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Mars Rover Spirit Still Alive
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:01 AM
from the brief-flower's-bloom dept.
from the brief-flower's-bloom dept.
Toren Altair writes with this excerpt from a story at The Space Fellowship: "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit communicated via the Mars Odyssey orbiter today right at the time when ground controllers had told it to, prompting shouts of 'She's talking!' among the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 'This means Spirit has not gone into a fault condition and is still being controlled by sequences we send from the ground,' said John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity."
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Mars Rover "Spirit" In Danger 222 comments
Riding with Robots writes "Just days after announcing that the Mars Phoenix Lander has met its icy demise, NASA reports that a dust storm has left the rover Spirit on the edge of power failure. During one recent Martian day, the robotic geologist's solar array produced only 89 watt hours of energy, the lowest output by either rover in their nearly five years on Mars. Mission managers are taking steps to protect the hardy, battle-worn spacecraft, but the agency describes Spirit's status as 'vulnerable.'"
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This was a triumph! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.
Re:This was a triumph! (Score:5, Funny)
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
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Re:This was a triumph! (Score:5, Funny)
(from someone at JPL)
At least you're not completely emotionally invested in this thing. Seriously, when it 'dies', somebody is going to need some serious counseling.
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Re:This was a triumph! (Score:5, Funny)
You're not smart. You're not a scientist. You're not a doctor. You're not even a full-time employee. Where did your life go so wrong?
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Everyone Dance! (Score:5, Funny)
And we're stayin' alive, stayin' alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin' alive.
Stayin' alive.
Ah, ha, ha, ha,
Stayin' alive.
Setup a status page (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Setup a status page (Score:5, Funny)
There is even one for if the LHC has destroyed the world or not [hasthelhcd...eearth.com]!
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NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
It rains and my stupid car won't start. Their little rover can travel to a different planet, survive the cold, survive dust storms, etc and keep going. Maybe instead of bailing out the "big three", we should dump all that money into NASA to make cars.
I'm willing to risk my safety on a metric to standard conversion problem for a car that will run.
Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, I think your car would run pretty darn well if you had a dozen scientists and engineers continually operating and maintaining it.
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
clearly he means that auto mechanics will be able to fix your car remotely from 35~250 million miles away regardless of where it breaks down. they can even get your car unstuck remotely [npr.org] if you ever get stuck in a ditch.
suck on that OnStar! all they can do is unlock your car.
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
Spirit has gone 4.8 miles [wikipedia.org] so far, and Opportunity has gone 7.68 [wikipedia.org] miles.
+36 Million miles each if you count the commute to work.
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
So, sort of like selling a Cadillac to a senior citizen?
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Re:NASA Automotives (Score:5, Funny)
nah, old people only drive slow when you're in a hurry.
I think this is more accurate.
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I'm not dead! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:bellows and a nozzle? (Score:5, Interesting)
It would have to be quite powerful, as as far as I understand, that dust (or the rover, I forget which at the moment) has a fantastic static charge to it, so it requires a potent wind to remove it, which they've been getting on a fortunately regular basis for the past few years.
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Re:bellows and a nozzle? (Score:5, Informative)
My understanding: The thing that the designers had decided was that the weight of a dust removal system was not worth removing a scientific instrument to do so, because they had a weight and size budget to deal with. They didn't think there was an effective means to clean the dust to extend the lifetime of the rover vs. less data recovered.
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Re:bellows and a nozzle? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to give some sense of the scale of the problem:
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03272 [nasa.gov] http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10128 - dirty solar panels.
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Re:Ummm (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to ask, but is it doing any useful science anymore?
Even if it is still doing the same science year after year it can deliver information on longer term changes in the environment on Mars. A five year perspective is much more than 20 times more valuable than a three month perspective.
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Re:Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider that the powers that be decided that the price tag associated with these two gizmos was worth it for the three months worth of science they were going to get out of them. Now that they've lasted roughly 20 times as long that means something went really right, the return on investment is definitely there. But it's just as important to know what they could do better. What are the weaknesses of the system? What systems upheld the best? These systems aren't mass produced like your auto, knowing what is effective and what isn't is just as much science as their original mission. And with the data that we're collecting we're going to make better probes in the future. That's worth the money too.
And yes, I'm sure that they're still doing science based on their original mission too. They have an ability to see things from a point of view we may not see for many more years to come. May as well get what we can while we can.
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Re:It is not Mars Rovers (Score:5, Funny)
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