Mars Rover's Epic Trek For the Crater Endeavor

Smivs writes "The BBC reports that NASA is to send its Mars rover Opportunity on a two-year trek to try to reach a crater called Endeavour. The robot will have to move about 11km to get to its new target — a distance that would double what it has already achieved on the planet. Endeavour is much bigger than anything investigated to date, and will allow a broader range of rocks to be studied. Detailed satellite imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will help pick out the best route ahead; and new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path. Opportunity has just emerged from the 800m-wide Victoria Crater. Endeavour, by comparison, is 22km across."

Comments

11 km

[adpsimpson]

That's about 11,000 inches, right? Shouldn't take that long.

Re:11 km

[AliasMarlowe]

It's 11 km om Mars, so we should use astronomical units: almost 360 femtoparsecs.

Re:11 km

[pzs]

There should seriously be a moderation tag for "sarcasm impaired".

Re:11 km

[Gewalt]

There really should be a moderation tag for "most people aren't nearly as funny, or as obvious as they think they are".

No, it really was funny and obvious. You're just not nearly as sharp, or as bright as you think you are.

Re:11 km

[Comboman]

There really should be a moderation tag for "most people aren't nearly as funny, or as obvious as they think they are".

Funny is admittedly somewhat subjective, but any Slashdot reader interested enough in Mars exploration to read this article would no doubt be familiar with the Mars Climate Orbiter and the error involving conversion of metric units that caused its failure; so I would call the joke fairly obvious.

Re:11 km

[paniq]

Those of us with an username.

Re:11 km

[SenseiLeNoir]

I did smile at the joke, but I still have a lot of admiration for NASA. I am a brit, and yes I was disappointed when the Beagle 2 probe was lost.

However, I still remember as a kid, I used to be awed with NASA, and its space shuttle launches, etc. As a child it was what I associated America with: space, advancing to new frontiers, etc, and NASA usually was the center of my aspirations. I used to dream of being on a Shuttle, and often felt jealous (in a positive way) for what our friends across the pond was up to.

In recent years, and recent news, which unfortunately put the USA in a poor light amongst some, NASA with their exploits brought back some memories about why I aspired towards America; that "can do attitude".

Sure they have messed up, at times. but space exploration is like that. Their successes usually are just as great.

These rovers were built to run for 3 months. They are running for on their fifth year now. Absolutely amazing!

The official reason of how they underestimated the abilities for the wind to clean the sensors, may be correct, but in this day and age, where items are engineered to last their intended lifespan, whoever designed these things still didnt "cheap out" on the rest of the vehicle.

These are not cheap little radio controlled dune buggy models for use on earth, but self maintaining vehicles that for nearly 5 years have operated in a hostile, largely unknown environment with no physical attention!

So hats off to NASA and JPL. And god speed on the new mission. And thanks for giving this older man a thing something to smile about in these times of drab news.

Re:11 km

[ArsonSmith]

It's an estimate right now. They're not sure where the Endeavor crater will actually be. Once Atlantis does the rescue mission Endeavor will be redirected to mars in order to create it's crater.

Re:11 km

[Sporkinum]

Maybe you've heard of it. It's the rover that made the Endeavor run in less than 360 femtoparsecs.

Amazing

[Amiralul]

Godspeed, Opportunity!
Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!

Re:Amazing

[ArcherB]

Godspeed, Opportunity!

Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!

So either the rovers are overachievers or we just set their goals WAY too low!

I guess they are taking a page from Scotty's manual.

KIRK: Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?

SCOTTY: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?

Re:Amazing

[GeordieMac]

actually a better mechanism would be to use compressed atmosphere to blast the dust away. Wipers have more points of failure and would likely abrade the surface of the solar panels, permanently reducing the efficiency fo the cells.

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you on it is an amazing feat for them to have lasted this long my issue is with how old these robots are getting up there why risk a risky two year voyage over a distance of about 6.8 miles to get to a creator that is 13 Miles wide and will take another couple of years to explore and probably end up causing a catastrophic failure of Opportunity to me this is a complete miss use of the opportunity they have with a functioning robot up there yet the functionality they have built into these robots donâ(TM)t give them too many more things to-do but explore
I also agree with you on this amazing feat for you to be able to have such an enourmous run on sentence with no punctuation whatsoever even though it seems like a risky voyage over all of those keystrokes just to get to the submit button to wait and see if your content got posted or if you got the slow down cowboy screen and then you have to wait for a while and just stare at the ceiling until you can submit again but back to the rovers I too hope they don't have a catastrophic failure when it goes to the new crater but hey what else can you do since it has explored everything else in the area that it is in and it might as well go someplace new to see something else because it isn't the destination but rather the journey

Let's hope the motors hold out.

[mbone]

Opportunity saw its first electrical spike in one of its motors recently - the same problem that has basically crippled Spirit.

This was described (8 paragraphs down) in this press release. That's why they got out of Victoria Crater post haste.

Of course, the terrain in Meridiani Planum is much more navigable than Gustav Crater, so even if they do lose a motor, they may still be able to make progress.

Re:Let's hope the motors hold out.

[mapsjanhere]

This is a suicide mission, NASA wanted to shut down the rovers years ago, and the public outcry repeatedly stopped it. Now, if the rover goes on a 2 year drive and dies, what a poor little heroic guy, finally succumbed to the elements.
And NASA gets to free all the funds to build newer and bigger and better and ...
Don't forget, these are the guys that canceled the last Apollo missions for the fuel bill; they already had the rockets, trained astronauts and everything else in place.

Re:Let's hope the motors hold out.

[mbone]

Oh, and given that there was never any plans to get the rovers back, this was always a "suicide" mission.

But you are right, JPL will keep running these until they physically fail.

Re:Let's hope the motors hold out.

[khallow]

Don't forget, these are the guys that canceled the last Apollo missions for the fuel bill; they already had the rockets, trained astronauts and everything else in place.

And the money to pay the army that would be needed to build and run the missions. Ending Saturn was a good move. The rocket was too expensive. Replacing it with the Space Shuttle though was one of the worst mistakes NASA ever did.

Re:Let's hope the motors hold out.

[ctetc007]

It may be true that this specific mission seems a bit suicidal, but what else are you going to do with it? Nothing? The rover was meant to run until it died, and this seems like as good a cause to die for as any.

The rover isn't just going on a boring 2 year long road trip, it's also exploring the rocks and terrain along the way. Even if it doesn't reach its destination, the trek will still be of scientific value.

Re:Opportunity proves it:

[ArcherB]

studying ... rocks!

ok, maybe only studying ... rocks ... rocks.

If you get an ... opportunity.

Allright I stop, I'm killing myself.

That's the Spirit

Re:Opportunity proves it:

[strabes]

I think this humor Endeavour has been unsuccessful.

A case for manned exploration

[blind biker]

A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle. And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments. And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.

So while human exploration of Mars may be expensive, it is probably much cheaper when comparing results.

I know the /. crowd has a strong, somewhat irrational animosity towards manned exploration. So I'll burn some karma, big deal :o)

Re:A case for manned exploration

[oldspewey]

irrational animosity towards manned exploration

Leaving aside - for now - the part where a human mission to Mars is almost certainly a suicide mission, if you want to make the case that other people are irrational your best bet is probably to present your own rational ideas for a fully-costed human mission, including all the associated life-support requirements both in transit and once on the surface.

Then we can compare your ideas against the cost of the Spirit and Opportunity missions

Re:A case for manned exploration

[gstoddart]

A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle. And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments. And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.

Well, we'd never have been able to put people there nearly as cheaply, or for nearly as long. We haven't solved the problems of getting people in space for long enough for the journey, keeping them alive, feeding them, and having them inhabit the surface of a strange planet without any real support.

The rovers have been absolute bargain in terms of the cost for the science achieved. And, they give us a lot of the basic information we need to know if we're ever going to put humans there. The value vs cost of the these rovers is not something you can characterize as expensive for what we get -- the initial mission was, what $300 million or so?

I think until we can overcome an incredible amount of technical hurdles, the rovers are still a good idea. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to develop some of the stuff we'll need for manned missions. Likely we'll need to work on some closer missions and return to the moon before we try to get to Mars in my opinion -- that'll at least let us try to sort out the really big challenges.

Cheers

On Barsoom, please...

[afc_wimbledon]

That's 18.52 haads - http://www.erblist.com/abg/weightsmeasures.html

Re:Opportunity proves it:

[paniq]

We're just cratering to our audience. :/

Re:Opportunity proves it:

[NightRain]

Make the pain stop!

Re:More than a suggestion

[g-san]

This actually is some pretty challenging stuff.

You make it sound like it's rocket science or something on that level. Sheesh.