Mars Rovers Get Extra 18 Months 205
iamlucky13 writes "NASA has stated in the latest mission press release that funding for an additional 18 months of exploration has been approved. The rovers have breezed through 14 months of operation so far, and the money will cover expenses through September of 2006. The rovers are still operating well, and recently both experienced dramatic power boosts from their solar cells. They are no longer like new, however. Opportunity has recently experienced data loss from one of its spectrometers, while Spirit has a smudged camera lens, a heavily used rock abrasion tool, and has previously struggled with intermittent steering issues."
Driving backwards a lot of time (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rear hazard-avoidance camera? (Score:5, Informative)
If a wheel develops a problem during the life of the rover it may be necessesary to drive it backwards.
Also, these robots, like many others, spent a lot of their time getting too close to hazards and having to reverse away, so being able to see behind you is pretty important.
And another thing ... a good way to measure how far you have gone is to take a picture of your tracks. This makes it easy to integrate your movements and calculate your new position
Sooner than you think (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, but tell me, when is the next time we'll have a probe that far out in say, oh, the next 20-30 years??
A lot sooner than you think. [jhuapl.edu] The Pluto probe will be launched by a souped up Atlas V (Model 551). That with a Jupiter flyby will have the probe screaming into the outer Solar system in a few years. It will be wandering the Kuiper belt like the Voyagers in 2020.
Re:Well, it's difficult to answer that (Score:5, Informative)
Useless? [nasa.gov]
"For the past two years or so, Voyager 1 has detected phenomena unlike any encountered before in all its years of exploration. These observations and what they may infer about the approach to the termination shock have been the subject of on-going scientific debates. While some of the scientist believed that the passage past the termination shock had already begun, some of the phenomena observed were not what would have been expected. So the debate continues while even more data are being returned and analyzed."
Re:Sooner than you think (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Eventually it must come to an end (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Informative)
After the heliopause comes the heliosheath, which has its own set of properties which are largely unknown. It's the area where the solar-influenced material blends into the interstellar medium (and getting any data on the interstellar medium would be a great boon for astronomy)
Re:Sooner than you think (Score:3, Informative)
Hardly
One thing I'm curious about is whether black hole propulsion is possible; I've never heard anything about it before. I doubt it is, with current tech levels; I would suspect that getting enough matter into the black hole before it vaporized would require enough acceleration of the matter that you might as well just use it for direct propulsion - but I'm still curious.