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Mars Rovers Return to Exploration
inkslinger77 writes "The two Mars rovers that have been carefully conserving critical power supplies since June, when the summer dust-storm season began on the red planet, are now springing back to work as the storms subside.
Typically, the solar panels on each rover produce about 700 watt-hours of electricity per day — enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours, according to NASA. But this year's dust storms reduced that to as little as 128 watt hours per day. When daily power generation is down to less than 400 watt-hours, the rovers suspend their driving on the planet and stop using their robotic arms, cameras and other instruments.
But they are back in action now!"
No, like everyone else, they were motivated by money.
Seriously, when designing the rover and the instruments, pretty early on you get an idea of how long the thing is supposed to last. it drives all sorts of engineering things such as materials, power supplies, and data retention. Had they needed this thing to last 5x it's normal lifetime, they would have to test it a hell of a lot more, spend much more money on more expensive parts and materials, and probably would only send one of the things.
And i doubt the engineers had a realistic view of how much damage they could take. Maybe they knew what they could take in earth conditions, but that's a far cry from mars- but any type of in situ instrument, such as the rover, comes with some inherent doubt about what it will run into. You don't think the engineers at JPL (who built the rovers for NASA) are just as amazed as we are?
"We're never gonna hire those yolks again" rarely plays into it from the engineer standpoint... the project manager, though, is a completely different story.