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NASA Mars Rover Spots Its Ultimate Destination
coondoggie writes "It has been years in the making but NASA said its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has captured a new view of the rim of the planet's Endeavour crater, perhaps the rover's ultimate destination. The Mars rover set out for Endeavour in September 2008 after spending two years exploring the Victoria crater. NASA says Endeavour is 13 miles across, some 25 times wider than Victoria crater, and could offer scientists more insight into the red planet's makeup."
It still amazes me how long these rovers have lasted. hopefully it makes it to the crater, and lasts for a long time once it gets there.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
FREE MARS!
" and could offer scientists more insight into the red planet's make-up"
Mars: the rouge planet!
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Wouldn't a large impact just melt/fuse the underlying rock and destroy any evidence of interesting geological, hydrological or biological features?
I bet there's a sticky note on the edge of the crater that has info on how to make Linux a popular desktop OS!
This is exciting. The knowledge contained within this crater will feed millions and advance the knowledge nessesary for the survival of the Human Race by many years, and reveal the secrets of oil spill clean up as an added bonus!
Um, not exactly. Though the discoveries made there could free the minds of millions of people and entice some of the brightest people on the planet to focus their talents on space sciences. Surely that has some value, too.
I wonder what alternates to solar panels they've considered. Seems like a satellite could collect solar energy 24.6583 by 7 and beam it to the rover(s) using microwave or something. And the rover could carry less equipment, not have to worry about dust so much, and operate around the clock.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Considering the success of robots like this and their small price, why is Congress so bloody interested in expensive human things like the space station? Get rid of the humans and send more robots!
Interesting. We don't know how close we are to finding life on Mars. Keep an eye on the data sent back by these robotic missions.
I was tempted to respond in a similar way to the GP's trollish comment, but yours went too far in the other direction.
the discoveries made there could free the minds of millions of people and entice some of the brightest people on the planet to focus their talents on space sciences
Come on, Opportunity has been on Mars for 6 years now and at this point they are just playing with a VERY cool RC car in the (Martian) dirt. It is not that expensive to run at this point and it is certainly worth keeping until it dies on the off chance of finding something interesting, but what discoveries that will excite millions have the rovers made in the last few years? None.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
This is exciting. The knowledge contained within this crater will feed millions and advance the knowledge nessesary for the survival of the Human Race by many years, and reveal the secrets of oil spill clean up as an added bonus!
I find your post very enlightening. Spirit and Opportunity should be supplied with Slashdot accounts and reprogrammed to post discouraging comments every few minutes. That would be far more helpful.
http://outcampaign.org/
K'breel, speaker for the Council, emphasized that the site for the final battle was well-defended:
"Gentle citizens, it has been years since the twin mechanized monsters touched down on our sweet red soil, but the Council is pleased to report that the last remaining mobile invader from the blue planet has been sighted by sentries approaching the rim of End-Devaur crater. The invader set out for End-Devaur last summer after spending a year at Victory Hole; Planetary Land Defense Forces have pinpointed the invader's location to a point in the trackless wastes at least half a year's journey from End-Devaur."
"The enemy's slow progress across the wastelands leaves us with ample time to amass an overwhelming counterforce, and at last we shall see this campaign through to its end. Rejoice! Within half a revolution around our star, this monstrosity from the blue world shall find its ultimate destination!"
When a junior reporter mentioned the persistent rumor that the invader was merely a scientific probe operating at least order of magnitude past its design lifespan, K'Breel raised a spirited toast "to an opportunity for victory!", and devoured the ends of the reporter's gelsacs.
The requirements were for 90 days at a time when we wanted to send up many such vehicles and robots knowing they were cheap and we would lose some.
These little guys have lasted far too long, demonstrating the folks at JPL were not able to meet the requirements the taxpayers gave them.
Far better engineering would have had these things come in at 40% of the cost and had them die on day 97. Then we could have flown more and more of them.
I hope the guys who managed this fiasco were suitably fired before they had a chance to screw the taxpayer and the space program over again.
if they found life, numbnuts.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
who pissed in your cherios today?
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Except the majority of the cost is fixed in the rockets to escape Earth and the spacecraft to reach mars, so a longer lasting robot is always better so long as it remains a minority of the cost of the exploration system.
You dont get it. Engineers design products to fail so people buy more.
In case anyone hasn't seen it, although featuring Spirit not Opportunity, still applies: http://xkcd.com/695/
There are still some people who believe that human achievement is a zero-sum game. Idiots, we call them.
Since all planned objectives have been met, how about sending one rover to other rover and pull it out of its hole. Then, working as a team, explore MARS together in the true "spirit" of cooperation.
What an "opportunity"!
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
if they found life, numbnuts.
The remains of a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias in the bottom of Endeavor crater would certainly create some interest.
But the long drives by Opportunity have actually been pretty interesting. It has found several meteors. It has also been able to study an increasingly wide area of mars. A long baseline helps a lot in science and I suspect data from Opportunity will be used decades into the future.
Also if not life, then maybe evidence of life elsewhere. A squatter probe (like phoenix and the vikings) would last longer on mars than on Earth.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Never happen. Halliburton is not invested in Mars.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Here's hoping the rover will stay functional until the release of 'John Carter of Mars' (2012, according to IMDB).
Wow, I bet you're the guy who makes laptops fail two days after the three-year warranty ends.
I am all in favour of careful engineering. Designing things to fail is extremely antisocial.
Far better engineering would have had these things come in at 40% of the cost and had them die on day 97. Then we could have flown more and more of them.
Ah, what a fanciful imagination you have of how engineering works.
Where engineers can guarantee operation in a highly variable, largely unknown environment for X days, yet also nail tolerances so tightly they can predict parts will fail in 1.1X days. And save lots of money in the process, somehow. Even though relative to your own imaginary number the rovers we actually got cost 2.5x, yet lasted more than 25x.
The rovers were engineered as robustly as possible within the weight budget, simply to ensure that they would work at all on the surface of Mars, and therefore had the potential to last for a very long time. This is obviously a win if you think the goal was to have the maximum number of operational rovers on Mars at any given time. But the reason they haven't launched more has nothing to do with rover cost. It's because they don't have the budget to expand operations to cover more; NASA is already busy with this already vastly expanded mission.
The only reason a 90 day mission plan came up was because that was their very rough estimate of how long the solar panels could supply sufficient power before they became too covered in dust. They had always hoped they could continue the mission past that and had contingency plans for the operations budget to that effect, and were very pleasantly surprised that their assumptions were wrong. When the Martian wind turned out to be much stronger than expected, enough to blow dust off of the rovers' solar panels, that constraint on the rovers' life span was removed and their robust engineering could pay off.
Executive summary: The only serious mistake made in the planning, research and design of the rover mission was in predicting a short lifespan for the rovers, and that mistake turned out to be in the mission's and the taxpayer's favor.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's a recommendation to use the "Morose Martian" distro ... no wait, they've already used "M" haven't they ?
Sometimes, the problem can be that Engineers over-engineer a product, but then later are forced to modify the design to reduce material and manufacturing costs. Had they been designed with cost in mind from the beginning, they might have been able to put R&D into the parts that need it the most.
People like you are everything that is wrong with today's society
The GP is not making an argument for careful engineering, he's making an argument for risky cutting edge engineering.
He's not saying YOUR laptop should fail after the three day warranty, because that's not the requirements or what a consumer wants from a laptop.
He's saying a 90 day lifetime rover should die on day 100 having a 10 day safety margin and not a six year safety margin.
At the time, the spirit (so to speak) was for faster, better, cheaper. But we didn't get faster or cheaper from rover, we got better, just as usual.
The reward for dying on day 100 after a successful mission would have been to launch more rover and more rovers.
The punishment for lasting six years is that we've sent no more rovers up there. And the next rover is not the size of a toaster or trashcan, it's the size of an SUV and will be canceled.
Instead of grabbing the public's attention with a series of rovers, we've bored the public to death with the same version of Johnny 5 rolling around not doing much of anything as far as the public can tell for six years.
Grandparent is right, these things were way overbuilt.
Pure fail. You, sir, epitomize fail.
Ah, what a fanciful imagination you have of how engineering works.
While I don't agree with his supposition, He's not that far off the mark. In manufacturing, if the expected life is 1 year (with a warranty period of 90 days), and if a $10 part will last, literally forever while a $2 part will last for 1 year of continuous use... You choose the $2 part.
Don't you hate it when /. posts are linked to blog sites instead of the home page, anyway post your links below
Home Page
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20100430a.html
Images
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20100430a.html
In manufacturing, if the expected life is 1 year (with a warranty period of 90 days), and if a $10 part will last, literally forever while a $2 part will last for 1 year of continuous use... You choose the $2 part.
Yes. But if the specs for your device includes high-g acceleration on launch, storage in vacuum at very low temperatures during transport, rapid heating during re-entry, another round of high-g deceleration, and finally operation in a thin atmosphere at still very low temperatures, you'll probably need the $10 part anyway. That it'll last virtually forever is just an added benefit.
Actually, we would call those "eastern cultures". Only America, with its history of expansion and "go West, young man" thinks of life as growing the pie. The culture I've lived in for the past seven years does not have that idea at all - overcrowding within a confined space has a bad effect on a culture, making the zero-sum game the only way to live life. "If you win, then necessarily I must lose." This sort of thinking is pervasive and destructive. People will screw you over for no reason, none, other than they feel that there is no such thing as a win-win situation.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Seems like a satellite could collect solar energy 24.6583 by 7
How do you know the Martian week is 7 days long?
Not ultimate. Next.
The remains of a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias in the bottom of Endeavor crater would certainly create some interest.
Someone give this man a cigar ... and quick. I'd hate for the Inprobability Drive to turn it into something that Freud wouldn't be so approving of.
Yes because those savings will really start to add up as we mass produce rovers.
By designing things to fail you will put the consumer in contact with the seller / manufacturer. That seems to be the opposite of antisocial.
you obviously come from a time *after* TV repairmen. once, it was considered a virtue to design things that lasted for ages. Its our modern wasteful profit mongering way to design things to fail.
Personally, I commend them for designing the thing as well as they did, because really, the cost of getting a new rover up there every year far outweighs the cost of continued support for this one.
Add in the increased chances of losing a rover during launch or re-entry on mars, and it makes even more sense to get all the bang for your buck you can out of one rover.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
planned obsolescence.
There are still some people who believe that human achievement is a zero-sum game. Idiots, we call them.
Economists, I call 'em.
In all of my life, I am not sure I have ever read a more cynical post than you just wrote.
...or are all successes just failures waiting to happen???
You sir, are the very definition of a crab in a barrel. Do you know what happens to crabs in a barrel when one of them tries to escape? The others pull him back down into the barrel.
Instead of celebrating the overwhelming success of the program, you denigrate it by saying it was too successful. Making something fail because of some artificial time horizon is just....well...stupid. My god man, don't you have ANY pride in success?
Granted, I am not a sparky (Elect Engineer) so my knowledge might be lacking here....
How, exactly, can electricity/power be "beamed" from a satellite to the rover? As far as I know, we can't "beam" any significant amount of electricity because so much is lost in the medium. While I know it's possible to do some induction (like Wii remote chargers), I don't think that technology scales up very well.
Can you explain this please?
Just remember to bring your papers to the crater. It is an impressive site, but I wouldn't want you to get detained in AZ.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
The GP is not making an argument for careful engineering, he's making an argument for risky cutting edge engineering.
He's not saying YOUR laptop should fail after the three day warranty, because that's not the requirements or what a consumer wants from a laptop.
He's saying a 90 day lifetime rover should die on day 100 having a 10 day safety margin and not a six year safety margin.
At the time, the spirit (so to speak) was for faster, better, cheaper. But we didn't get faster or cheaper from rover, we got better, just as usual.
The reward for dying on day 100 after a successful mission would have been to launch more rover and more rovers.
The punishment for lasting six years is that we've sent no more rovers up there. And the next rover is not the size of a toaster or trashcan, it's the size of an SUV and will be canceled.
Instead of grabbing the public's attention with a series of rovers, we've bored the public to death with the same version of Johnny 5 rolling around not doing much of anything as far as the public can tell for six years.
Grandparent is right, these things were way overbuilt.
Except that the two scenarios aren't mutually exclusive- we should have continued to send more robots over there while having the robots last longer than we ever expected.
Not only that, since we seem to crash 50% of everything we send to mars, you pretty much have to outlast your design requirements to get an average success rate.
The toughest part of the mission is just getting the thing on the ground in one piece. Some redundancy in engineering to hopefully make the rover last the failure of a few components will almost certainly ensure a long lifespan. Even so, don't forget we almost lost Spirit right in the beginning due to a software problem of all things. THAT would have sucked, especially considering how well the hardware has held up.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
In all fairness, when compared to the projects that government historically spends money on, blowing a couple hundred million bucks to drive a rc-car around on Mars doesn't seem like a bad investment.
At least NASA and its contractors have come up with a few useful tech advances as a byproduct of throwing stuff into space.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
faster, better, cheaper
But I thought I could only pick two!
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Grandparent is right, these things were way overbuilt.
Grandparent needs to read more and I think you do too.
Launch Successes (s) and Failures (f), 1957–1999
With about a 6%-7% chance of failure of not even making it to the planet, you want to make as few launches as possible and get the most out of each.
Then you have everything that could go wrong during landing. e.g. Beagle 2 and the crater it left in the martian soil.
Yep, thank God NASA is run by actual rocket scientists rather than internet experts.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Whoooosh!
I get the impression that this is a debate between optimists and pessimists; ie, is the glass half empty or half full?
Personally, I'm with the optimists on this one.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
The secret is this: Blush. Lots and lots of blush.
Well, there are only two types of people in the world: those who have gotten sick from hot dogs, and those who have not yet gotten sick from hot dogs. Guess which one still buys hot dogs?
Except the majority of the cost is fixed in the rockets to escape Earth and the spacecraft to reach mars, so a longer lasting robot is always better so long as it remains a minority of the cost of the exploration system.
This is incorrect. My understanding is that the two Mars Exploration Rovers cost roughly $850 million for the development, launch, and first 90 days of the mission. Of that, roughly $200 million was development cost, somewhere around $450 million was the cost of building (and other work like testing) the rovers, $75 million for operations, and $100 million for two rather cheap Delta II launches. So the launches took up roughly 12% of the total cost. This is typical fraction of cost IMHO for most satellites, space probes, and similar vehicles. It is rare to see launch costs outside 10-20% of the total cost of the mission.
Seems like you just bit the troll. Who himself was weirdly moderated +4, Insightful. While good comments got moderated -1, Troll.
I don’t think that there is any doubt left, that the moderation system has been taken over by trolls / 4channers.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I think you might be the delusional one. Since what you describe... is called... NATURAL SELECTION!
It’s the principle that all life adheres to. In all of the whole of the universe.
Yes, in a confined space, if you win, I lose! Since “win” always implies gaining some resources (or more people with your mindset). So since the resources are fixed, this means they got taken from somewhere. Which is: YOU.
Even the simplest bacteria in a petri dish follow that basic rule.
You live in a happy hippie fantasy world, my friend. And some day, your line will become extinct because of it. Which essentially means nature going: “He’s right, you’re wrong.” to you.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.