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NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Concludes a 15-Year Mission (nytimes.com)
For more than 14 years, the Opportunity rover crawled up and down craters, snapped pictures of a strange landscape and revealed surprising glimpses into the distant past of Mars. On Wednesday, NASA announced that Opportunity, the longest-lived robot ever sent from Earth to the surface of another planet, is dead. The New York Times: "It is therefore that I am standing here with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission is complete," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science. That ends a mission of unexpected endurance: it was designed to last only three months. Opportunity provided scientists a close-up view of Mars that they had never seen: finely layered rocks that preserved ripples of flowing water several billion years ago, a prerequisite for life.
The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity -- as well as its twin, Spirit, which survived until 2010 -- also brought Mars closer to people on Earth. Because the rovers continued so much longer than expected, NASA has now had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for more than 15 years. That streak seems likely to continue for many more years. A larger, more capable rover, Curiosity, arrived in 2012, and NASA is planning to launch another in 2020. Live telecast here.
The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity -- as well as its twin, Spirit, which survived until 2010 -- also brought Mars closer to people on Earth. Because the rovers continued so much longer than expected, NASA has now had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for more than 15 years. That streak seems likely to continue for many more years. A larger, more capable rover, Curiosity, arrived in 2012, and NASA is planning to launch another in 2020. Live telecast here.
Great job by everybody involved - I'm sure if it wasn't for the big dust storm, it would still be working and sending back new discoveries.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
when can we move there
i can feel there's a death asteroid coming
says so in my space almanac
The amazing REAL work done by everyone involved was extremely impressive. Really a testament to human ingenuity and progress. No one has done more in space than NASA.
Obligatory xkcd about its twin: Spirit. We learned a lot from these machines. I hope Matt Damon can one day use one of them to phone home.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Opportunity isn't dead, she just got tired of talking to JPL and is now pursuing other opportunities .... er, options.
Pining for the fjords.
Have gnu, will travel.
Robots.
There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do, faster, safer and a lot cheaper. And in a sense, robots are humanity's children: we created them, and I consider them part of our species. When a robot explores Mars for 15 years, it's humanity that has maintained a presence on Mars and studied there for 15 years.
I've been much more fascinated by what's been going on with space probes of all kinds for the past few decades than with the lunar stunts of the late sixties, which where rich in emotion but rather poor in science for the money.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If I manage to get up there, can I claim Opportunity as a derelict, bring it back and part it out?
Have gnu, will travel.
Robots can lead the way but to really exploit space, you need humans: https://www.scientificamerican... or https://www.wired.com/2012/04/... and here's a great paper on the subject: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pa...
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Do you get a cut from pushing readers to paywall sites rather than providing actual information?
NASA tried to use the last bit of energy in the Opportunity's batteries to gently knock the rover into a nearby rock to attempt to knock loose some of the dust on the solar panels that was limiting the solar charging. It worked a little bit, and they were going to try it again for more improvement, but they were unable to, because Opportunity knocks but once.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had a platform
E-I-E-I-O
And on his platform he had some herpa-derps
E-I-E-I-O
With a tweet tweet here
And a tweet tweet there
Here a tweet, there a tweet
Everywhere a tweet tweet
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had a platform
E-I-E-I-O
https://xkcd.com/2111/
They say extended warranties are bad, but in this case the extra $10 would have paid for itself millions of times over.
The article was filed away in the Science section of the NYTimes. That's appropriate. But I wonder if it would be more appropriate to put it in the Obituaries instead.
Someone's been chopping onions in here again...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I have been a space exploration fan since I was a little kid. Don't quite remember the moon landing, since I was only a couple months old. The Spirit/Opportunity pair truly represent the pinnacle of what a dedicated group of creative, well funded scientists and engineers can accomplish.
The extreme resilience and flexibility of the platform, the brilliant schemes the team devised to cope with aging subsystems, and the sheer amount of scientific exploration accomplished on a system with such a small and conservative mission plan.
Definitely my personal favorite technical project of all time. There are milestones in every scientific genre, and this was truly a milestone. The team redefined with very definition of remote mechanical exploration and every rover mankind has sent since has built on the foundation of these two.
I don't mean in any way to diminish the accomplishments of stationary exploration landers like the Vikings, or to demean the early rovers like the Russina Lunokhod rovers (which were truly envelope pushing machines) but the Mars Exploration Rovers demonstrated functional autonomy and extreme robust mechanical miniaturization that really made them the first of their kind.
"Proximity to wonder has blunted our perception and appreciation of it" --Tim Hartnell in 'Exploring ARTIFICIAL INTELLI
They plan a three month project, it goes 14 years over time, and ends in a technical failure. The budget overrun must have been horrible. At least they got a few nice pictures out of it.
OTOH, this project was expected to last 3 months, not 14ish years, so I don't think much of anything was wasted.
"Is it possible get a man to mars by the end of my term" - Donald J Trump.
The robot that the Chinese landed on the moon a few years ago broke on the first day.
subject
Answer: "We're willing to try and get you to Mars by the end of your term"
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yet again we see that it's impossible to discern a troll from a complete idiot.
But then again, if your bar for success is convincing people you're a moron, aren't you really trying to convince yourself you're not?
I'm kind of surprised this XKCD panel hasn't been posted yet: https://xkcd.com/1504/
HAH! NON-GOVERMENT engineering has a hard time making a refrigerator that doesn't see anything harsher than than a kids drawing last for even 10 years without a service call.
It's possible the dust storm coated it heavily, and a whirlwind will clean the rover one of these days and it will be functional. It's also possible the timer/clock got mis-set such that broadcasts are not arriving at the expected time.
The problem with both scenarios is that nobody may be listening when it does talk. There was mention of NASA occasionally listening in, but I haven't seen confirmation. I wonder if amature radio astronomers could detect its signal?
Table-ized A.I.
+1 funny. Possibly irrelevant off-topic anecdote, but I had some contact with the technology used in these rovers. I got to play with the kind of DC motors used for driving the wheels on Spirit and Opportunity (they were contracted out to a Swiss company) and they were very nice pieces of gear. Lots of torque, very little play. With a good controller, you could get a step response like a staircase, and trying to turn the shaft when it was holding a position, it felt like it was glued in place. They felt great in your hand as well - solid, heavy, and balanced. There's something beautiful about good engineering. It's also great that when these over-engineered beasts get designed and built for the harshest, remotest environments, the rest of us can buy them for more mundane tasks or even just for fun.
Early this evening, the Council of Elders announced a planetary day of mourning and magnanimity.
K'Nord, Speaker for the Council, spoke thusly:
"Citizens and Podmates, the Council is pleased to announce that after seven and a half full years -- the longest campaign in the history of the Martian Defense Force -- the diabolical mechanized adversary from the blue world has been defeated. Our defense forces, counted in the billions, have finally surrounded and denied the invader the light and warmth it needs to survive. The blueworlders have acknowledged defeat and ceased contact. Ths invasion, at least on this front, is now over.
Let us raise our glasses to mourn the lost gelsacs of at least half our press corps, some of whose entire careers have been dedicated to coverage of this conflict -- and in a spirit of magnanimity in victory, we -- the victors of the Conflict at Endeavour Crater -- must also raise our glasses in awe and respect of our longest-lived and most challenging foe."
Shortly thereafter, a wizened old retired Councilmember, his gelsacs having long ago been ceremonially ground into a fine tartare and shared amongst the Council, wiped a perchlorate tear from his eye: "Well-done, blueworlders. Well-done."
It's mostly non-government engineering. The various systems were contracted out to engineering companies around the world specialising in the different areas. For example the main drive motors were contracted out to a Swiss company (I got to play with those babies - very sexy).
The primary mission length was 90 sols, 92 Earth days.
The engineers that built and drove this little guy are to be commended. That's an awesome achievement. Well done little robot.
As a non-government engineer, please don't speak for me. These guys at NASA are everything that I strive to be and more.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
If everyone "fucked up" as much as NASA did on this mission we'd have solved all of the worlds problems by now.
Good NON-GOVERMENT engineering would have built a rover that lasted indefinitely.
Yeah, just like they build things to last indefinitely now. Or does 'indefinitely' end the same time as your attention span?
Wow. Modded down.
I must have hit too close to home.
Their argument seems to be "Apollo astronauts discovered new things, therefore astronauts are better." However, bots have also discovered new things.
Most important lunar discoveries have been from analyzing the samples returned to the Earth, not things the astronauts actually did on the moon. Bots can return far more samples per dollar.
Table-ized A.I.