Spirit Stuck In Soft Soil On Mars

cheros writes "NASA reports that the Spirit Mars lander is presently stuck in soft soil. The lander's wheels are halfway sunk into the soil and they are planning simulation tests to see if they can get it out again. I hope they can get it out of there because it's picking up enough new energy to operate; however, it only has 5 wheels left to get around on — one of the wheels hasn't been working for years. Fingers crossed."

Comments

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[Lumpy]

Yes.

same as your 20 minutes waiting is cheaper than buying you a new laptop with Usb 2.0 high speed ports.

Life in slow motion...

[yogibaer]

In an era where time is the devil and speed is God, it's interesting and heart warming to see that there is actually an engineering job where you can spend weeks looking at the dust under your feet, comtemplate your (modest) goals (another 100 feet, yeah!) and then very, very slowly take you next step. And if a dust storm comes along, just wait for the next breeze to gently brush the dust of your panels and let the sunshine in. Envious. Quite envious.

Re:Life in slow motion...

[Tablizer]

That's the wonder of having an open ended mission without any specific goals. Go slow and produce something every once-in-awhile and you stay employed.

They "go slow" for a reason. For one, they only get approximately 2 communication sessions a day. If you let the rover keep trying something on its own, it may end up even more stuck. Thus, they back out incrementally and slowly.

Further, it takes time to set up simulations of specific situations. Before opportunity went down into its first big crater, they studied the pathway photos and reproduced a test-bed with similar-looking rock and gravel. They went to the local Home & Garden Depot and purchased a bunch of flat patio rocks, chiseled them to shape, and stuck BB's into notches to simulate the so-called "blue-berries" discovered in the area (and in the crater photos). The interns that helped work on that must have been tickled. "Mom, I built Mars in NASA's back lot! I hope you still have Tide."

I see very little reason to rush things unless there's a known time-limit. Plus, the rover can take multi-spectrum photos and readings of the surrounding area while waiting. It takes times to send big photos back unless you compress all the good details out of them. It's like dial-up across 70 million miles. While on the move the rovers cannot stop to smell the roses very deeply as they can while waiting for something.

And, I hope future rovers have bigger wheels. This is about the 5th time I've read of getting stuck in sand/soil to some degree.
   

When does this end?

[wandazulu]

It's great to see that the rovers have lived on for so long, even if they are showing some wear-n-tear, but given the circumstances, they're clearly well built and I'd buy a used one off ebay any day (uh, shipper pays postage).

I'm curious though, in a totally non-judgmental way, about the cost of the program in general; they expected the rovers to last, what, 90 days? So presumably someone budgeted so many resources here on Earth for people, etc., for that length of time. Since the rovers have been doing such a great job of defying expectations, what kind of effect does that have on the budget for the program; is it sufficiently small enough that it just gets lost in the wash?

Also, since their plans were presumably all built for a 90-day time frame, how do they determine what to do now? Do they take requests from PhD candidates and researchers from around the world?

Re:When does this end?

[DaveV1.0]

By far, the largest cost of the project was building the rovers and sending them to Mars. Every day of return amortizes the cost of sending the rovers to Mars. The scientists studying the data sent back would have been studying data regardless. This just means they have gotten way more data than they could have hoped for.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[dotancohen]

Does anyone know if managing the twins is still cheaper than sending a new rover?

Sending a new rover for what? There is a new rover on the way, but that does not make Spirit and Opportunity any less valuable. Even getting stuck in soft soil is doing science: the things that the scientists learn from the experience (what soft soil looks like when you approach it, what techniques to use to get out, how to built a rover that can handle it) will be useful.

And don't forget, turning up this soft soil may reveal something important. Many of Spirit's discoveries were because of soil turned over due to her stuck wheel.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[yuriyg]

Don't be so quick to judge. If the GP is a highly paid professional, his time actually might worth more than a modern netbook.
Same story with the rovers. That was a legit question.