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Mars Rover Down? Spirit Stays Silent
astroengine writes "One year after NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit stopped communicating with Earth, mission managers have announced that they will give the stranded rover one more month to send a signal before they scale back the search. But things aren't looking good. In the words of JPL-based Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell, 'Spirit was so close to us, just a year ago. Snap your fingers, and she's a hundred million miles distant and we can't even prove she's alive.'"
Obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/695/
They did only design the Mars Rovers with a six month operational life. That they lasted as long as they have was extremely lucky.
Since from a visual point of view spirit was in a far more interesting area with hills and varied lanscape. Opportunity is in the middle of a vast desert with just the odd crater to break things up.
Martian winter powered down the rover as it wasn't getting enough sunlight to run. They waited until the last few weeks because that's when peak sunlight hit the collectors again at its last position. They'll give it another month just in case it needs to warm up some more, but things aren't looking good.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It's pretty simple. We are now moving into the Martian summer for the southern hemisphere. Spirit went quiet because of the Martian winter at her location, when it got colder and less sunlight per unit area was falling, thus, not enough energy to keep warm and keep operating. They transmitted/received off and on ever since losing communication, but the best chance was waiting until about this time because she should be warming up, getting more sun, and hopefully waking up as peak solar output at the site and for her orientation was reached (as the article mentions, this was on March 10th of this year). Unfortunately, nothing. They try all the backup plans (e.g., if the rover loses track of time it starts transmitting/receiving on specific time windows and communication modes), and if nothing happens after a practical amount of time, they give up, because from now on the amount of power would be in decline.
Closer/further from Earth is irrelevant because the best way to pick up a signal would probably be via the satellites in orbit of Mars as they pass over the site, and direction of the antenna is also irrelevant because they're using the non-directional antenna (i.e. low gain) for the initial communication. Regardless of Mars-Earth position, they're going to try when Spirit is most likely to have the power to communicate.
Spirit is doing just fine on Sol 792. Just four days ago one of the rover drivers blogged this:
"The good news is, we have data from Spirit at last! And a lot of it, too -- a whopping 110 Mbits!"
Here are some pictures Spirit has taken recently.
Is this sloppy Slashdot reporting, or an early April's Fool joke?
I'd be happy to volunteer my ex-wife to be launched to Mars to look for the missing rover. I understand and fully accept the risks of the mission.
As I recall, they put Spirit into hibernation for the Martian winter. I suppose they left it off all this time to charge the batteries as much as they could. I assume the issue isn't signal strength- it's a lack of power in the rover to pick up the signal and respond to it.
Also, Wikipedia disagrees with you about the communications.
The rovers also use the low-gain antennas to communicate with spacecraft orbiting Mars, the Mars Odyssey and (before its failure) the Mars Global Surveyor. The orbiters relay data from and to Earth; most data to Earth is relayed through Odyssey. The orbiters are closer to the rovers than the antennas on Earth, and have a view of Earth for much longer than the rovers.
Source
Sent from my CR-48
If I had to guess, I'd say the most simple answer is the correct one: extending a budget because Earth time is inconvienent would not pass through the higher ups, and also because by the time 2012 rolls around, it will be too late (its probably half buried in ice and sand).
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
One word: money. There's a price to keeping the hardware + people ready & waiting. They probably don't have the money to wait much longer.
They hate it when you do that.
The most probable explaination is that Spirit died last Martian winter. The hope was that it was still alive but in deep hibernation mode and would eventually get enough power surplus to charge its batteries and reconnect with Earth. Now we're at peak power generation but Mars is still heating up a bit - just like in the northern hemisphere the summer solistice is in june but july/august are the warmest months. Normally it should have reconnected long before that, but if say the solar panels were partially damaged it could take this long for it to gather enough power. It's been a slim hope and it's getting even slimmer, pretty soon it's time to write off that possibility completely.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As I recall, they put Spirit into hibernation for the Martian winter.
Not quite. Spirit put itself into hibernation at the start of the martian winter with the lower light levels and dust buildup on her solar panels. She's yet to come out of this hibernation (and may never)
clearly spirit has just watched the tao of steve one too many times.
lose != loose
OK so they're optimizing for peak solar electrical power and peak outside air temp, which unfortunately coincides with (nearly) peak RF path loss. Makes sense if the problem is assumed to be temp related.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Ugh, wikipedia has at least two articles...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Design_and_construction
"Communications depends on an omnidirectional low-gain antenna communicating at a low data rate and a steerable high-gain antenna, both in direct contact with Earth. A low gain antenna is also used to relay data to spacecraft orbiting Mars."
You know what would improve wikipedia, a third article on the same vehicle. How bout a MER-A article with a third separate writeup.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
NASA got its money's worth for a change
We designed Spirit and Opportunity to last 90 days each. We've got one probably dead at just over 7 full years, and another fully healthy one after that same time. They were relatively cheap, too. These damn things WORK. NASA needs to mass-produce about 100 more of these, and get them to every solid surface in this solar system. If you know something's technologically sound, use it everywhere you can. Send them to all Saturn/Jupiter's solid moons, Mercury, Pluto, any asteroids who come near, the moon, Arkansas... any place where we might go looking for intelligent life.
The obvious question, "How long has it been since it landed?" wasn't answered by TFA. It originally landed January 4, 2004 and has been doing research for nearly 7 and a quarter years.
To visit http://marsandme.blogspot.com/ for a wonderful perspective from Scott on the regular dealings of being a Mars rover driver.
"If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet"
From what I read, It looks like it happened very suddenly and there are signs Q was involved.
Admittedly I haven't read past the summary.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/profile-vandi-verma.html
Pretty much a geek dreamboat; too bad she's married (and it wasn't even arranged).
Driving Spirit for 5 years before getting stuck. Can I have her give my wife lessons?
Have gnu, will travel.
Five years delayed.
Yeah, saw that right after I posted...
America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, badass speed. -Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936
I think the rover is either programmed to hibernate for a certain period of time during low power situations or the controllers tell it to hibernate. During the winters the rovers don't get enough sun on some days to keep their heaters running much less attempting to communicate. So it just waits and tries to conserve energy.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
But maybe he shouldn't have snaped his f**king fingers eh?
Pretty much a geek dreamboat
Alien-looking fingers and a chin that would make Superman jealous. Yeah, I guess in a very technical sense you're completely right ...
I repeat, SHE?
Methinks NASA engineers have too much time on their hands.
In Liberty, Rene
She doesn't look like Pamela Anderson, so that makes it OK to slag her, right?
Sucks to be you!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
She doesn't look like Pamela Anderson, so that makes it OK to slag her, right?
She look-a-like-a-man!
Sucks to be you!
Because I refuse to play the "is-it-a-tranny?" game? No, I'm pretty happy here. But thanks for your concern!