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Mars Winds Clean Spirit's Solar Panels Again
Titoxd writes "In a blast from the past, NASA reports that Spirit's solar panels have received a much-needed cleaning courtesy of the Red Planet. The report states, 'The cleaning boosts Spirit's daily energy supply by about 30 watt-hours, to about 240 watt-hours from 210 watt-hours. The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications, so this increase roughly doubles the amount of discretionary power for activities such as driving and using instruments.'"
. . . don't forget to pack the broom.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
That's much better than NASA's alternative plan of sending a Squeegee Kid to do the job.
How much longer can this thing go? I mean, it was "designed" to only go a few months, and we are years beyond that. Anyone have a pool on when it will really stop working?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Maybe next time, NASA should include some type of cleaning devices, so that when the panels get dusty, then a brush or something could wipe the panels. Sure, it's more weight, but it could increase the productivity of the mission.
I find it amazing what can be done with so little power. 240 watts? I'm looking around my office and figuring the lights use about twice that. This thing is cruising around mars, keeping itself warm, sending information to Earth. No real point to this post except to express my amazement.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Jesus, can you fucking read? Not even the article, but the summary...
"to about 240 watt-hours from 210 watt-hours. The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications, so this increase roughly doubles the amount of discretionary power for activities such as driving and using instruments."
180wh for survival. They were generating 210wh. Now they're getting 240wh.
210wh-180wg=30wh discretionary.
240wh-180wh=60wh new discretionary.
No wonder you're not a rocket scientist. Or if you are, you're one of those fucks who confused imperial and metric, aren't you?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
(Not to be mean), but this might be a case where RTFS would apply.
Their they're doing there hair.
Back in action, let's go for another 4 years...
Ignorance is Bliss -- And the Opposite is True -- Genius is Madness
the 180Wh is what it uses regardless. So the increase from 210 Wh in to 240 Wh in makes for a doubling of expendable energy.
i find your lack of faith in science disturbing!
FTFA:
The cleaning boosts Spirit's daily energy supply by about 30 watt-hours, to about 240 watt-hours from 210 watt-hours. The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications, so this increase roughly doubles the amount of discretionary power for activities such as driving and using instruments. Thirty watt-hours is the amount of energy used to light a 30-watt bulb for one hour.
They are not counting the overhead to keep the thing alive. They've doubled the amount of power available for science etc.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Dimwit, the discretionary power (the power left over after basic needs) is doubled, not the total.
(240-180)/(210-180) = 2.
Clearly the sun on Mars shines brighter than your intellect.
the parent is a troll. please mod him as such.
Best,
wbs
Let's see, we have "180 watt-hours per day". A bit long ins't it? As long as there's 24 hours per day (not so sure of that in mars ;), we can convert it to 7.5 watt-hour per hour. Or 7.5 watts. Humm. So we have a new unit of power!
Lets call it Wh/d, and set the conversion 1 Wh/d = 24 W.
Or we could, you know, use joules.
entropy happens
the parent is a troll. please mod him as such.
Best,
sbw
I've been going out at night shining a flashlight on it just to throw off their data. Next week I'm going to write my name in the dust on that thing with a green laser pointer.
Easy, you're counting it wrong. Summary says they have about double discretionary power, aka power that can be chosen to be used. 180 is a minimum and MUST be used for the vehicle to continue functioning.
210Wh(previous daily energy) - 180Wh(required daily energy) = 30Wh(previous discretionary energy)
So another 30Wh doubles it.
We've proved that the budget rover designs have been the most successful designs we've sent to another planet.
They've been resourceful and far roaming...so why haven't we expanded on the design.
I think we should package up some new rovers. Slightly larger with additional equipment. With one additional design feature. A means to self-clean it's own solar panel.
This way the unit could theoretically operate for near perpetuity.
nuclear rather than new clear energy.
The summary? I don't even read the titles before I start posting.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Boy, those things were built!
Only on Slashdot can a post that confuses power (watt) and energy (watt-hour) be modded +3 Interesting.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
OK, so when is this thing going to replace ine Energizer Bunny in the commercials?
... there are no homeless people on Mars.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
on local ridges or some other local high points where they would get more exposure to wind. At the density of Mars' atmosphere, even a tornado wouldn't hurt the rovers. Don't need to stay there for long; just long enough to get electrical generation up past 28%.
What're we talking about?
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
What I really want to see is a glider, or a ballon/lander combo survive that long. Something of that nature would be really useful if it could pop all over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Dude, calm down. It's just the internet.
10/10 trolling. Well done.
If only they'd take the initiative and start banning shitposters who openly gloat about their willful ignorance maybe we could fight the downward spiral /. has been in for some time. Chemotherapy for a cancer patient, if you will.
A 30W bulb? Wow. The room I'm in now is lit by a single 18W lamp and that's more than adequate. I realise that American homes tend to be more spacious, but seriously - 30W? How large are your rooms?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Maybe they should check for homeless on the planets of Polaris? using Firefox 3.1 beta to view them?
why can't our terrestrial equipment be this efficient?
It can be, it's just too expensive or annoying. My PC has all these high tech power saving features. I've disabled most of them because they're annoying.
Apparently the feature that turned off the user was left on.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
...could be hired to work for GM or Chrysler, Toyota
and Honda would be the ones needing a bail-out.
Help feed homeless animals - Free! www.theanimalrescuesite.com
Most American incandescent bulbs are 60W. I dont think CFLs have really caught on, though I do use one out of 8 or so lamps in my apartment..
Are you serious? My kitchen alone has about 15,000 lumens of lighting and it's smaller than most that I saw in Europe outside of apartments, and I often find myself wishing for more lighting. Most small (~9m^2) bedrooms have at least 1600 lumens of lighting, with average CFL efficiency of ~65 lumens/watt that means a small room needs about 25W of lighting as a minimum.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
One of Spirit's front wheel motors has stopped, so the drive it backwards.
Opprtunity's arm wont completely contract, so they drive it loose instead of docked.
Both of the RAT grinders have warn out, so they cannot drill millimeters into rock like they used to.
The camera lenses are dusty. Sometime the wind cleans them up a bit.
I am sure there are others.
Quite. If you're using modern lamps, 30W is ludicrously bright. If you're using old-fashioned incandescents, 30W is pathetically dim. Does such a thing as a 30W bulb actually exist in the world?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Well, considering the rovers don't move very far very fast, there can't be much practical benefit to find a ridge then move up and down it. When all the wheels worked, the rovers were getting somewhere around 40m a day. Both rovers currently have one or more wheels that no longer work so movement is not something that is easily done by.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
'nuff said.
moist (think: Nutty Professor/Merv Griffith makes me moist...)
Will it be the homeless person, or the rover? In any case Rover got a real shiner. And, i feel so... overcome, so excited for the thing. It's wonderful how Mother Nature can provide pleasure in so many small ways. A VOLTAGE boost. Whoda thought...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications
Spirit has the Rover? Patrick McGooghan is never getting off Mars!
The Phoenix polar probe landed in late May 2008 and died early November 2008. It was funded for the first 90 days, then for another 90 days. Because it was so far north, it was expected to die in late November due to too short battery-charging hours. An unexpected dust storm covered the panels causing it to die two weeks early. However, there were other portents of doom: Mars went into solar conjunction in late November, so the device would be on its own for three weeks near its death date. I recall just about now its perpetual night at Phoenix latitude. Its expected to accumulate about a one meter of dry ice frost through the winter, which will crush it. Satellites will photograph it periodically.
Phoenix mostly worked as planned. I think about three of the dozen chemical stoves wouldnt open their latches wide enough. The stoves heat the soils to various temperatures and chemically measure the expelled gases. An stove grate shaker shorted out. Phoneix's arm had trouble getting ice samples beacuse the ice was harder than expected. If you dont gather ice flakes quick enough they evaporate and disappear. The soil was much more sticky than expected and balked at going into the stoves.
The Mars Science Lander is two years late and a billion dollars over budget because it has developed lots of new technology. It was supposed to launch during the 2009 optimal planetary configuration, but will have to wait until the 2011 one. The next lander uses a nuclear source and rocket landing instead of airbags. I'm a little fearful all the new stuff may not work as planned. I am also fearful NASA budgetary troubles may still kill it.
The cleaning boosts Spirit's daily energy supply by about 30 watt-hours, to about 240 watt-hours from 210 watt-hours...
I would have never figured out that 210 + 30 = 240.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
I hate to break it to everyone, the Russians did a moon rover that lasted just as long using 60's Russian technology. One rover traveled 23 miles, or at least 2 years.
Why is this better? This was performed in the 60's way before Mars was a glint in NASA eyes...
http://itssamsview.blogspot.com/2006/02/successful-russian-moon-rovers-35.html
Anyone interested in the Mars Exploration Rovers' mission should check out Mars And Me, the unofficial diary of a Mars rover driver. Scott Maxwell is blogging his daily work at JPL exactly five years later. A very interesting and well-written look at the day-to-day operations of a truly amazing scientific expedition.
Really, it is about time for an update in the Spirit of that classic tale.
Only this time - we have the Opportunity to make it "based on a true story".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
How about we all stop thinking that we have better ideas than the guys who built these incredible pieces of machinery? /. we have a bunch of armchair engineers believing they could do better?
I mean the designers built two rovers that had to survive a launch from earth, months in deep space, a bouncy landing on another world, and then operate correctly with a 10 minute (Or longer) radio delay.
That is an incredible accomplishment! Then for it to continue to operate for YEARS! I am in awe of the designers.
Now here on
Do you honestly believe that the same people who built these incredible machines didn't think of a solar panel wiper? A can of compressed air? A fan? A compressor?
To the designers: If any of you are reading this. My hat is off to you. Well done!
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
My wife and I used 896 kWh this past month, which comes out to about 30 kWh per day. That's over 100 times what the Spirit's solar panels take in. :-)
tear-off windshields
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=6915
"Working" is relative. There are a handful of single-points-of-failure on the rovers. If these fail, a rover's suddenly gone. However, they could gradually just wear out. They'll probably be declared "unusable" at the point where they don't return enough science to justify the maintenance costs. Thus, it may come down to an economic weighting.
For example, if an additional wheel stops working, then Spirit will be even more hampered than it is now with one bum wheel. That would greatly limit where it could rove and get sun-light to charge its night-heater system. Flat places tend to be boring science-wise.
Thus, they may face a choice of viewing yet more flat-land rocks that all look the same, or end the roving mission and make it a passive weather-station until the point its batteries fail to hold sufficient charge to keep it warm enough at night to not crack a chip.
I'd give it a 40% chance of a gradual retirement, 30% chance of a sudden failure of a pivotal component, and 30% another dust-storm freezing it too death.
Table-ized A.I.
and why doesn't it happen to my car???
Of course, 30 W lights exists. Incandescents in the 30 W range are used for accent lighting, night lights, multi-lamp fixtures, etc. And as for being ludicrously bright, on a film set it is perfectly normal to have multi *kW* halogens and other high end lamps. So, I know at least a few cinematographers who wouldn't even consider 30 W worth of "modern lamps" to be a starting point.
oven light
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
That's, "About what are we talking?". Your using English.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I don't get watt-hours. What's wrong with Joules? Or kJ? Why have two units for energy?
Because civil time isn't decimalized. Human beings in mainstream cultures still plan their work time and leisure time in hours, not kiloseconds. For this and other reasons, electric power companies on Earth still sell energy in kilowatt hours, not megajoules (i.e. kilowatt kiloseconds).
For proving there's nothing a good blowjob can't fix! I'll have to e-mail this link to my wife....
...like nothing else in the solar system.
Table-ized A.I.
It seems like the Japanese (symbol of auto reliability) designed these rovers.
Glad to see that they exceeded their lifespan by a thousand of times.
You wire the panels so that the charge can be manipulated. You don't have any moving parts, or risk of scratching the surface. It uses electricity, but not much, and it could be built right into the panels. It just seems like the wind would have an easier time if the dust was electrically unsticky. please destroy my idea now, ivan
Like to brew? Want to talk about it? Brattlebrew: groups.yahoo.com/group/brattlebrew
I am still in awe of the rovers. I can't think of another mission where we have gotten to move around on another planet for so long.
Imagine the team that gets to work on these...every day they get to experience another planet....
I hope it doesn't become boring, but I can't help but wonder if they joke with their significant other:
"Goodbye dear, I'm off to the quarry."
"Goodbye dear, I'm off for another day of looking at rock #SG2351, you know...the one we call the martian phallus. Professor Gretchen has some more ideas about it...."
"Goodbye dear, we get to move a foot to the left today."
"Goodbye dear, we get to move a foot to the right today."
"Goodbye dear, Dr Simon said we get to spin the Rover around today, but we have to ask him first."
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain