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Mars Soil Frustrates Phoenix Again
Tablizer writes "The Phoenix Mars lander has been frustrated yet again by Mars's odd soil. The wet nature of the soil they are targeting appears to have made it get stuck in the scoop rather than drop into the oven. Past problems with similarly clumpy soil may have damaged the lander because the vibrator had to be used longer than it was designed for, resulting in a short circuit."
It's pretty interesting learning about the problems encountered while analyzing alien soil, but I'm not even going to touch that vibrator comment.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
How many of you saw the word "vibrator" and clicked it?
There's got to be a joke in here somewhere.... Wet nature... Drop into the oven... Got to think... Lemme get another beer.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
The real reason for this story was to get the following quote on Slashdot's front page:
"the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit."
Congratulations on getting it past the Slashdot editor.
Yes, it's a deleted scene from Stepford Wives Go To Mars.
"... the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit."
Time to upgrade to a real geek, I mean man, and put the toys away.
Why stop there? Anything can be a euphemism.
Frustrates phoenix...Wet nature...drop into the oven...get stuck in the scoop...damaged the lander...and of course, the universal problem everyone faces: ...the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit.
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
because the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit.
I'm not surprised that the martian atmosphere is causing issues gettin' NASA's baby off.
"In later results, NASA found out out that the martian atmosphere actually helps with male ejaculation; The atmospheric pressure along with low gravity made a natural ejaculation travel 5 miles before hitting the ground."
Doesn't it seem like every Mars mission (excepting the Rovers) has some show-stopping failures?
Almost like someone out there doesn't want us poking around on Mars... Hm...
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Beer!
vibrator not strong enough? i hear you there, NASA. that's why we're on mars in the first place, i suppose.
The short circuit was believed to have been caused when TEGA's oven number four was vibrated repeatedly over the course of several days to break up clumpy soil delivered to oven number 4. Delivery to any TEGA oven involves a vibration action, and turning on the vibrator in any oven will cause oven number 4 to vibrate as well.
This is too hot for Slashdot...
What exactly is 'wet' about the soil? I see that the soil is icy (H2O ice or CO2 ice?), but as far as I knew 'wet' and 'icy' are mutually exclusive. Perhaps 'sticky' would be a better term? Or... is this some kind of cool ice that is 'wet' at very cold temperatures as opposed to good old fashioned dry ice?
This would make my day. I'm a girl btw :)
Analyzing ?
Maybe I simply do not understand the design parameters for this mission, but:
No offense to the hugely-talented engineers and designers involved in the creation of this spacecraft, but it seems like this probe needed an idiot-proofing pass (like consumer products having, eg: a heat sensor that shuts off a motor if it gets too hot).
A Phoenix putting something into an oven... there go our tax dollars! Any competent phoenix would wait until its body burst into flame, then use the spare heat to analyze the sample.
I don't know about you, but I intend to write to my Congressperson.
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your vibrator cuts out early.
The research data collected from this event would be used to pave the way for human colonization of Mars. I hope...
I don't mean to troll, but I'd like to think that in a mission they're hoping to find water or ice or something along those lines, they'd anticipate the possibility of moist soil when designing their instruments.
Hopefully the next mission includes an icecream scoop.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
If you use the vibrator, obviously the scoop is going to get wet.
(couldn't resist)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
That's how it goes when they send a vibrator to do a mans job. Anyway, are the exploring that hole they found a while back?
Because they are relatively cheap you can screw up plenty and still do the work for less cost than a manned mission.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What I hope now is that after two months on the surface they will finally get around to use the AFM (and not just for a test). WTF is taking so long ?
And we couldn't implement "ice-cream" scoop technology =P
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
There's got to be a joke in here somewhere....
Mars hasn't had contact with any life forms in hundreds of millions of years, at least. Of course it needed an unusually long time with the vibrator.
...The wet nature of the soil they are targeting appears to have made it get stuck in the scoop rather than drop into the oven. Past problems with similarly clumpy soil may have damaged the lander because the vibrator had to be used longer than designed, resulting in a short circuit..."
It appears to me that these NASA folks did not test the lander harder or if they did, the tests they performed were invalid!
What I mean is - we have tones of wet clumpy soils on planet earth where tests could have been done enabling lander improvements to be made accordingly.
Sounds to me like another classic example of NASA's incompetence. Sadly things at NASA will get worse before they get better, and not before billions of dollars are "wasted."
I was thinking of the Two Girls One Cup that it would be a scene from.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
He would not have survived the trip or the landing.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Since I'm a guy and all :)
I had a feeling all along that those NASA types were perverts.
There could be other compounds in the ice that is helping it to do these actions. I would think that this is going to be very interesting IFF they can get some in the oven.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
this was tested in all sorts of areas around the earth. To make something like this IS difficult. It is part of the reason why I really want to see us on mars. Once we are there, all the exploration will continue to be by robotics. It is just that ppl on the planet will put these systems together as well as fix them. I suspect that the fun jobs will still be handled by ppl on earth.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Your joke raises an interesting question: is it cheaper to send up a single big swiss-army probe that has everything, or simpler probes that use lessons borrowed from the last probe? Phoenix is relatively cheap, probe-wise, such that its not like we put all our eggs in one basket on this one. A later probe can now be more focused to the task based on known soil characteristics.
It is hard to calculate a clean answer to such questions without having some experience with different designs. Mars is still a new world. Our experience with biology experiments with Viking suggests that the incremental approach may be better. We've learned how Mars may "trick" such experiments and how sneaky life can be based on Earth samples. We can now design experiments that rule out the traps that Viking discovered. Sure, we'll probably find new traps along the way, but nobody says exploration must be easy.
Table-ized A.I.
They should have had you on the mission? I am sure that you really would have expected the exact kind of conditions that they had. After all, being nearly 2x as far from the sun, in the middle of winter, you might be more worried about hardness of items rather than stickiness, but that is just me. To be honest, I seriously doubt that you or the other ludites could even get a rock off this planet let alone deliver something to another planet.
BTW, if NASA is SOOO incompetent, why do they have a much better record at delivering vehicles to other planets than ANY other group? Me, I have my issues with them, but I have worked on a small part of MGS and know that there is a lot involved. These folks are doing good work.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It always seemed a bit odd to me we send something a few million? miles to soil itself. I can soil myself and never leave my chair.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
if mars had this much trouble with vibrator, don't send any of them to Venus, there will be an explosion
Well it's a natural result of all that frustration...
The lander has a hard time getting off, it needs more stimulation
The word "wet" implies the presence of a meaningful amount of liquid water. In this regard, the soil at the site is very unlikely to be wet (and note that the linked articles don't actually say that it is). The temperature and pressure conditions at the site only allow for solid and gas phases for H2O. Solid ice slowly converts to gas through sublimation when the ice is exposed by the scoop. Materials can clump for a variety of reasons. For example, lunar soil can cling to itself and to things like spacesuits even though absolutely no water is present at all. All sorts of factors can influence the cohesion of planetary soils, including the physical shapes of soil grains, the electrostatic properties of the grains, binding by spatter through micrometeorite bombardment (unlikely on Mars due to atmospheric protection) and, in the case of the Mars soils, even small amounts of ice have the potential to bind grains.
Well... Mars does contain a fair amount of gooey caramel, so sticky soil surely shouldn't come as a surprise to NASA.
Yo mama ...
may have damaged the lander because the vibrator had to be used longer than designed
Isn't Mars a guy? What's he doing with a vibrator? 0_o
If Phoenix isn't working, I'm sure Firefox shall fix all that stuff.
Robotic missions are getting better as designers are learning from their mistakes.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Woody Allen had a problem with a vibrator in "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)", related?
Dear NASA, build a scraper on the next soil sample scooper.
Kthxbye.
How about they stop fucking trying to find out if there's life on Mars. It's obviously not where the aliens are. Why don't they spend all that money trying to dig up "soil" on actually finding the aliens instead. It's already been established that we can't live there so why bother. It's just like the US, always wanting to fuck with shit that isn't theirs. Maybe they should just claim there's weapons of mass destruction on mars and nuke it too?
Um, one could argue that the prolonged lack of contact should have resulted in an unusually short time with the vibrator... but then, I'm a guy, that's just the way things work for me.
Fertile soil?
It looks suspiciously similar to the Firefox logo, I wonder if the artist was the same. At least he got the face pointed in the right direction this time.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
NASA scientists break vibrator
He said "colon"
" It's so gay. Sapphic. They should have sent a Lesbian ... "
*bzzzzzz*
Apologies to the late Sagan
By the time you finish reading this sentence will end.
"pulling-out-doesn't-sound-manly" (+1) "frustrated" (+3) "wet" (+6) "vibrator" (+8) "short circuit" (+3) "longer than designed" (+4) Total: 25
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I wonder if it would be that silly to try and turn the scooper upside down and LIGHLTY bang it on the inside of the oven so that gravity can do the rest and let it fall out...although I dont know how sturdy that oven is nor do I know if the robot is able to apply small pressure turns instead of full tilt ones.
Let see, they are searching for the possibility of ICE on a planet where it is WAY BELOW zero. None of these rocket scientist every tried to get more than one scoop of ice cream out of a tub of ice cream with an ice cream scoop? Never heard of a non stick scoop or a heated one?
They should have tried it out on some nice sticky Texas clay. The "dirt" near my house seems to give me the same problems they're seeing.
I suspect that the fun jobs will still be handled by ppl on earth.
Did you even read the summary? That robot's having more fun than everyone who worked on it put together!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I guess they hired a team from the "Robot Wars" TV show, they always have a weapon that get stuck...
Sounds like one too many what-ifs got pruned from the decision tree. Nice. Probably saved a couple million bucks on the ground, got the pup out the door, and sent it all the way to Mars before it flushed its entire budget into thin air. Speaking as a taxpayer, at least the show's been entertaining.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
....if they're trying to get something cooking in the oven using a vibrator.
He would not have survived the trip or the landing.
He would if they designed for it.
There are plenty of people that would be happy to go and never come back, it's (relatively) easy to make a lander that would exert forces someone could live through. It's taking off and coming back that's the really hard part.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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By using your logic, then why does it only take the typical male Slashdotter, mmmm...about 4.5 seconds?
"resulting in a short circuit"
You mean it came alive and started demanding "input"?
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What kind of crappy vibrator technology did they use that was only good for a few days?
Seriously that technology isn't exactly rocket science and most products these days that use that technology (phones, game controllers, uhm vibrators, etc) last more than just a few hours or days.
They only designed it to last for a few hours? They designed it to break? I don't get it.
I support NASA and most of their programs. It was very exciting when Phoenix touched down softly on Mars, the first craft to do so in a long time. This overall mission, however, has been a failure IMO. They will try to put lipstick on this pig until the cows come home, but the failure of the geologists on the program to adequately anticipate the mechanical properties of the soil they would find there looms large.
Leave it to JPL investigators to forget about MUD. NASA
Phoenix hasn't been a total failure. There was undoubtedly some good science that came out of the mission. But the centerpiece experiment has not lived up to expectations and whoever is responsible needs to be held accountable. If it was a committee then they are all responsible.
Let me clarify with blunter language. I called Europeans wusses who jump at their own shadow, and Americans schizophrenic nut jobs.
Europeans are wusses
don't think this needs much clarification. I can just run down the laundry list of things that Europe has failed to do since the Cold War ended. Top on the list would be their utter failure to intervene in Kosovo until the American strong armed NATO into doing something and the UN meekly stamped on approval AFTER the US and Britain were busy pounding the piss out of the Serbs. The pathetic response from Lebanon's pleading for Europeans to send a few peacekeeper to just watch the border (no one was even asking them to fight) that finally got filled in a half-assed way only after the Italians (of all people) shamed the French into sending more than a couple of squads.
Finally, you have the sad state of Afghanistan. This is a war that pretty much everyone agrees was an a-okay thing. It was clear, cut, and dry. Osama attacks one NATO member (US), Taliban refuses to hand him over, and latter Osama hits two more NATO members (Spain and Britain) with serious but thwarted plots in at least a fourth (Germany). What does NATO do? While the US is fighting TWO wars at once, European NATO members do everything humanly possible to avoid sending troops. When they do they opt for glorified sheep guarding in the safest possible parts of Afghanistan while Americans and the occasional Brit wad in neck deep in blood while fighting an even bloodier war a couple countries over at the same frigging time.
Conclusion? Europe's thirst for blood and human sacrifice is meek, even when there is a damn good reason for it. If they can't suffer the thought of a handful of professional warriors fighting and possibly dying, I have a hard time swallowing that they will opt for a few pencil necked scientist (which for the record I proudly am) getting killed for some sweet scientific data.
Americans are psychotic
Americans clearly have a taste for blood and human sacrifice. Granted, they really don't even touch the scale that they did in World War II and would have their ass kicked for being total whining pansies by their 1940's era selves, but they sure do look manly next to Europeans at times when it comes to letting blood. The Americans are not above cleaning up Europe's mess (Kosovo) with a sword when the president needs a good distraction from bad personal news (Monica). Ahh, but here comes the rub. If the Americans were just shedding a little blood (including their own) they would be planting the red, white, and blue on all sorts of heavenly objects (cash permitting, but they do have a pretty hefty amount of cash) in the name proving the size of their penis as they did in the Cold War days.
For better or for worse though, the US has developed a split personality. One one hand you have a raving mad blood thirsty killer itching to chop someone in two for looking at them funny, and on the other hand they have developed the personality of a hypochondriac Jewish mother. These two identities live totally separate lives but exist in the same person.
The psychotic killer
The blood thirsty killer came flying out in a murderous rage after 9/11 looking to basically kick the shit out of anyone who might of been responsible for a mild pin prick to the hand. This killers first response was to chop his own hand off in rage at the attack (Homeland security bans clothing on all airplanes, institutes mandatory anal cavity searches for 90 year old grandmothers, and sneaks into your sons room at night to read his diary while watching your daughter undress). After realizing that it had chopped its own hand off, the US really flew off the handled promptly went into a frenzy against the guilt party (Afghanistan). Still kind of pissed, the US continued to slice off bits of its own arm (which only served the piss the US off even more) and then whacked someone that looked kind of like that Afganistan dude if you squinted
Does that mean that we now know that females will need longer-lasting batteries for their vibrators when they will colonise Mars?
Uhmmm...more practice?
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