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NASA Making Renewed Efforts To Contact Mars Rover Opportunity (spacenews.com)
NASA is making a new, and perhaps final, attempt to restore contact with the Mars rover Opportunity, which has not communicated with the Earth for more than six months. From a report: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced Jan. 25 that it was transmitting a new set of commands to address what it acknowledged are "low-likelihood" events that could have kept the rover from contacting Earth. These new efforts are in addition to the months-long "sweep and beep" campaign of transmitting other commands and listening for a reply from the rover.
The new commands address scenarios where the rover's primary X-band radio has failed or both the primary and backup X-band radios have failed, as well as cases where Opportunity's internal clock has an offset affecting its timing. The commands direct the rover to switch to the backup X-band radio or use its UHF transmitter to contact Earth, as well as resetting its clock. Those scenarios could explain why the rover has failed to contact Earth, but project officials acknowledge that those scenarios are unlikely. "A series of unlikely events would need to have transpired for any one of these faults to occur," JPL noted in the statement about the new campaign.
The new commands address scenarios where the rover's primary X-band radio has failed or both the primary and backup X-band radios have failed, as well as cases where Opportunity's internal clock has an offset affecting its timing. The commands direct the rover to switch to the backup X-band radio or use its UHF transmitter to contact Earth, as well as resetting its clock. Those scenarios could explain why the rover has failed to contact Earth, but project officials acknowledge that those scenarios are unlikely. "A series of unlikely events would need to have transpired for any one of these faults to occur," JPL noted in the statement about the new campaign.
I misaligned my satellite dish the other night. The first program I saw showed Opportunity and these little green guys were messing with it. At the end of the hour they had put new 22 inch rims with spinners and low profile tires, a crazy new stereo with a coupe big ass subwoofers, neon lights on the undercarriage, lambo doors and shag carpet inside. I think it must have been the martian version of pimp my ride.
Silly NASA still messing around with obsolete rovers. Why aren't they building space factories and Mars colonies and mining asteroids? They obviously don't read Slashdot comments. If they did we would be living on Mars by now.
Given how long past it's warranty this little rover lasted, what an achievement for JPL.
I hope they can get things working again, but even if the effort fails, this little rover has gone over and above. It's hard to say good bye and we are sad about it, but we all knew this day was coming. Remember what JPL accomplished with these two rovers and revel in that. This isn't a failure, it's but the end a huge success.
Way to go JPL, you really out did all our expectations and have contributed to a volume of scientific observations that will provide invaluable science and research for decades to come, not to mention some really impressive pictures which are very interesting to just look at. Thank You! Job well done.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This is what you get for gluing in the battery.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
A grue did it.
Let me see if I understand your nonsensical rant. You want to defund NASA for trying to revive a rover that they have kept working for more than 15 years past the original mission parameters because they are "incompetent". I feel that feat alone destroys your point.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Trust me, NASA, it isn't going to happen!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
They're probably just hesitant to reveal the real story, that Opportunity has simply chosen to stop responding to us. https://xkcd.com/1504/
First, please list all the NASA bloat that you think has occurred. Second, why would you think that NASA doesn't know what happened. The batteries being drained in a dust storm is the exact scenario that NASA predicted more than 16 years ago in their planning. And third, why would the Chinese and Russians getting to Mars help out NASA in this way? Have those countries have designed and built repair bots that can troubleshoot an American rover? I would bet they Chinese and Russian rovers have their own missions and not one thought has been put into fixing another rover.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I understand that claiming that NASA is "incompetent" after keeping rover up for 15 years past mission parameters is delusional. Perhaps you need to clarify what incompetent means. Now let's go to your second rant: how much money does NASA get and for what? I'm pretty sure you have very little clue.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Well its pretty damn hard for a robot to phone home with no electricity.
One of the possibilities is the rover's solar panels got covered in dust and isn't getting enough power to do anything. It's also possible during the Martian winter the batteries depleted so deeply that pretty much everything froze solid.
I see you've never had a complicated piece of hardware or software fail on you. Most missions like this will send the device into a safe mode if there is a major issue waiting for commands as for what to do. Sometimes the best option in those cases is to wait for more input instead of possibly damaging the equipment.
That said, they've kept a rover functioning on Mars for a bit over 14 years...the planned mission duration was 3 months. I think they maybe did something correct here. Also they learned from the MER
program for future missions: don't rely on solar power on Mars. That's why Curiosity is powered by RTGs.
Jobs in their state is good, jobs for their relatives is better, non profits they can be on the board of and get paid for doing nothing DOUBLE PLUS GOOD
I have a question for anyone who has read more about survivable systems than I have.
Does it make sense to design a remotely operated system to attempt to reestablish communication on its own if its primary communication channel is disrupted? Specifically, to do things like what Opportunity is being commanded to do manually, such as trying to use a backup radio, switching to a different frequency radio, and resetting its clock. These seem like the sorts of things that should be automated. It should be rate limited, and aware of how much on board power it has, so it avoids going into an infinite battery draining loop trying desperately to phone home, but shouldn't it actively try to reestablish communication?
Is there a decent online English-to/from-Jive translator? (They don't call it "jive" anymore, but the alternatives are arguably not PC.)
Table-ized A.I.
So you admit you don't have any clue to how much NASA spends? That seems like the totality of your argument: you don't know but sure you are right.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You've posted no points with actual facts and keep asserting things without foundation.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Or an election.
Table-ized A.I.
I remember reading that there were known spots on the circuit boards such that if that spot cracked due to the cold, the entire rover would fail.
They were known weak-points which lacked redundancy, but the cost of the avoiding them was considered too high. The rovers have roughly 90% redundancy, but approaching 100% apparently has a steep cost curve.
For example, at some point the redundant systems have to coordinate with each other to make sure both are not trying to do something at the same time, which could waste power or put noise into instrument readings. These coordination points are not easy to also make redundant. You need redundancy handlers to manage the redundancy handlers in almost a fractal way, requiring redundant "turtles all the way down", filling the rover with bunches of circuits.
Table-ized A.I.
They forgot to run ntpdate first on startup?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)