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NASA Mars Rover Spirit May Move Forward By Spinning Its Wheels
coondoggie writes "As NASA celebrates its Mars rover Spirit's sixth anniversary exploring the red planet, it is hunting for a way to keep the machine, which is mired in a sand trap, alive to see a seventh year. On its Web site, the space agency this week noted there may indeed be such an option. That option would be spinning the wheels on the north side of Spirit, letting it dig in deeper in the Martian sand but at the same time improving the tilt of the rover's solar panels toward the Sun."
That ranks up there with "People kept alive by breathing."
Floor it!
Somehow I have a bad feeling that while allowing the rover to remain operational for a bit longer, it will also ironically become stuck in the hole it dug.
You know what the solution to this problem is? Send more rovers. Lots more. If we had a spare rover near Spirit, we could probably have it roll over and give Spirit a tow...
Ya gotta pin it to win it!
it will be nice when we can but a nautical rover in that liquid methane ocean...and not have to pay engineers to kludge their way out every hole, sandy spot, or dusty place. Also be cool if it could use the methane as a fuel source.
THL phish sticks
The rover was designed for a 90 day mission. If it made it to Mars operational, and was capable of operating for 90 (martian) days, the mission was a success. Here we are, years later and it is still working. It isn't as though this is a panic "Oh no we have to save the mission!" kind of thing. Rather, this is another step to see how long they can extend a tremendously successful mission. Even if the rover dies tomorrow, it will have far surpassed any expectations set for it.
Also of note is that Opportunity, the other of the two rovers launched, is currently trucking along towards a crater they want to look at.
Honestly.
Because it was the first thing I wanted to know, Spirit's twin Opportunity is still going strong and puttering around a rock called Marqeutte Island. So regardless of how Spirit pans out, there's a really good shot at seeing year 8 of the Mars Rover 90 day mission.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_opportunity.html
7 years ago we put together a robot designed to survive a journey off of our own planet (secured to a fireball), through the vacuum of space (oxygen-breathing life need not apply), land on another planet (falling from miles above the surface) about which little is known (and nothing about the proper tire to use in a martian dust-pit). This tiny robot was hoped to survive for 90 days. It has survived for more than 2,500 days. This tiny moment of reflection brought to you by the You Really Are Alive In A Great Period of History Foundation.
Time to smoke some tires.
The other rover needs a winch like any respectable Range Rover would have. Sounds like a cheap fly-by-night sort of budget operation...Oh wait, it was.
Sheldon
Every update on that page gives the Rover's daily power generation in watt-hours. Its plummeting. I found that a fascinating insight into the seasons on an alien planet.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
--Greg
Can someone in the know indicate if/why it can not rock itself out. About 4 times/year I have to rock my car out of street parking, if I left it out and it snows 10cm.
You would need to be able to load code to do the rock locally, and a 3d accerometer to decide when to change direction, or floor the drive as you came out.
I was thinking that a thin but flexible robotic arm would have 3 uses: 1) Moving rocks to study what's beneath, 2) Digging out stuck wheels, and 3) cleaning off solar panels with a little brush.
Table-ized A.I.
But all that costs money. Also, the more parts there are, the more that can break down.
And in my estimation, a robotic arm with a little shovel may be a better deal because it could also have a brush to clean the solar panels.
There is a single big rover that will be launched fairly soon. They didn't have time to change it for sand-trap problems, so it may get stuck also.
Table-ized A.I.
Curiousity would get to Mars in late 2012 if they keep on schedule. It doesn't have the solar panel problem and the freeze death problem as it's powered by radioisotope thermal which will hold up for a decade. The legs have additional articulation and the whole thing is much bigger (and way more complicated anyway), so the sand problems will be different. I do wish the arm was better.
Bruce Perens.
With the progress they have made in the past weeks, and the problems that they had with the broken wheels (two wheels seems not be 'broken' by now), and the fact that the rover is still sinking deeper and deeper, I think I would stop the extraction process and go for getting Spirit survive the winter. It is a pitty for all the energy they invested in trying to find a safe extraction path with a spare rover here on earth, but maybe it is time to expect that the Spirit rover is stuck forever.
That would cost something on the order of a few million dollars. You have to design the arm, build the arm, test the arm, and then fly the arm into space. Every kilogram of mass adds something on the order of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars to launch costs.
And then it also has to run off of the solar panels, draining more power. There really isn't anything to justify the cost of it. The rovers have already lasted a hell of a lot longer than they should have without any arm. Moving rocks isn't going to do you any good, the landscape is a lot more barren than it is here on earth. You could achieve the same results by studying the top of the rock, or just digging down a little bit by spinning the wheels or something. You'd only get different results if you drill down several meters, and that takes more than a robotic arm.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I would be thrilled to have robotic probes beaming back four-year-delayed updates from Alpha Centauri, since that is the only option that seems even remotely realistic. It's the travel time to the stars that is the problem, not the delay in your transmissions once you're there.
Even if we could accelerate a spacecraft to an insanely fast 0.1c (at present the fastest we've managed is 0.00025c), it would take almost half a century to reach our closest neighbor (assuming it wasn't destroyed by interstellar dust at that speed). Given our fragile construction, intensive life-support requirements, and short life-spans, it's difficult to see how such a manned mission could be attempted successfully.
I love Star Trek too, but until we develop warp drive, it's safe to say the best hope of reaching the stars is by robot.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
When you have an entire team of scientists having prolonged discussions about the best solution to such a simple problem as getting a small vehicle out of a sand trap, you know your methods are pretty limited.
If we had people on Mars, problems like these would be trivial to solve. The human body is a tremendously versatile instrument and you don't fully appreciate it until you try to do things with robots - especially if those robots are located several light minutes away. Sending humans to Mars would simplify exploration by leaps and bounds. All that has been discovered so far in 35 years of probe landings could probably be done in a few days with astronauts present.
I think they are kind of clutching at straws now.
I wish them the very best but I think I'd start taking bets on them not getting this puppy out of the sand (even if they do, how do they know it's not thicker 5' away?)
RIP little dude.
It doesn't have to be a big arm. It could be long and thin. And it only uses power when it's needed, such as digging the wheels out or cleaning the solar panels. It's not like the x-ray spectrometer that runs and runs when used.
Table-ized A.I.
That's one of the reasons why you explore a planet: to know what the dangers are. I'm sure future rover designs will be better able to handle sand-traps. I would point out that the MER designs were generally based on Sojourner, which didn't encounter that problem. Neither would the MER rovers if they only lasted their expected duration.
Table-ized A.I.
Everyone who has a comment on how the Rovers should have been designed differenty;
Everyone who has a comment on how the teams should have better ways to deal with this problem;
Everyone who has a comment on how the mission could have gone better;
Everyone who has a comment on how there must be a better way;
Shup Up. Now.
The 90-day mission is looing forward to its 8th YEAR. We have received data several orders of magnitude greater than hoped for. We've travelled much, much more than thought possible for thse Rovers. We've also learned a great deal about how to conduct robotic missions on other planets or moons in the solar system. We have gotten nothing short of a scientific miracle in the volume of information, learning opportunity, and pure information.
The teams running this show have done stellar work, overcoming incredible obstacles. Amazing work.
And your ideas about solving the current problem? As if it hasn't already been thought of, considered, even tried out in simulation.
Read a bit of the blogs from the teams. They are pretty damned incredible.
Me? I got no idea how to get it out of the sand. Tilting and waiting out the winter is a good plan, rather than taking chances when the Rovers are actually doing pretty well otherwise.
Honestly. This mission is delivering value way beyond expectations. I got no complaint.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Correction: I believe the winter sun faces north, not south. Thus, spinning the north-side wheels will dig in the north side of the rover deeper, making the panels face slightly north instead of straight-up.
Table-ized A.I.
Not all problems have solutions. The rovers cheated lady luck many times already. It has to end eventually. The dice will have their day. We've just got spoiled. Spirit just got out of another precarious spot roughly a month before it got jammed in the current spot, for example.
There's a Fi in their Sci.
Table-ized A.I.
I really hope you are joking.
If not, you saying that that a rover that survived for 8 years, that was supposed to only survive 90 days - was poorly designed. Oh, and NASA should have known about this problem (based on all the other rovers we've sent over the years) and added a complicated jacking mechanism and bigger wheels. And I guess, if in 20 years it gets attacked by aliens someone will post "oh, and they should have seen this coming and added laser defenses."
[NASA is] hunting for a way to keep the machine, which is mired in a sand trap, alive to see a seventh year.
Ah. The real reason for Tiger Woods' leave-of-absence.
--
Toro
And I guess, if in 20 years it gets attacked by aliens someone will post "oh, and they should have seen this coming and added laser defenses."
I could almost agree with you if it weren't for the fact that we already had prior knowledge of the existence of dirt/dust/sand on Mars. We have no evidence suggesting that we will ever run into aliens.
All they had to do was play Moon Patrol to figure that out.
Wow, really? Most people I talk to disagree, or have different views of the future.
Obviously, predicting the future is impossible, however, there's a few basic ideas :
1. It isn't impossible to recreate human intelligence using electronic circuitry, and it'll happen sooner or later. A recent developement is a PhD researcher noticed how the human brain is extremely noisy and neurons are actually fairly flakey and inconsistent, and he built a brain simulator using ASICs that is about 10,000 times more power efficient than current supercomputers. While the human brain has some incredibly complex structures, we can cheat in a lot of ways (our AIs will have MUCH better hardware and cleaner data input for one), and we think nature designed the whole thing completely blind.
2. Once it becomes clear that it IS possible to create AI, the forces pushing humans to develop it would be unstoppable. No law or U.N. resolution could stop the developement : any nation or group that had a working AI would also possess a weapon that would make nukes look like firecrackers. (because a working AI with good hardware would be able to run at around 10 million times the thinking speed of human beings, able to create new tech or weapons or control robots or hack into human programmed computers with ease)
3. Such AIs will need resources. Unless they have technology different from what we can imagine, they'll need to use solid matter in their nanomachines (well, very large machines that are built atom by atom). The energy to power all these state changes will mostly come from the sun. While it's possible that they could kill us to free up the matter in our bodies and biosphere, I have to hope that beings vastly smarter than us will have enough compassion or curiosity to preserve the race of primates that created them, as well as the rest of the biosphere. (the reason we'd be in rotating space habitats is that is a LOT more mass efficient than leaving the earth intact).
You have a point that this might only last for a while. Unless FTL communication is possible, there won't ever be an interstellar empire or network of AI civilizations. Matter here at Sol will always be limited resource, and the AIs might scan our brains and compact us down to thumbnail sized scraps of molecular circuitry or something in order to save on mass. (followed by data compression...no need to keep billions of human personalities up and running when they could sorta almagate us into a virtual museum exhibit of just a few 'everyman' human personalities)
And have you come up with a design for such a device that will work reliably enough to make the addition worthwhile? It's all very well to play arm-chair designer/engineer, but implementation is where things get tricky.
I have a feeling if NASA had direct and immediate view and control of the rover they could easily free it from the sand.
They could do this by rocking it back and forth, by shifting from forward to reverse rapidly until it rocked from it's hole.
Sort of like finding the resonant frequency of a stop sign for example, by shaking it.
I'm sure they could find the math to support this, although it would likely be extremely complex, and need to factor in the mass of the vehicle, gravity, weight and depth of the sand, atmospheric density, engagement time of the driven wheels switched from forward to reverse, etc.
Controlling something on planet Mars, from planet Earth, with it's delay of radio waves, among numerous other things is a staggeringly complex and impressive feat.
This should be a lesson on how not to design a Rover. Getting out of a sand trap isn't hard if you think about it beforehand and plan accordingly
Ah HA! I found you! I've been looking for you for many years, and here you were hiding on slashdot.
I just wanted to insult you, being that it is your own personal fault this poor rover is stuck.
Get your ass back to NASA and tell them all these things you have been to mars to see and think about and plan for accordingly! Before any more rovers are lost!
Put away the ranger, and become who you were meant to be!
Send the other one over to push or tow it out !!
Does the existence of dirt and dusk means there must be sand traps?
The best tried and true design with wheels for traveling, plus be able to pull or push yourself out if stuck, without getting out of the cab or needing outside assistance, plus do all sorts of useful work, is the backhoe with front end loader and levelers.
I bet if Nasa contracted some radio shack RC toy company, told them to build a super little backhoe design, it would work really well on martian terrain, and come in cheap. You can roll or "walk" with one of them.
I do like that idea of the convertible folding wheels though, go from all rolling to all insect type walking. That "bigdog" pack robot walks pretty good. This is one of the dang coolest machines ever built:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2bExqhhWRI#
When it comes to not getting stuck in the first place though, over moderate terrain, like you see in most of the mars pics..tracks. I think using wheels there where they knew it was really dusty was a mistake.
Major obstacles terrain, lotsa boulders and so on to go over and around, something like that bigdog bot. I watched some linemen who had to get a heavy cable, seems it was a phone cable but don't remember now, through really rough steep mountainous terrain up in Vermont. They used a huge Belgian draft horse. Had to snake around trees and over rocks and all sorts of nasty stuff, no way with any machinery. That was a super point A to B "machine", that horse took off with that cable attached to a giant spool on the truck and just walked away with it like nuthin' and pulled it out, like half a mile or something.
I really hope you are joking.
If not, you saying that that a rover that survived for 8 years, that was supposed to only survive 90 days - was poorly designed.
Of course it was poorly designed! It was supposed to survive for just 90 days yet it's gone on for 8 whole years! Can't NASA do planned obsolescence properly?!!
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