: Friends don't let friends post to /. after watching The Best of Spike Milligan.

Finally, finally: I have no friends.

Sorry, not Barry Bonds here

[Tablizer]

that needs a big fat asterisk. Seriously, a "90-day mission" and it's still going 3 years later? Something is rotten in Mars.

Most thought that dust on the solar panels would end the missions after a few months. Turns out that whirlwinds clean them every now and then. They didn't know such would happen since long-duration solar missions hadn't been done yet.

And mechanics *are* wearing out, it is just that they find workarounds. Spirit drives backward because of a failed wheel, and Oppy holds its elbow in a single place most of the time, using wheels to maneuvor instead of bend the bad elbow. And some if it is probably luck; the electronics could snap at any time due to heat-cold cycles. (Oppy's front wheel is showing signs of wear also.)

It is also true that statistically, once missions get past the early phase, they tend to last well. The failure spots are usually early in most missions if there are failures.

Re:Oh my goodness me

[big-magic]

Assuming I counted correctly, there have only been 5 successful landers/rovers (Viking 1 and 2, Mars Pathfinder, Opportunity, and Spirit) and 1 partial success (Mars 6). Check the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars. There were a lot more missions to Mars than I realized, most of them failures. Going to Mars is hard, which makes the success of Opportunity and Spirit even more amazing. It would be a mistake for us to get cocky and think we've got this mastered, just because our couple missions went really well.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Oh my goodness me

[Sibko]

And yet, it's a bit sad to think that, since the 70's, all we've managed to do is land a couple more landers on mars.

20, almost 30 years of no significant space achievements. :(

Oh sure, there's a couple of impressive things that have been done with probes. Crashing them into asteroids, flinging them out towards Pluto, but where are the asteroid mines and space colonies, the moonbases and He3 refining facilities, or even an interstellar probe to the nearest star system?

Re:Delete *.*

[Lord Crc]

It would be nice if the remote software were able to reject commands deemed likely to cause mission failure.

Or perhaps something like what they did to the display resolution dialogs after a while... Ie if communication is lost after a command for X time units, undo the command.

Yawn: Another broken record

[camperdave]

in 1962 Canada launched Alouette 1 into orbit. It had a one year design lifespan. After running for ten years, the satellite was deliberately shut down. It is still in orbit and can be re-activated by sending the correct wakeup signal.

Slashdot Tags of any worth?

[LS]

If you needed more evidence to support the fact that Slashdot tags are worthless, unfunny, manipulated by editors, and clearly not reflective user input, just look at the fantastically retarded tags attached to this story:

theydomakethemliketheyusedto, gogogadgetlander

What exactly is the criteria for tags getting on the front page? Are you seriously saying that several Slashdot users all came up with these tags at the same time? That is clearly either evidence of editorial manipulation, or that cyanide pills need to be handed at the next nerd convention.

LS