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Mars Rover Spirit Still Alive
Toren Altair writes with this excerpt from a story at The Space Fellowship: "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of 'She's talking!' among the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This means Spirit has not gone into a fault condition and is still being controlled by sequences we send from the ground,' said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity."
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin' alive.
Stayin' alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin' alive.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
But I wish they did!
Abe Vigoda has one,why not the mars rovers?
It rains and my stupid car won't start. Their little rover can travel to a different planet, survive the cold, survive dust storms, etc and keep going. Maybe instead of bailing out the "big three", we should dump all that money into NASA to make cars.
I'm willing to risk my safety on a metric to standard conversion problem for a car that will run.
"I'm getting more charged...I think I'll go for a drive..."
Please help metamoderate.
Wouldn't sixteenth century technology like a simple bellows with a directable nozzle fix this problem? It doesn't have to be a very powerful or strong bellows, just something good enough to help displace the worst of the dust and fines buildup...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I'm not dead yet.....
Still Alive
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
You damned mammals, you've done it!
These little guys really cheer me up some days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_rover and http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/
4c:61:7a:79
I hate to ask, but is it doing any useful science anymore?
We already know the "three month" mission has stretched to 5 years, so I assume the budget has stretched too.
If it is still doing something useful, fine, but if money is being spent just to see how much longer it will "live", it doesn't sound cost effective.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I guess it was just a flesh wound.
Martians are sending the signals!
...and chop a couple of digits of his uid for that reference.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
piningforthefjords
Except standard units is another term for US or 'English' units. Your attempt at pedantry fails.
Yes, metric is the accepted international standard. No, what GP referred to was not 'the standard' but what is known as 'standard units'.
If this Palin prototype can last this long on Mars, imagine how long the new model might be around :(
'She's talking!'
The hard part is getting her to shut up!
the engineers of the project must really love dragonforce, perhaps even adopt a new theme-song!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEeoCGzENso
Seriously, if I ever have twins, I am naming them after these rovers!
ah, ah, ah, ah,
stayin alive, stayin alive,
ah, ah, ah ah,
cake is a lie, cake is a lie,
cake is a laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaye,
whaaa aaaaaaaa aaaa aaaa....
If I went around claiming I was an emperor...they'd put me away!
The problem is those silly NASA Windows users trying to manage all with their Terminal Server Client. If the Rover had sshd everything would be allright.
Not only is it doing science, it feels fantastic and it's still alive.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
Please, remain calm and seated behind a computer. An expect team will be along shortly to remove these dangerous notions that NASA has long since perfected stellar and interstellar travel and has been keeping the united states public in the dark because the seats are to small for the average american behind.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The goal of the mars rovers is of course first most to collect data from marse but just as important is learning from this mission how to plan future missions.
It seems that some people at NASA greatly over-estimated the harshness of the mars landscape. Some basic equipment that could have been installed to prolong the live of the rovers wasn't, because they wouldn't last long enough to make use of for instance solar cell cleaners. But the rovers did last, their wheels did not break off (or at when it happened wasn't the mission killer it was feared to be).
Future mars missions can learn from this, not just in the design phase (build in more redundancy and self-repair facilities) but in the operation as it shows that if you can actually land a vehicle it can be kept going for far longer. Perhaps make use of this in advance by giving options for joint missions with other rovers that might land later?
Now that everyone knows two small rovers designed for just 3 months can survive for this long, perhaps it is worthwhile for the next mission to go for an even longer duration and perhaps end up with a vehicle going for a decade, and because it has a long live expectancy build in, perhaps be build to travel further (the rovers only covered a few miles because they were never expected to life long enough to travel further but now that they can life long enough to travel further they could have been designed to travel further)
Space exploration is not just about finding data from space, it is about finding out what works and what doesn't. The rovers worked, that is important data. See the next rover being send, bigger, and with its own power supply that is hopefully going to last for longer without the rover constantly being depended on the sun allowing it to travel continounsly. The new rover is a combo of the old and the new. From that mission data the next rover will be developed. Maybe bigger, maybe smaller, all depends on what is learned next. To builders, the soil data is just so much gobbligook. The mission data, now that gives engineers/designers whatever a major hardon.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Didn't anyone tell them?
The cake is a lie.
A five year perspective is much more than 20 times more valuable than a three month perspective.
42 times more, to be precise.
Seems like the next step might be a charging / cleaning / maintenance station and a group of rovers. Maybe the station itself is a rolling rover. It would just creep along in a straight(ish) line and a series of rovers would scout the surrounding area, returning to the station for a dusting off and quick recharge periodically. Kind of like the Roomba vacuum that returns to a charging station automatically.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
What happens when these rovers finally due kick the Martian bucket (in another couple of years)?
Are they designed well enough that when we finally start colonizing Mars that we will be able to dust them off and boot them up again?
Amazing! Victory! Now we just need to try to keep her alive. Think we can do it?
-Steve "The Geek" Hencye
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Am I the only one who gets a little misty-eyed when I think about these little guys?
I grew up with the space program; we watched the Challenger explode live on television in the 3rd grade. Space, and space exploration, have always been (to me) man's greatest hope and frontier.
I realize they're mechanical objects, just as I realize that Voyager is just a satellite and the ISS is basically a double-wide in space. These things still represent the future of our species and life as we know it. Every time I hear that the rovers are still going, almost 5 years on now, I can't but think of what we can do *right* when we put our minds - and money - to it.
Some day, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, we'll be able to retrieve these guys. My earnest hope is that they're split up - one returned to Earth to the Smithsonian, and one enshrined forever in a monument on Mars itself. Sort of a new version of the Resolute desks, only this time bridging dreams instead of cultures.
It's like having and raising a child. Except this one, at 15, doesn't live in your house and does what he's told.
It's like having and raising a child on Mars... Which is a real problem. Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids - in fact, it's cold as hell, and there's no-one there to raise 'em, if you did!
Bow-ties are cool.
And all this science, I don't understand... Aghhh! You tricked me!
And that kids is how I met your mother.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Sorry if someone has already posted this.
Okay, so we have these multi-million dollar probes up here on Mars, with these solar panels that tend to get coated with the dust from duststorms.
How hard would it be to add a $3 windshield wiper to the solar panels? It may not be perfect, and if you are rubbing something as abrassive as sand against the solar pannels, you run the risk of damaging them, but seriously, you are going to loose the probes eventually anyways. Why not see if you could get a bit more time out of them? Or better yet, enclose the solar pannels in plexiglass or something, then put some whipers on them?
I am shocked that noone at NASA or JPL has thought of this, and I wonder if there is some reason as to why its not done.
...but it keeps going, and going, and ...
I'll see your IMPERIAL and raise you a WHITWORTH. 2BA forever.
My wife uses a second hand stairlift (10-15 years old). The factory trained expert engineer borrowed my 2BA nutdriver to remove/refit the seat last week.