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Opportunity Rover Reaches Martian Day 4,000 of Its 90-Day Mission
An anonymous reader writes: Let's take a moment to appreciate the incredible engineering, scientific, and planning skill that went into the construction and deployment of the Opportunity rover. It landed on Mars with the goal of surviving 90 sols (Martian days), and it has just logged its 4,000th sol of harvesting valuable data and sending it back to us. The Planetary Society blog has posted a detailed update on Opportunity's status, and its team's plans for the future. The rover's hardware, though incredibly resilient, is wearing down. They reformatted its flash drive to block off a corrupted sector, and that solved some software problems that had cropped up. They're currently trying to figure out why the rover unexpectedly rebooted itself. Those events are incredibly dangerous to the rover's survival, so their highest priority right now is diagnosing that issue.
Fortunately, weather on Mars is good where the rover is, and it's still able to harvest upwards of 500 Watt-hours of energy from its solar panels. Opportunity recently completed a marathon on Mars and took an impressive picture of the Spirit of St. Louis crater, and the rover will soon be on its way to enormous clay deposits that could provide valuable information about where we can look for water when we eventually put people on Mars. As always, you can look through Opportunity's images at the official website.
Fortunately, weather on Mars is good where the rover is, and it's still able to harvest upwards of 500 Watt-hours of energy from its solar panels. Opportunity recently completed a marathon on Mars and took an impressive picture of the Spirit of St. Louis crater, and the rover will soon be on its way to enormous clay deposits that could provide valuable information about where we can look for water when we eventually put people on Mars. As always, you can look through Opportunity's images at the official website.
https://xkcd.com/1504/
Also appropriate: https://www.xkcd.com/695/
Here's proof that we are capable of great civilian technology achievements when we have the will and the desire to invest in science and engineering instead of yet another boondoggle.
(manned missions)
Still, I have to point out that this amount of research could have been done by a motorized human in half a day. For a rough estimate, look at the path the rover traveled in these 4000 days:
http://planetary.s3.amazonaws....
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Of course it's lasted more than 90 days. That's because Opportunity never landed on Mars. All the images are created in a secret NASA location in Nevada.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to go monitor the Jade Helm Texas takeover.
Proverbs 21:19
https://xkcd.com/1504/
He was a lot nicer to Spirit, which had a similarly impressive run:
https://xkcd.com/695/
yeah, that's probably a good 100 years away, if not 500. Aside from dangers like radiation, nutrition, and other oh-so-subtle big things like gravity -- each of which is likely to kill a human long before they need their first water source -- there are also dangers in the trip itself, like radiation, nutrition, gravity, the vessel, going stir-crazy, and the time itself. Before all of that, there's the money, the interest, and the law. There's the communication delay, the medical equipment that doesn't exist, and the general goodbye-ness of it all. Oh, and then there's the actual "success" part -- ten failures does not a landing make. And finally, and I can't stress this enough we aren't going to mars the day after settling on the moon; and we sure as hell aren't going to mars before settling the moon.
So, figure another twenty years before ten humans live on the moon (the way they do on the space station now). Figure another twenty years before the moon is routinely stable, reliable, and worthwhile. Then figure fifty more years to actually give a damn about mars.
"eventually" appears as the heading on my to-do lists too. There's "now", "today", "tomorrow", "this week", "next week", "this month", "next month", "soon", "later", and "eventually". I think it 25 years I've yet to even start even one task from the "eventually" section.
Technology moves very quickly these days. Humans still don't. How about building a transit system that lets me get from new york to california in under EIGHT HOURS! then you can work on mars.
Pretty sure you are going to need a drink long before low gravity messes with you.
Pretty much all other reasons you list as problems could be applied to a move to Wyoming, but people do that all the time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why is a Martian day called a sol? Shouldn't that be the length of Sol's (the suns) day? Now what are we going to call the lengths of days on the other planets?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
But then I think, no, these are the guys who launched an elderly senator who oversaw their funding into space for totally legitimate scientific inquiry ("providing information on the effects of spaceflight and weightlessness on the elderly")...
(I know, unpopular to criticize NASA here, but just sayin'...)
Why do you think this wasn't legitimate research? Space travel may become common in the near(ish) future for citizens, and this is the sort of thing we need to know before we get there. With all the focus on civilian space tourists coming from other space programs, it's probably a good idea for this research to be done by a group who's in it for the science, not the money. Besides, it's not like it was really just "some elderly Senator" like you're implying - it was John Glenn, one of the very first astronauts. This is someone they sent up in his prime, and spent years testing. This is exactly the sort of subject who does make it legitimate research - someone they have large amounts of medical data on both Earthside and in space from before they were considered "elderly". This gives valuable data points at different points in his life. This is exactly the type of research science NASA is supposed to be doing.
It landed on Mars with the goal of surviving 90 sols (Martian days), and it has just logged its 4,000th
Good job soldier - and NASA engineers.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
I hereby nominate the Mars Rovers for any and all honors which can be shoehorned into being something we can assign to them.
And kudos to the people who built it and kept it going.
Fourty-five times planned mission length is pretty damned awesome!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Still, I have to point out that this amount of research could have been done by a motorized human in half a day. For a rough estimate, look at the path the rover traveled in these 4000 days:
And the entire project with two rovers and five extensions has cost $944 million. The SLS program will cost tens of billions to develop and even then a launch would eat over half the budget, before you actually have any crew capsule, lander, habitat, return craft or scientific equipment. If you really did an apples-to-apples comparison on the same budget, you'd realize we're getting a very good bang for the buck.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I mean with all the technical miracles NASA pulled off on that mission, they somehow managed to underestimate the longevity of the mission by 45x.
To be fair, 90 days was not, in fact, the estimated lifetime of the mission. It was the design specification of the mission. That is, each of the subsystems was designed with the specification "design a system that will operate for a minimum of 90 (Martian) days, even under worst-case conditions."
Think of it as a 90-day warranty-- after 90 days, it wasn't expected to be dead, it was just out of warranty.
(and note that since the engineering specification was validated by testing the subsystems to either three times design life, or testing to design life under three-sigma worst-case conditions, it would have been very difficult to design for 4000 days...)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Watt-hour is a unit of energy, not power, so the information doesn't make a sense. Maybe the author wanted to say "rover can get up to 500 watts out of his solar panels" or "It can get 500 watt-hours of energy per day"?
That research could have been collected in a day by a human being, sure.. but not before probably dozens of people died. just trying to get there.
We send probes because they are expendable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It's kind of interesting.
One of the big reasons that they thought it would be limited to 90 days is that the solar panels get covered in dust, and as that happens the amount of energy collected diminishes. They figured in about 90 days, based on previous missions to Mars, they'd be out of juice.
And...for the first 50 days or so, it was going that way. And then, a whirlwind came by, and scrubbed the rover clean. This has happened many many times since. An unexpected good fortune.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Personally I think a Martian has taken a liking to it and repairs it while it's sleeping.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
You'll never achieve your big goals with an attitude like that.
I disagree, it will just take longer.
Why are we listening to Carmack? Thresh took his Ferrari in a game Carmack designed.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If you designed something to last for 90 days and it lasts for 4000 you've over-engineered the solution. Time and money could clearly have been saved in the development and construction of the rover.
Just shut up.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I have read stories that NASA considers to shutdown this rover mission due to budget cuts and priorities.
By that logic, we could send half of Washington D.C. up there.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I was kind of shocked when they were showing off a copy of it that UW Engineering had at UW Discovery Days a couple of weekends ago.
It's even smaller than a battery powered Formula 1 electric car.
Little in the middle but it's got much track.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Other than the fact that doing so would likely violate several intra-galactic treaties, that would be an excellent idea.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you designed something to last for 90 days and it lasts for 4000 you've over-engineered the solution. Time and money could clearly have been saved in the development and construction of the rover.
Now in this case, the fact that it has lasted far beyond its intended life has been a positive think. However, in much of the other work NASA does it is simply wasting money. NASA has a problem delivering projects on budget because it's focusing too much on reliability and safety and trying too hard to account for every eventuality. They're also too scared of failure and bad press.
Should they have spent time and energy making it last less long? You have no idea why it's lasted as long as it has. You have no idea if it was over-engineered, or just built well with the most appropriate components and technologies available. Millions of dollars were spent just to get the rover to Mars. If it failed do to being under-engineered, THAT would be a complete waste. Seriously, explain to me what parts should be engineered to fail in exactly 90 days? How much time should be spent creating solar panels that fail sooner? Should they make intentionally bad welds?
I remember John Carmack saying he thinks SpaceX should be destroying more rockets. Instead of trying to make a rocket that's 100% guaranteed to work (as NASA would) they should make a good enough solution and work out the problems by having some of them fail. After destroying a few the issues will be worked out and you'll have a working rocket in the time it would take NASA to complete a paper study for the rocket design.
It was probably the Challenger incident that destroyed NASA. Since then they've developed a culture of, "no matter how much this costs or how long it takes it can't be allowed to fail." You'll never achieve your big goals with an attitude like that.
John Carmack's a smart guy, way smarter than I am. Of course his rocket company failed. He was building small sounding rockets and he failed. There's nothing wrong with failing, that's part of life. On the other hand SpaceX is succeeding. They are delivering satellites to LEO, GTO and even one BEO. They are delivering cargo to the ISS. They are testing the abort system on a crew capsule that will be used to transport astronauts. I think SpaceX knows how to build real rockets better than John Carmack does...
On that note, SpaceX is totally willing to loose rockets in experiments. What they aren't willing to do is knowingly risk loosing a rocket prior to completing the mission. It's important to know when to take risks. If you spent $200 million to get a rover to Mars (made up, but realistic number), it's not a waste to spend a few bucks to make sure it will work when it gets there. And if you're building a rocket to put people and $500 million satellites into orbit, it's important not to kill the passengers or destroy the satellites.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
If you've only got one shot at launching a vehicle on a 40 million km journey, you should over-engineer it. You don't know what's going to be the weakest point.
It took 253 days just to get Opportunity to Mars, who want's to trial-and-error something that takes so long?
Also, since the solar panels don't have wind-screen wipers, if they happen to get some bad luck with the weather, the estimated rate of dust accumulation will end the mission in 90 days.
John Carmack's a smart guy, way smarter than I am. Of course his rocket company failed. He was building small sounding rockets and he failed. There's nothing wrong with failing, that's part of life. On the other hand SpaceX is succeeding. ...
To clarify on this, one of the reasons Armadillo Aerospace was put into hibernation was because it took risks it could not afford. And one crash and a hard landing later they had to close down. I feel bad for Armadillo and Carmack and I wish Slashdot allowed editing of posts since my real target was the AC that assumes to know that Opportunity was over engineered, rather than just being well built and frankly a bit lucky.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Except that they can't... at least not the way that they do it naturally. I recall reading somewhere that mammal reproductivity is quite dependent on the earth's gravity, and attempts have a baby outside of that environment would most likely be fatal for the fetus, assuming that the attempt to become pregnant in the first place did not outright fail.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
wyoming has radiation?
Hell yes! Have you measured background radiation in the rockies?
communication delays?
Ever tried to maintain cell signal on the way to Yellowstone?
nothing to see, or to do?
Once you've seen Frontier Days once...
No medical equipment?
I go up there all the time with no medical equipment.
I don't know what that gravity would do to your digestive systems.
That's why every astronaut has died immediately after return from space with even less gravity...
I have to break character here and say - you are SUCH a retard. That's enough fun for me. You may carry on if you wish.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Impressive power generation.
The unexpected reboot is clearly because it spotted something it shouldn't have. Can't let any photos of [elided] reach Earth. Can you imagine what would happen!?
The only reason why Humans have not been on Mars is that we can't find a really good reason to do it.
With continued Apollo-era funding, we'd have done it in the '80s. Few engineering challenges involved that aren't really just legwork.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If they called it a 'day', they wouldn't have known if it was an Earth day or a Mars day. If they relied on calling them 'Mars Day' or 'Earth Day', soon someone would have forgotten to maintain the prefix.
So they coined a new word to use for a Martian Day, and stuck to it.
For other planets, I expect that the same term will be used. 'Day' for time on Earth, 'Sol' for time on the planet. That said, we don't have all that many things that would have usable 'Sols'. Mercury's days last for months, Venus' day last for longer than its year. Maybe probes on minor planets, which look like they have days around 8 hours long.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If the boss has proved previously that they can do the work, and then actually does some work on the trip then they are not a tourist are they? There were less than a dozen other people on the planet that could even be considered for the project at the time. Would you still be making a big deal of it if Dr Aldrin went instead?
That you agree that a trip to Mars is well within man's grasp, and that trying to make some point from how hard you find trans-continental flight is nonsense.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Plus the oldest of three Mars orbiters. This is to make room in the NASA planetary budget for current and new missions. The WH has proposed this before, but either NASA or Congress bypassed it.
If you designed something to last for 90 days and it lasts for 4000 you've over-engineered the solution.
When your workshop is 140 million miles away, that's probably a good idea.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There's nothing wrong with failing, that's part of life.
Speak for yourself: the only thing I fail at is failing, where I fail spectacularly to fail.
Or something.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Water on Mars would make it more habitable than California.
Sure, once they get the atmosphere pumps working Total Recall style.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it