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New Mars Rover Rolls For the First Time
wooferhound writes "Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time. Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet). Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things: environments where life might have existed, and the capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life."
August 2012: Mars rover discovers proof of complicated life forms on mars
December 2012: We get WTFPWNBBQed
Living With a Nerd
I've always wondered why the rovers aren't designed with bigger wheels and bubble-ish tires (not saying they have to be inflated) like on a truck outfitted for work in a swamp. Every time we read that one of the existing rovers got stuck and the folks at JPL were working on getting it unstuck, I'd think the same thing.
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Those tires are at least as big as my garden tractor and it has six of them.
That and its body looks like a cross between a battle ship and a Dalek.
But what matters most though, is if it works well and has new science capability.
So do we have a better idea of the mars defense grid locations, or is this one going to be "lost" on landing?
I think you don't quite understand the utter, sheer enormity of a project like sending a probe to another planet, let alone an autonomous rover to land on the surface. As you yourself admit, this thing is going to travel hundreds of millions of kilometres through space, burn through an atmosphere, land on the surface of a planet and -hopefully- roll away into the sunset. NASA can't test it enough IMHO. This machine needs to have triple redundancies built in - it will need them. Watch the video: this thing is going to explore the surface of another planet. Who is going to fix it, if it breaks?
There's no thing like overweaning care when it comes to real, actual space exploration. If you don't take care, you can see a rover worth a few hundred million dollars burn up in an atmosphere or worse: just sitting there like a lame duck because someone thought it'd be a waste of time to take the appropriate care.
No you're thinking of an incident from the viking mission where the opposite happened.
Viking video images were miscalibrated to display the sky as blue.
But there is always a calibration target on the lander with known colors that is used for proper calibration.
Disappointment ensued when it was corrected as per the know target and the sky was pink.
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/rover/energy/
"The Mars Science Laboratory rover will carry a radioisotope power system that generates electricity from the heat of plutonium's radioactive decay. This power source gives the mission an operating lifespan on Mars' surface of at least a full Martian year (687 Earth days) or more while also providing significantly greater mobility and operational flexibility, enhanced science payload capability, and exploration of a much larger range of latitudes and altitudes than was possible on previous missions to Mars."
Hope they fix the dust collecting on the solar panels issue. Something as simple as compressed air blowing on the panels would do the trick. Since there is a thin atmosphere on Mars, they could just have a little compressor pump the Martian air instead of an air or CO2 canister.
Yes, it's nuclear powered... problem solved :)
I know it costs roughly $80,000 to land an object on the moon, Mars must be a bit more.
Lets say a Hum-V was built that runs perfectly on 100% solar power and weighs about the same as a standard Hum-V, we know it would cost roughly $480,000,000 to lift that Hum-V to the moon. Hard to see how that would be any cheaper...
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Ah sorry, amend my previous figure of $80,000 above to $80,000/pound..
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Mars gravity is about 1/3 Earth's. If the structure is 3x stronger than it needs to be to support itself on Mars, it's just barely strong enough to support itself on Earth.
Ah sorry, amend my previous figure...to $80,000/pound.
Dang, I knew the dollar was down against the pound, but that's just ridiculous.
I've always wondered why NASA makes such huge and complicated probes when they could just make many, many tiny and expendable ones. I recall seeing a project under consideration where a fairly large number of probes would roll around looking for signs of water. Since there would be so many of them, we wouldn't suffer a total loss if a probe took a somewhat risky maneuver down a steep ravine, for example. I always hold my breath when a robot deploys or is transported for the first time, so I can only imagine how the scientists feel about this.
Why not go the cheaper, multiple probes route?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
The first modern probe, pathfinder was a cute little thing that mostly just took pictures. Then came the robo-geologists Spirt and Opportunity about the size of golf carts. Now its Curiosity the size of an SUV. It need retro rockets to land instead of airbags. And has more reliable nuclear power instead of solar.
Sssh, the torch and pitchfork carrying mob will here you use the other 'n' word and start to panic.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
How many kilograms was the baguette that shut down your LHC?
Ribbit.
And everytime I see a post like this I think of The Ariane 5 Flight 501 failure (integer overflow error, LOL!) and ask myself will they step into the 20th century and ever put someone on the moon?
Greetings from the United States.
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http://xkcd.com/695/
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ISTR that the Apollo LM was constructed for the Moon's gravity and would collapse under its own weight on Earth. It's interesting that a vehicle that's made for a 0.38G environment works on Earth.
When will a nation that still calculates pressure in pound per square feet (hahaha that sounds so funny) make the step into the 21st century?
We made that step decaeds ago. It was 18 inches (45.72 cm) long.
The common internal cumbustion engine is not exactly rocket science. If I sent my CRX engine over to the wiz kids ahd had it rebuilt I would EXPECT them to re-check the oil, timing, etc, crank it over a few times without fire to make sure nothing clanks inside, and have the oil pressure gauge hooked up when it is fired off for the first time just to make sure nothng was forgotten or missed. Some shops even do compression tests just to spot obvious problems.
So I'm entirely pleased that JPL gave this new Rover a cautious and careful initial drive. Why destroy a motor or break something else just because you 'know what you're doing'?
Now, sadly, we have to deal with the fear that this Rover will get to Mars, drive off the landing pad, and lurch to a halt 12 meters away just because of something no one thought of. I'd rather we make a dozen copies of Opportunity. that rover design seems to have stood the test. Make a few and land them as a MIRV'd mission. Or maybe update the power system with the nuclear option. We'll be pretty disappointed if this fancy new Rover grinds to a halt for something either stupid or unknown.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Exactly. Seeing the GPs query, the mesh tires were the first thing I thought of too. They worked on the low gravity and soft surface of the moon, can't see why they wouldn't work on Mars.
...and for the life of me, I don't know why, considering Spirit has shown how easy it is to get bogged even with autonomous ground-plotting software. The Lunar Rover mesh wheels worked perfectly, were lightweight and durable, why not do the same? Alternately, if I were in charge of wheel design I would perhaps consider a more spherical wheel cross-section. I recall something I saw whilst browsing Google Patents which was a 1930's swamp buggy machine that had spherical wheels. The softer the terrain the further it sank down, which in turn increased the ground contact area. Seemed like a good idea to me.
Whilst hydraulics might sound like a good idea, remember the operating conditions it's working in - the mean surface temperature is -63C which could severely affect a hydraulic system
Engineers and technicians wore bunny suits while guiding Curiosity through its first steps
Sometimes I really wish "bunny suits" actually meant costumes of bunnies... Space exploration could use a little more whimsy.
all we have to do is brake there glass domes as they can't live on the air hear.
So I'm entirely pleased that JPL gave this new Rover a cautious and careful initial drive. Why destroy a motor or break something else just because you 'know what you're doing'?
I'm not saying don't test it. But the reason you do prissy tests like this is because you expect that you don't know what you're doing, and you want to make sure the wheels go all the way around. Shows a lack of confidence in your processes and in the robustness of your gear. Which means both were designed by people who didn't have confidence in their own design abilities.
Someone mentioned $80k/lb (probably more for Mars). So adding a few lbs to make the thing much tougher and more robust is a good idea, since a fat screw-jack is insurance against losing the other several hundred lbs worth of cost because you saved weight using a prissy tin-foil deployment spring on the solar collector.
Break one of yours. Mine won't. Getting more done on Mission 1 is better than having to plan and fly Mission 2 to get less done.
The only caveat to this is how much rocket you got? If necessary, build that bigger, too.
I understand it fine. Which is why I don't understand why the thing isn't made so bulletproof that you could test the wheels with the entire crew jumping up and down on top of the rover.
Because then it'd be far too heavy.
There are more consequences of weight than just having to have a (super-linearly) larger rocket, though that is a significant issue given NASA's budget and not something that can be ignored even if it were the only issue.
The MSL is already so heavy that they can't use the simple airbag landing method they used for Spirit and Opportunity. Instead, they're having to use a pretty crazy method of dangling the rover by a cable from a rocket-propelled landing platform.
Increase the weight significantly, and that method becomes much harder if not impossible. It's a square-cube problem. The strength of the rover's structure goes up as the cross-sectional area, but the mass -- and thus the force experienced on landing for a given velocity -- goes up as the volume. In a very real sense, your heavier rover is actually weaker when it comes to this aspect of the mission. Which means you need much larger rockets that are simultaneously much more precise in absolute terms, and thus vastly more precise in percentage terms.
I don't know what related industry you work in, but if weight isn't a dominant issue then it's really not that closely related to space travel.
The enemies of Democracy are
One of the Mars landers crapped out this year because too much frost (albeit a layer of dry ice a couple of feet thick) snapped its solar panels. Prissy design is passe.
Oh yeah, and denigrating the previous rover designs because one of them finally crapped out is just silly. You think they could have designed it to withstand a couple feet of ice accumulation and not had to sacrifice a ton of other things? If so, you're wrong.
The enemies of Democracy are
The rover will be equipped with weaponry for use against cats.
This rover does not have solar panels, it runs on Nuclear Power . . .
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/technology/technologiesofbroadbenefit/power/
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
This rover is carrying it's own power and will not have any solar panels. http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/technology/technologiesofbroadbenefit/power/
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
the real problem isn't getting it to mars. It's getting to land safely on mars. There is very little atmosphere, not enough to use parachute, but enough to cause heat when plowing though it. Add to that enough gravity to make things like retro rockets unpractical
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
But your example of survivability of the touchdown is begging the question. It can't survive the touchdown because they didn't make it strong enough. It's one of the reasons HMMV's are as strong as they are. You can dump them out of aircraft on a pallet.
The rocket thing is a good idea, except that the mass of rocket you need goes up super-linearly with the mass of payload you're trying to decelerate. I bet an auto-gyro would be even better, even in a thin CO2 atmosphere.
Your statement about where I work is tautological. That's two classical fallacies you've resorted to in attempting to question my reasoning.
could have designed it to withstand a couple feet of ice accumulation and not had to sacrifice a ton of other things? If so, you're wrong.
No, I'm right, and for exactly that reason.
They sacrificed a ton of fuel they could have put into a bigger rocket to get a sturdier rover there, and still had it today to do another year of science.
Yes, the current rovers do impressively vs. their minimum mission requirements.
But their minimum mission requirements are kind of pathetic compared to what they could be if you set out to use more robust systems. And you wouldn't need to spend weeks planning which pebble to run the left front bogie over when moving to the next bit of interestingly colored sand.
So you should counter with "but we could put another instrument on the payload for that weight." Yes. Good. Do that, too. Let's stop screwing around here. Pack half a dozen rockets with all the equipment we can think of, and get it on-site. Let the rover go around and assemble the gear onto itself when it gets there. And make it tough enough to survive the environment and give us room to implement tasks we couldn't dream of until we've seen what there is to be tried.
source?
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
But your example of survivability of the touchdown is begging the question. It can't survive the touchdown because they didn't make it strong enough. It's one of the reasons HMMV's are as strong as they are. You can dump them out of aircraft on a pallet.
Um, the MSL can (in theory, the new mechanism is unproven) survive touchdown. If they made it significantly heavier, it wouldn't be able to because mass scales faster than strength. If you meant the airbag landing, that's just ludicrous, it can't survive that because its mass is too high for airbags to protect it, and heavier would just make that even more impossible. It'd just be crashing into the planet.
You can't drop a HMMWV very far. A lighter vehicle of equal material strength would actually be able to survive a farther drop. That's basic physics, not begging the question. Try to drop a HMMWV in an airbag-protected lander onto Mars and it'd be scrap. While Spirit and Opportunity were fine because they're so much lighter. Get it?
The rocket thing is a good idea, except that the mass of rocket you need goes up super-linearly with the mass of payload you're trying to decelerate.
Yes, another reason why they can't afford to increase the mass of the rover as much as you'd like. Those much bigger (yet more precise to keep landing velocity down) rockets would feed right back into the initial launch equation.
Your statement about where I work is tautological. That's two classical fallacies you've resorted to in attempting to question my reasoning.
Look, it wasn't intended as an insult, I'm sure you're good at your job. But if keeping mass down isn't a primary consideration, then no your job is not closely related to what NASA is doing. Mass is a primary consideration of NASA, it's not apparently on your radar, ergo your jobs are not closely related.
Claiming logical fallacies because you didn't follow the logic means nothing.
The enemies of Democracy are
They sacrificed a ton of fuel they could have put into a bigger rocket to get a sturdier rover there, and still had it today to do another year of science.
Assuming you meant "If they sacrificed a ton of fuel",
Pack half a dozen rockets with all the equipment we can think of, and get it on-site. Let the rover go around and assemble the gear onto itself when it gets there.
That's a great idea -- for the future. In fact it's in the future if NASA's technology development plans don't get too damaged by Congress demanding a shuttle successor. Robotic assembly from separately launched components (specifically targeting automated resource harvesters/processors, but obviously this could include exploration craft) is one of the technology developments supposed to occur in the next 10 years.
See, NASA engineers understand that you can't just blow up the size of what your launching, and it makes more sense to launch and land smaller components for a lot of the reasons, including the difficulty of landing larger components without them being damaged. It's nice to see you acknowledging that reality at least somewhat.
Anyway, point is -- that technology is in development. When Spirit and Opportunity were launched neither the rocket-sky-hook nor robotic-self-assembly techniques existed. Airbags were the only known method to work. So your dream rover would either still be in development, or it'd be a fucking crater on the Martian surface. Either way, what we got, when we got it, was better.
The enemies of Democracy are
One of the Mars landers crapped out this year because too much frost (albeit a layer of dry ice a couple of feet thick) snapped its solar panels. Prissy design is passe. Let's send up some gear that can do donuts.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your donuts-driven space exploration program *g*
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
This whole trans-ocean flame-thread is silly - especially in the context of a space exploration discussion.
Greetings from Planet Earth.
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
NASA may understand things related to aeronautics and space, but, sadly, they sure as heck don't understand HTML very well:
(a href="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D298_50.jpg" target="_blank" class="captionText") ... ...
(img src="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D298_50.jpg" width="120" height="90"
(a href="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D298_50.jpg")Full Size Image(/font)(/a)
and:
(a href="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D853_50.jpg" target="_blank" class="captionText") ... ...
(img src="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D853_50.jpg" width="120" height="90"
(a href="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D853_50.jpg")Full Size Image(/font)(/a)
and:
(a href="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D867_50.jpg" target="_blank" class="captionText") ... ...
(img src="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D867_50.jpg" width="120" height="90"
(a href="../../images/20100723_D2010_0723_D867_50.jpg")Full Size Image(/font)(/a)
Ummm... Houston? We have a problem here!
The "width" and "height" attributes of the HTML "img" tag *DOES NOT CHANGE THE SIZE OF THE IMAGE FILE*. It only changes the how that (image) FILE is /rendered/ on the screen.
The entire 2.31 MB (9.4 x 6.3 inches (23.8 x 15.9 cm) 2250 x 1500 Pixel), 1.57 MB (5.8 x 8.1 inches (14.8 x 20.6 cm) 1400 x 1942 Pixel), and 2.01 MB (8.8 x 5.8 inches (22.3 x 14.8 cm) 2104 x 1400 Pixel) files will /still/ be downloaded whenever the page is displayed.
They'll just get squeezed into a tiny 120 x 90 pixel area on the page, which sort of renders moot the whole point of providing thumbnails, doesn't it?
What /should/ be, at most, a several kilobyte web page is, thanks to the rocket scientist that wrote your page's HTML code, is now a 5.9+ MEGABYTE web page, that even with high speed DSL /does/ take a while to load.
I've seen this mistake made far too many times by amateur web authors. You'd think the folks at NASA would be smart enough to get it right.
I mean this isn't exactly rocket science we're talking about here!
But then maybe that's the problem? They only understand rocket science, so anything that /isn't/ rocket science completely baffles them??
Makes you wonder sometimes....
"Fish" (David B. Trout)
Am I the only one that misread the headline and expected to see an announcement that Rolls Royce had won a bid to build a Mars rover for the first time?