Mars Rovers Update

BoldAC writes "CNN is reporting that engineers will upload a software hack to decrease the recent power drain plaguing the rover Opportunity. The hack works by reducing the power supply to a poorly functioning switch." p3tersen writes "Opportunity has photographed a blue martian sunset (it's blue because of the optical scattering properties of dust in the martian atmosphere). In other news, the rovers are beginning to experience power supply problems due to the accumulation of dust on their solar panels."

Gentoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Gentoo; how does this affect me??

ACPI

[compbrain]

"The hack works by reducing the power supply to a poorly functioning switch."
You know, they could just tell the rover to use its ACPI functionality and go into standby and spin down its hard disks....

Re:ACPI

[Anonymous Coward]

that doesn't even make sense. stop trying to sound smart.

Was panel was sticky ?

[dapyx]

Or is the dust sticky?

Actually it was revealed that the panel was sticky. The NASA engineers don't want to discuss about the source of stickiness.

Blue Skies on Mars???

[vudufixit]

Is this before or after the NASA guys visited the Rekall Corporation?

Re:Difficulties in planning space missions

[stonebeat.org]

if we send men to Mars, hopefully they are wise enuff to get out of the rover (in space suits) and clean the solar panels. ;)

Re:ACPI

[dzym]

Except ACPI doesn't work properly on anything but Windows.

Nice try.

Re:Solar problems

[Bull999999]

Another problem with rovers lasting forever is that they may gain AI, build themselves up with other technology, and go on a killing spree until a witty captain of a spaceship stops it.

Blue Sunset is NO Surprise

[Crypto Gnome]

Opportunity has photographed a blue martian sunset

It just plain makes sense, when you think about it.

• Earth
  • Blue Sky
  • Red Sunset
• Mars
  • Red Sky
  • Blue Sunset

agreed

[SweetAndSourJesus]

I'm sure a bunch of half-baked ideas from random yahoos would get them much further than anything their silly engineers could come up with.

Look harder!

[Serious Simon]

Once the robots find water, they could spray it on the solar panels to clean the dust off...

Because I want one in space

[Papa Legba]

I suggest a solar panel Zamboni! If for no other reason that Zambonis are cool and a space Zamboni would be a magnitude cooler. Imagine the great PR if NASA could send back shots of there Zamboni working on another planet.

Re:Solar problems

[jeff munkyfaces]

would it be possible to set them into "violent shaking mode" to solve this?

Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea

[r00zky]

Yea, well, but i suppose accumulated dust attenuates way more light than a few thin plastic sheets, no?

And i know what i'm talkin' bout coz i park my car outside and never clean it ;)

Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea

[BigBlockMopar]

I like the way how you try to appear intelligent and how you capitalize "bad idea" to show what an eleet hax0r you are.

Ah, yes. My AC Fan Club at work again. I've been suspecting for a while that I have a stalker.

The subject line is the title of a diatribe, and in general, as a title, it should be capitalized.

If I wanted to be an "eleet hax0r", I probably would have capitalized the "A", for the full effect of "A Bad Idea". But I didn't.

Furthermore, I'm not gonna be much of a hax0r anyway; I'm an electronics guy, not a programmer. While I can make "Hello, World" in everything from TI BASIC to 680x0 assembly language, my programming style is so much brute force and ignorance that Microsoft keeps on trying to hire me to write Outlook security patches.

So there ya go.

Re:Difficulties in planning space missions

[tealover]

Actually, this is justification for having women accompany the men to mars. ;>)

Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

yea, i know what u mean, thats exactly what pedestrians say just before i smash 'em to pieces

drive the damn thing through the ghetto

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure some guy with a squeegee will jump on it in no time.

Re:Fan

[heptapod]

E.G. Any at all

There's plenty of atmosphere on Mars. Just because it averages about 6mbar compared to 1bar on Earth doesn't mean there isn't enough. What do you think perpetuates those enormous dust storms way over there? Kittens?

Blue skys on Mars ...

[madpierre]

it's blue because of the optical scattering properties of dust in
the martian atmosphere

That's Scullys Xplanation.
Mulder says different.

Or it's because NASA's mission faking division forgot to photoshop the
images before releasing em. ;)

Re:Layers on Panels are a Bad Idea

[Yorrike]

But the folks at NASA aren't stupid;

They're so incredibly smart, in fact, that they don't even need to convert metric measurements to the archaic system they insist on using.

Go NASA!

The obvious joke

[confused philosopher]

On Soviet Mars, the Pink sunsets are BLUE!

Re:Solar problems

[Lawrence_Bird]

Damn it! Rudy Giuliani made it to Mars first and
got rid of all their squeegee guys!

Re:mainly because people are ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

People like to conflate measures of "toxicity" to make it sound more scary.

Pu238 is an alpha emitter, which means you can stop the radiation with a sheet of paper or a few inches of air. If, however, you happen to inhale that Pu238, and it just happens to be of just the right particle size, it can lodge in your lungs. At that point, you have an increased risk of various cancers. In this one particular application, Pu238 is fairly dangerous.

Chemically, it's not particularly toxic.

The odds of actually getting particles of just the right size distributed world-wide and lodged one particle per human lung are preposterously low, of course. It's sort of like expecting all the air to rush out of your house and suffocate you because all the molecules just happened to move the same way.

The analysis for Cassini concluded that even in a worst case scenario, stipulating all the various improbabilities needed to release any Pu02 in the first place, an area of about 7 square miles would be affected in excess of existing EPA regulations. Assuming all of the Pu affected people on land, the effect would be about 1 extra millirem over 50 years, a period in which you normally get about 15,000 mrem. Excess cancer deaths would have been about 120 (and before you say something like "even one life is too many", please check some OSHA statistics for accidental causes of death). I'll neglect the argument about the effect of extremely low doses of radiation here; there's some evidence such might even be beneficial. But we'll stick with the 120 number assuming a linear effect far below the threshold at which anyone has been able to measure an effect.

Re:The whole solar thing...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty simple.

Do you really think we would give the aliens on Mars nuclear capabilities? How long before they created their own warheads and held the people of planet Earth hostage for 1 million dollars?

Latest Image

[FrostedWheat]

My goodness, not even Mars is beyond the reach of Disney [nasa.gov]!!