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

Call a tow truck

[confused one]

Time to call AAA...

Re:Call a tow truck

[Megane]

Alien Automobile Association?

Re:Call a tow truck

[rackserverdeals]

They should get Opportunity to come by and fire it's grappling hook to tow it out with its winch.

What?!?! We launched a bunch of space robots to an unknown, rocky terrain without a grappling hook and winch?

They probably didn't include the lasers either. Good thing the people that carved the face are long dead.

Re:Call a tow truck

[camperdave]

Opportunity is on the opposite side of the planet. Given how fast the rovers travel, Opportunity could be on the scene in late 2157.

Re:Call a tow truck

[Sentax]

With the lack of spirit, there won't be much opportunity.

Re:Call a tow truck

[dreamt]

I don't know that I have ever met a native New Englander that has any idea how to drive (especially in the snow)! At least nowhere near Boston.

Re:Call a tow truck

[Onyma]

So pretty much a normal road side assistance response time then.

Re:Call a tow truck

[omris]

Boston is full of college kids, who are probably not New Englanders. And all of the natives around them have now evolved the most aggressively defensive driving style ever imagined to protect themselves. Not a good sample pool.

Look at Maine.

Or someplace that gets a lot of lake effect snow.

Here in Rhode Island, people are terrified of snow. If they predict snow, all of a sudden there is no milk or bread in any store in the state. This always baffled me. Bread, ok. But WHY would you buy milk when there could be severe weather. If you're trapped in your house, your power will likely go out, and now you have a new gallon of spoiled milk. Genius.

On the plus side, I repeatedly impress my neighbors by getting my car out of the snowbanks they make on top of it by shoveling their car out and dumping the snow on mine. I think they're bitter that I don't have to shovel if I don't want to.

Re:Call a tow truck

[crashumbc]

This always baffled me. Bread, ok. But WHY would you buy milk when there could be severe weather. If you're trapped in your house, your power will likely go out, and now you have a new gallon of spoiled milk.

yeah it's not like its COLD outside or anything...

Re:Call a tow truck

[rackserverdeals]

I think you're not understanding things. People don't want to drive or are worried about being able to buy during/after a storm as someone mentioned earlier.

The problem isn't that people are buying 10x more milk, it's that 10x more people came into the store. Or whatever the multiple is.

When there's a storm more people will go shopping in the day before the storm than after the storm. The market gets products delivered daily and sells it slowly throughout the week but when there's a rush to get emergency provisions, they get more people into the store than a usual day because people plan on not shopping for the next few days.

Re:Call a tow truck

[weszz]

Beer and TP.

In Wisconsin when there is a severe snowstorm predicted, those two sell out.

Milk is nice, but the beer and TP will help you weather the storm.

Re:Call a tow truck

[turgid]

Duh. Sharks can't live in space.

Sharks can live under water. There is no air under water. There is also no air in space. Therefore sharks can live in space.

Whoa! Time to stop drinking.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

I visualized a bottle of rectified spirit in Martian soil.

Should have used show chains...

[tippe]

... but I guess it's a little too late now. Oh well, better luck next time.

Re:Should have used show chains...

[ianare]

How would they have helped, if they're only for show ?

Still the cheaper option?

[biocute]

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

This occurs to me recently when I had to copy a 600MB file via USB1.0 port to thumb drive, which would have taken about 20 minutes.

I decided to stop the copying, took out my laptop, connected to the network, mapped drive and copied that file in 2 minutes, altogether less than 10 minutes.

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.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[ducomputergeek]

The next rover to mars is costing $1.8B to build. Spirit and Opportunity costs around $4M per year to operate. So I think you can fund a lot of years of operations for $1.8B. Hell what does a Delta IV heavy launch cost these days? $50M? $100M?

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?

[Aquaseafoam]

How does a rover on Mars cost 4 million per year to operate? Personnel for operating the rover couldn't possibly cost that much, and I'm sure the communication infrastructure for it was already in place.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[rackserverdeals]

How does a rover on Mars cost 4 million per year to operate?

Long distance charges.

I don't think the $4million number is accurate anyway. It's likely higher. Last year they were going to cut the budget by $4 million and turn off one of the rovers but then changed their minds. IT looks like the budget for the program is actually $20 million according to this article.

Hmm... maybe they didn't change their minds and it's not really stuck.

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.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[Zordak]

And don't forget, turning up this soft soil may reveal something important.

Especially if the "soft soil" turns out to be warm poo.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[Anonymous Coward]

Communications infrastructure maintenance costs and data warehousing maintenance costs probably don't come cheap for a project like this. I'm sure they don't communicate with these rovers over a walkie talkie.

I don't know how many people are on the team that operate each rover, but lets assume five. I'm sure they're making a smidge more than $8/hr, so chalk up another million in pay and benefits right there.

I read somewhere that your average local walmart has an operating cost between 1 and 1.5 million. These guys are performing science and maintaining a robot on another planet for a little less than 3 times that cost.

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[Thumper_SVX]

The personnel may not, but the building they're housed in might. Oh, and electricity costs, overall infrastructure share cost (plumbing, networking, etc).

And from my experience, NASA doesn't build a new comms infrastructure for every launch. They have large consolidated arrays that are actually owned by separate companies... sometimes literally, sometimes they're just "shadow" companies. Communications time is "rented" from these companies at a set rate.

Yes, sometimes it's all just a shell game when dealing within NASA and the USA, but it makes a certain kind of sense. Instead of having a communications infrastructure that's "in the dark" for 12 hours a day and can't talk to the rovers, they instead rent that infrastructure out to people "looking the other way" and rent antenna time in Australia, Japan, Russia etc. Having the arrays manage by another company actually keeps the books easier to keep straight than if you were a project owning your own infrastructure and leasing out antenna time to projects from ESA.

And no, not a rocket scientist... but drank with plenty and a few have talked about this :)

Re:Still the cheaper option?

[ChrisA90278]

Personnel for operating the rover couldn't possibly cost that much,.....I'm sure the communication infrastructure for it was already in place.

(1) Thos guys make between $85K and $120K per year. "overhead" about doubles that. This covers things like the building they work in, insurance, vacation pay and the bosses and office cleaning staff and capital equipment. So for $4M/year you get about 16 people full time.

(2) The communications system is HUGE. We are taling about football sized antennas all around the world, satalites in orbit and so on. All these cost money and every space program has to pay a "tax" based on usage and so on. So your $4M does not cover 16 people.

I've been in the software business for many years. I was surprized the first time I had to cost out a project. $1M does not buy many lines of code. We get about 250 lines of code per man-month.

5 out of 6 wheels?!?

[DavidChristopher]

SOURCE: Wikipedia
On sol 779, the right front wheel ceased working after having covered 4.2 mi (7 km) on Mars. Engineers began driving the rover backwards, dragging the dead wheel. Ironically, although this has resulted in changes to driving techniques the dragging effect has also had a positive effect in the fact that the wheel dragging has partially cleared soil away on the surface as the rover travels and allows for imaging areas that would normally be covered in soil.

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/mission/images/rover1_detail_500.jpg

NASA got awesome mileage out of this vehicle... considerably more than was initially expected- over 7700 meters! Hopefully they get it unstuck. According the the NASA website, they've gotten it backed up by a few CM over the last few Sols...

Re:5 out of 6 wheels?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's more mileage than most American cars :)

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.
   

Craigslist Mars

[BigBlueOx]

WANTED: IlludiumQ36 space modulators. New or used. Top prices paid! Contact Shirley or Bobbie @NASA.

Inflatable Tires?

[Ukab the Great]

I wonder if they could put inflatable tires on rovers and then manually adjust the pressure for each one to accomodate different soil types, a la WWII DUKW http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DUKW It might help the rover to better adapt to different kinds of soils.

Of course, it would have to be designed for the different pressures of the martian atmosphere.

Shoulda...

[Anita Coney]

Shoulda went with that optional AWD package.

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?

[NETHED]

I've been wondering the same thing myself. I bet in the first 100 days, only very pre-planned experiments and moves were made.

Now that we're what, 4 years in, I wonder if grad students are allowed minor joy rides in em. ("You published 2 Science papers, take Oppy for a spin").

You know, now that I'm nearing the end of getting my PhD, it amazes me how science is done. And not in a good way. If you have not read the PhD Comic, you should, its funny because its (sadly) true.

Re:When does this end?

[Phairdon]

I'm assuming that you have gone straight through school to get your PhD and haven't had a job in industry yet. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry.

One thing that I learned after graduating with my degrees and getting a real job is that real science and engineering is much different than school and research science.

Real science is when you are working on a spacecraft (or some other physical product) and trying to get a real vehicle in the air. School science and lots of research science is plagued by lots of bad things that get mentioned in PhD Comic. I work on trying to get a vehicle in the air and I get really frustrated with some groups out there that we work with that are mainly for research and they don't get the big picture.

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:When does this end?

[lwsimon]

My understanding is that NASA designed the rovers to last as long as possible, but only committed to 90 days. Saying its good for a year and getting 6 months would be bad, saying its good for 90 days and making it 6 months is great :)

Lowered expectations.

Re:When does this end?

[DerekLyons]

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?

Nothing gets lost in the wash in NASA's budget. Not only are there harsh internal reviews, NASA's line items are a popular target for Congressional review. Almost nothing NASA does is low profile, and politically (except for the really big programs) they're neutral - they have no strong constituency in favor, and they're a good place to hide a little pork from public view.
 
That being said, if a program runs long NASA can (and does) reprogram funds from elsewhere to keep it running and then adds it into next years budget request. Programs are paid for annually, not in a lump sum up front.

Re:When does this end?

[2short]

Well, while it sounds simple in press reports, you don't really design something to last 90 days exactly.

You make some estimates and design something such that you think it has (for example) a 95% chance of lasting 90 days. You don't want to send the thing to Mars without being pretty sure it's going to last for the length of time you've decided will make it worth sending.

But if it has a 95% chance of lasting 90 days, how long does it have a 50% chance of lasting? Probably years. "How long can you say it will last with a high degree of confidence?" is a very different question than "What's your best guess?"

The durability of the rovers, while impressive, is not as completely shocking as it might first seem.

DUI-S

[youn]

would the cause of the accident be a driving under influence of spirit ?

A comedy?

[denzacar]

maybe a good comedy movie will do the trick.

Like that recent JJ Abrams comedy based on Star Trek characters?

Enough of these rovers...

[Rog-Mahal]

Let's get some real people up there! Our unmanned rovers have given us a lot of valuable scientific data, but our space program needs some new life breathed into it. The days of the Shuttle are numbered, and technology such as ion rockets seems very promising.

Re:Enough of these rovers...

[c6gunner]

You seem to be saying, humans on mars can do more than humans controlling probes, if you ignore the difficulty and expense of getting them there and keeping them alive and operating.

When Bush suggested launching new missions to the moon and mars, the NASA estimate for the entire effort came out to $120 billion. The Mars Rover missions cost something like a billion each. That means that for the price of 120 remote missions we can afford to launch two manned missions - one to the moon, and one to mars. Following missions would be significantly cheaper, since the initial R&D and infrastructure costs would have already been covered.

Even if they only stayed there for a couple days the astronauts could gather more data than a dozen rover missions, AND they could bring back samples for earth-side analysis - something which is essentially impossible with probes.

I suggest they not only can, but have. It is not clear to me manned missions will ever achieve what remote probes are doing now. e.g. years of operation on mars.

Doing something for years and years is only an accomplishment when there isn't a faster way of doing it. If you spend years manually calculating the value of Pi to the Nth digit and someone comes along with a computer and replicates the same feat in half a second, does that mean that his achievement was somehow inferior to yours because it took less time?

Human missions don't need to "achieve years of operation on Mars" in order to justify the expense. A couple days of human time on mars will achieve FAR more than your "years of operation" via rover.

But in any case it seems clear to me that these goals are best advanced today by gaining as much knowledge of other planets as we can.

Really?

How did we get to the moon? By building better telescopes and studying it in detail from the ground? Or by developing rockets?

The only things we need to know in order to create settlements on Mars and the Moon is:

1. How to get there.
2. How to take our environment with us.
3. What hazards to expect during the journey and after arrival.

Gaining more knowledge about our destinations is a great idea, but it does nothing to actually get us there. At best it gives us a better understanding of what to pack before we leave - at worst it provides no relevant insights.

If they are better for the job, where are they?

Waiting for the funding, mainly.

Saying manned exploration is better if you ignore the drawbacks of manned exploration is just dumb.

The only drawback is that politicians don't want to authorize the necessary funding when it's much simpler to just toss NASA a bit of spare cash every now and then, and pretend that it's being well spent.

You're arguing that manned Mars missions haven't accomplished anything, so we shouldn't fund manned missions. The reason they haven't accomplished anything is because we haven't funded any. That's a circular argument. If you do not fund a line of research, you cannot use the the lack of results as a reason for not funding it. Otherwise we could have used the same "logic" to refuse funding for remote missions in the first place, or for any space exploration whatsoever. Using that argument, we would have simply said "nobody has ever launched anything into space, therefore we shouldn't bother funding rocket research, and should make better telescopes instead". NASA would have, quite literally, never gotten off the ground.

Gernsbeck Continuum

[afabbro]

Reading that headline, "Spirit Stuck In Soft Soil On Mars," I thought I'd been transported back to a 1930s Northwest Smith story about a haunted being trapped in the Red Planet. Alas...no.

There is precedent

[edremy]

Grumman billed North American Aerospace for towing the crippled Apollo 13 command module back from the moon. Make it worth enough and I'm sure someone will be up there shortly

The Big Bang Theory

[thespacemark]

Okay, it is pretty obvious that someone at NASA is a fan of the show, and figured if it worked for Wolowitz... Hey, surely 'I' won't be so stupid as to get the rover stuck. Maybe they will discover life on Mars while stuck in the dirt.

Rover Driver's Blog

[TrekkieTechie]

At night, there's a small red light in the sky. On that light lives four hundred pounds of thinking metal sent from Earth. I tell that metal what to do, and it does it.

Scott Maxwell, one of the rover's drivers, has a blog detailing the events of the mission exactly five years behind schedule.

Geocities is dead you moron

[Liath]

http://myweb.accessus.net/~090/as13/as13bill.png

Full glass

[camperdave]

...or, the glass is full - with an overfill safety margin of 100%