Slashdot Mirror
Options Dwindling For Mars Spirit Rover
coondoggie writes "NASA says it is narrowing a short list of things its scientists can do to extricate its stuck Mars Spirit rover. They are exploring a couple remaining options, such as driving backwards and using Spirit's robotic arm to sculpt the ground directly in front of the left-front wheel, the only working wheel the arm can reach. The amount of energy that Spirit harvests each day, however, is declining, as autumn days shorten on southern Mars. 'At the current rate of dust accumulation, solar arrays at zero tilt would provide barely enough energy to run the survival heaters through the Mars winter solstice.' NASA is currently analyzing results of a Jan. 13th attempt to move the spacecraft that involved a very slow rotation of the wheels. Earlier drives in the past two weeks using wheel wiggles and slow wheel rotation produced negligible progress toward extricating Spirit, NASA stated."
If they had the Martians number they could just call them and ask them for help. NASA, you proud fools!
What's the big deal?
This problem was solved in the 80's with The Animal: The Animal
Spirit Rover engineers should have played with more 80's toys. Can anything stop...THE ANIMAL?!
"Hey baby wanna drive a car on Mars?" is not an appropriate use of scientific equipment.
the easiest thing to do is to send a second robot probe with a tow cable and winch it out.
That's way dumb. Call a local tow operator. Any Earthside tow operator will want to be paid for the mileage. You're paying them to drive 60 million miles each way. At $3 per mile, that's a lot of dough.
That's an option, of course, but I fail to see how it would help the rover.
It also keeps them focused on their tasks. If they were together, it's just robot-on-robot sex, 24/7/365...or at least after every sunny day...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Obligatory quote: "Don't anthropomorphize our gadgets, they hate that"