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Long-lived Mars Rovers to Keep on Roving
An anonymous reader writes with a link to a ComputerWorld article about the ongoing saga of the Martian rovers. They've overcome amazing obstacles and they show no signs of shutting down any time soon. "'After more than three and a half years, Spirit and Opportunity are showing some signs of aging, but they are in good health and capable of conducting great science,' John Callas, rover project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. Since landing, the rovers have had to surmount a host of technical issues. Just a few weeks after landing, the Spirit rover had an out-of-memory problem that almost ended its mission before it began, but scientists were able to get the rover back into operation. In April 2004, both needed software updates to correct problems and improve their performance."
should read the story of these two amazing machines. There's a lot that's wrong with NASA but there's so much that's right, too -- and this is proof positive.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
OK.... are we SURE that these things weren't made in Japan?
Cause they're acting more like a Honda than a GM at this point.
How long would a rover that was actually designed to last for three years keep on working?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
in a spectacular fashion. Either extreme, it is rare that a mission is routine.
We have been seeing articles like this for 3 years now. That is great, the more positive talk about a NASA project the better.
The thing that always seems to be missing is: why did these two robots continue to work so well, and, how do we go about repeating their success?
Mikey
I've always been the kinda guy to fall for the girl dressed like an eskimo.
sheesh.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
They jus' keeps scoopin',
They don't have scoopers, by the way, at least not in the Viking sense. They take the instruments to the soil instead of bring the soil to the instruments.
However, they can and do use their wheels to dig small trenches in order to analyze deeper soil. They do this by holding 5 wheels mostly still and move the 6th wheel.
It is a remarkably compact yet flexible way to get the most out of existing hardware.
Spirit cannot do this well anymore because of one stuck wheel. However, by dragging it around, it has become a happenstance "auto-trencher" and because of it they've stumbled upon some soil with high salt content underneath the visible layer that many scientists think is an important clue to the continuing water study (although the pieces to the puzzle still have yet to be all fit together). Now they regularly do spectral analysis on the bum-wheel trenches to see what's below the visible layer.
Table-ized A.I.
This project must have had a hundred million managers and task teams!
Seriously!
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
A talk being given by one of the geologists (Jim Bell) on the Spirit/Opportunity teams. (He was also selling and signing the book of the same name.) A few little tidbits from the talk...
One of the rovers (Spirit?) has blown a motor on a front wheel. As a result, it's normal mode of travel is now backwards. Also as a result, it tends to drag a groove in the Martian soil. In a recent transit, they were taking photographs of where they'd been and realized that the dragging wheel had exposed a different layer of soil, significantly different from the surface layer. Had the wheel not been dragging, they never would have discovered this.
Choosing a landing site is a tug-of-war between the engineers and geologists. The engineers want to land someplace safe, so they can make it in one piece and functional. The geologists want to land someplace interesting. Usually "interesting" and "safe" are opposites. It's a compromise.
Likewise, choosing what to look at is a compromise between safety and interesting. They've recently taken one of the rovers (Opportunity?) into a crater, realizing that they may not be able to get it out. But they've done all of the doable stuff nearby, the crater is compellingly interesting, and if they don't make it out, it's been a good run, and there's more to do in the crater.
The rovers are really slow. You may hear it, but it doesn't hit home until you've seen a visual demonstration of how slow those things are.
The rovers had been "wintering over," and they were worried about them getting enough sunlight to keep from getting too cold. While the Jim Bell was on the road for this book tour, and before the engagement I was at, they'd reacquired contact.
During the early days of the mission, the scientists were on Martian time, living 27 hour days. After the first few weeks, they settled out procedures and policies to allow them to go back on Earth time.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Because a private company would have sucked their profit out a long time ago and shut the whole thing down before it became interesting or enlightening or even heroic.
Space exploration isn't just about science or nationalism. It's also about humanity and it's desire for exploration. What's the point of learning all about the cosmos unless we can somehow put it to use for humanity? And part of that science is the effect of space travel and other-world habitation on humans. Eventually, humanity will be living out in space, and we will be better and richer for it.
I consider that a fine investment of my tax dollars.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If you mean commercialization as in "Let's disband NASA and wait for private enterprise" then yes. If you mean as in "Let NASA push the frontiers, but try to make commercial ventures follow" then I disagree. Even though the government doesn't need to have a direct profit, there's very rarely money to do something just for the hell of it. Most of the time, it's to generate new technlogy, improve education or knowledge in a science, create a better understanding of our own culture or history and so on. Sure the Apollo program did a lot to improve ground-based science and technology, but I imagine over time it'll be less and less relevant to surface-dwellers and only relevant to space travel. If we can't find ways to make it profitable, if space travel is a constant money sink forever then it will be nothing more than the odd scientific expedition. So I'd say it's very important, but you can't put the cart in front of the horse - there must be something commercializable to begin with.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings