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Mars Space

Mars Rover Opportunity Working Free 149

Posted by Zonk from the go-little-explorer-go dept.
VernonNemitz writes "As previously reported, the Mars rover Opportunity ran into more sand (or finer material) than it was designed to handle. While initial attempts to escape may not have accomplished much, the most recent efforts seem to imply that the plucky machine is going to succeed at getting away."
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Mars Rover Opportunity Working Free More

Mars Rover Opportunity Working Free

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  • Its been ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20, 2005 @03:59PM (#12593265)
    Clamped by Martians.

  • That's nice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chris09876 ( 643289 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @03:59PM (#12593267)
    I guess moving 7.4 centimetres is better than nothing :) It's good they didn't give up on the rover... I'd like to say they've really gotten their moneys worth with these guys, but it's hard to measure the economic payback of the whole "mars exploration" thing... it's more of a long-term investment.

    • Yeah (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:00PM (#12593289)
      "I guess ... 7.4 centimetres is better than nothing"

      Yeah, that's what your girlfriend said!!!
    • They're taking it slowly to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Once the rover drives up and out of the dune, it will then be directed over firmer-looking terrain back toward its original objective, but they want to be sure they understand how it's reacting as it moves.
    • I guess moving 7.4 centimetres is better than nothing

      As long is it's not moving down.

    • Re:That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:26PM (#12593545) Homepage
      It's amazing to see the news (and especially slashdot) making such a big deal over the dune. The only reason that it took so long was because the NASA team, cautious as they were, were spending their time recreating possible scenarios in an oversized sandbox with an Opportunity replica, and trying them out. If you follow the mission [nasa.gov], the scientists never sounded particularly concerned.

      Following missions in detail, by the way, is a good way to get an idea of how overcautious these people generally are, even on missions where stuff ends up going wrong. Getting a craft to Mars and making it function there isn't easy, and following a mission (and craft design) in depth really pushes that home.

      Plus, lets not forget that Mars is protected by a Galactic Ghoul [wikipedia.org] that ate 4 out of 5 Soviet craft launched at it. ;)

      • Re:That's nice (Score:5, Funny)

        by Fear the Clam ( 230933 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:46PM (#12593781)
        The only reason that it took so long was because the NASA team, cautious as they were, were spending their time recreating possible scenarios in an oversized sandbox with an Opportunity replica, and trying them out.

        And I suppose that making all of those "rumm rummm" noises was science too, hmm?

      • Re:That's nice (Score:5, Interesting)

        by petermgreen ( 876956 ) <plugwash.p10link@net> on Friday May 20, 2005 @07:29PM (#12595102) Homepage
        i'm not sure overcautious is the word i'd say given the fact the fucking thing is on mars they NEED to be extremely cautious.

        how many sysadmins can honestly say they've never fucked something up on a remote box? now when you fuck up a box in a colo it may well cost you a couple-hundred dollars and/or hours of travel time to fix so you take care!

        now imagine your box is somewhere you CAN'T go and fix it and has all sorts of mechanical parts to fuck up. you are going to be extrodinerally carefull.

        do you really think the rovers would have lasted this long if driven with a gung-ho attitude?
    • that's farther than my cheap-ass WalMart mars rover's moving.
    • Since these things are lasting so long, I wonder how much less it would cost to mass produce these rovers... maybe cover the moon (i know moondust is harsh) with them or something. I bet a dozen of these on things on the moon could give us some economic payback within our lifetimes.
      • Since these things are lasting so long, I wonder how much less it would cost to mass produce these rovers... maybe cover the moon (i know moondust is harsh) with them or something. I bet a dozen of these on things on the moon could give us some economic payback within our lifetimes.

        They don't really have the capacity to perform any useful work, so their net productivity is a negative number. With 12 of them the "payback" is that negative number times 12. "I know we're selling below cost, but we make up fo

  • Kudos to NASA and team! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guyfromindia ( 812078 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:00PM (#12593280) Homepage
    This is great news... The rovers have been going on WAAY beyond their intended lifespan... Maybe we all can learn from the excellent design/descipline that the Engineers used to create these wonders!
    • If I could agree with you more, it would mean I have a mod point to give.

      Good work to the NASA team.

    • Re:Kudos to NASA and team! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I agree as well. They said the same thing about Voyager 2 [wikipedia.org]. And it is still running and moving on. Cheers to NASA.

    • Re:Kudos to NASA and team! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Peldor ( 639336 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:17PM (#12593470)
      Actually it turns out there was a confusion in the units.

      The specifications committee set a working lifespan of 100 days, and the design team thought they meant fortnights.

      • Re: Obligatory Star Trek Reference (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        No, the rover team included Trekkies who knew they were communicating between Mars and Earth over an open channel, so they used standard code to describe time units in case Khan was listening. In accordance with Starfleet regs and all.
    • excellent design/discipline? seems pretty easy to me:

      Step 1: Create a good product with an intended lifespan of 2 years
      Step 2: Tell everyone that you've created a good product with an intended lifespan of 3 months
      Step 3: Receive accolades for going on "WAAY" beyond said product's intended lifespan.

      • Step 2: Tell everyone that you've created a good product with an intended lifespan of 3 months

        There is a real difference between the official, designed lifespan and the expected (or hoped for) lifespan. The widget is truly supposed to function for the official lifespan in order to fulfill the main mission objectives. If it doesn't, it fails the mission. After that time, the mission is a success, no matter how you look at it, and the secondary objectives, extra telemetry, whatever, are gravy as long as

  • It was easy, they just had to tell it that it could see R2D2 at the local cinema.

  • Monster Garage needs to build the next rover (Score:3, Funny)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:01PM (#12593296) Homepage
    Am I the only one who thinks NASA / JPL needs to outsource the next rovers to a Monster Garage* build team?

    *Monster Garage [discovery.com] is a reality show on The Discovery Channel in which a team of professional and hobbyist mechanics build a vehicle related contraption in 5 days.

    • Re:Monster Garage needs to build the next rover (Score:5, Funny)

      by rdwald ( 831442 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:05PM (#12593346)
      Am I the only one who thinks NASA / JPL needs to outsource the next rovers to a Monster Garage build team?

      Yes.

    • Re:Monster Garage needs to build the next rover (Score:4, Funny)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:20PM (#12593497)
      Either that or send a small solar-powered tow truck along with every rover. Of course, the towtruck would probably break the rover loading it up, and then bill NASA directly because their rover insurance company refuses to honor the roadside assistance section of their policy because the tow truck wasn't owned by an authorized wrecking company.

      See, this is why the folks at NASA get the big bucks, they have to deal with all of this crap.
      • Wrong. Wrong! WRONG!

        NASA/JPL needs to get away from the whole concept of rovers -- everybody knows that modern-day Rovers spend way more time in the shop than in the outback, and cost a fortune to cover towing and repair costs.

        What NASA/JPL really needs to focus on are the next generation of the extra-terrestrial mobile drilling rigs that they thoroughly trashed on that asteroid in "Apocalypse". A couple of those rigs soft-dropped onto Mars and there would be no question about whether (or how much) water
    • ...would be better, he could probably get the same hobbyists to build a Mars Rover out of household items - AND carry an egg without breaking it - in the 30 minutes of The Great Egg Race.
    • Sounds like the John Varley novel "Red Thunder", in which a magic power source removes any weight concerns WRT spaceflight payloads, and the first people on Mars are able to take along an actual hopped-up pickup truck to cruise around the dunes of mars.

      • Sounds like the John Varley novel "Red Thunder", in which a magic power source removes any weight concerns WRT spaceflight payloads, and the first people on Mars are able to take along an actual hopped-up pickup truck to cruise around the dunes of mars.

        Not having read it, did this pickup not have an ICE, or was the requisite oxygen magically supplied on Mars as well?

    • Oh dear, I can't believe the Discovery Channel has a "pimp my ride up" thing going on. With an annoying WWF-stlye announcer screamin everything and a host that looks like he busted out of a prison. Man, I used to watch that channel for interesting documentaries. What the hell hapened?

  • Update: Spirit and Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:01PM (#12593297)
    SPIRIT UPDATE: Spirit Observing 'Reef' - sol 477-482, May 17, 2005

    Spirit remains in excellent health. On sols 477, 478 and 479 (May 7 to May 9, 2005), Spirit made observations with remote-sensing instruments and analyzed soil targets with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and Mössbauer spectrometer. Spirit then performed a short drive to a target called "Keel," on the outcrop called "Jibsheet." On sol 481, Spirit was able to begin observing a target called "Reef," using the microscopic imager and performing a 16-hour integration with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer. On sol 482 (May 12), Spirit continued work on Reef with instruments on the robotic arm, and performed a 21-hour integration with the Mössbauer spectrometer.

    Spirit's total odometry as of May 12, 2005, is 4,341.19 meters (2.70 miles).

    Spirit Update Archive

    OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Progress Inch-by-Inch for Opportunity - sol 465-466, May 17, 2005

    On Opportunity's first three drives to get out of the sand trap, the rover has advanced a total of 7.4 centimeters (2.9 inches) in getting off the dune. Each of the first two drives -- one on sol 463 and one on sol 465 -- turned the wheels about two and a half rotations, enough to drive two meters (7 feet) if there were no slippage. Images from the hazard-avoidance cameras taken during the drives show that some of caked powder adhering to wheels between cleats had come off. The team was encouraged by the results, and decided go ahead with a 4-meter (13-foot) commanded drive for sol 466.

    Sol-by- sol summaries:

    Sol 465 (May 15, 2005): Opportunity rotated its wheels in a series of 10 steps, each step enough to roll 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) if there were no slippage. The wheels are slipping a great deal in the sand of the dune, but the rover advanced better than anticipated from simulated tests, covering 1.9 centimeters (0.7 inch). The rover used its panoramic camera for observations of the sky and dunes.
    Sol 466 (May 16, 2005): Results from the sol 465 drive were good (some wheel cleats are clean and the rover is making forward progress), so the team commanded a drive that, if there were no slippage, would roll 4 meters (13 feet), consisting of ten 40-centimeter (16 inch) steps. Opportunity gained an additional 2.7 centimeters (1.1 inch). The panoramic camera made more observations of the atmosphere and dunes.

  • Good Job (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AT-SkyWalker ( 610033 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:03PM (#12593322)
    When this first happened I remember I read somewhere that the NASA engineers outlined their trouble shooting approach by indicating that they will try to duplicate the situation here on earth and will study every maneuver before performing anything on the real thing on Mars so they won't have to resort to forceful trial and error maneuvering

    This is a shinning example that meticulous work and systematic thinking eventually gets the job done, even if it sounds boring and even if a "quick fix" seems really sexy


    Good Job NASA.
    • It is also a good example of why everything they do costs so much and takes so long to do.

      Even though the unsexy-boring-overanalyzed way to go is the correct one the majority of the time, someone with the balls to put the hammer down, shake the steering wheel and yell yippee is exactly what is needed every now and then.

      (In this case however I think the course of action has been correct, especially with how healthy that rover is. They may get A LOT more work out of her.)
      • Almost every time you see "the hammer put down" in space exploration, it has been a Bad Thing(tm). Remember "Faster, Better, Cheaper"? Remember the effects of budget cuts during design and construction of the shuttle on its maintenance costs? Etc?

        You don't rush or underfund some of the most failure-intolerant and technologically complex missions humans ever take part in (note: this isn't simply a reference to the rovers themselves, but everything needed to get them from the assembly building to explorin

        • A single minor glitch on such a complex system in such environmental and stress extremes, and it's often all over.

          A poor choice of words perhaps. If it's "all over," then it's a catastrophic failure, not a minor glitch. Witness the Beagle, and previous probes.

          • By "minor glitch" I mean "minor oversight", "minor piece of inaccurate data", etc, that causes a fault.

            • By "minor glitch" I mean "minor oversight", "minor piece of inaccurate data", etc, that causes a fault.

              I fail to see the distinction. Anything that causes catastrophic failure, by definition, is not "minor". The failure to upgrade thermostatic switches on an oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 was hardly a "minor oversight". The standards conversion fiasco on a previous Mars probe may have been a simple mistake, but it was in no way a "minor piece of inaccurate data" -- it was a major mistake. Pick a diffe

    • Re:Good Job (Score:3, Funny)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )
      This is a shinning example that meticulous work and systematic thinking eventually gets the job done, even if it sounds boring and even if a "quick fix" seems really sexy

      Ob. Simpsons reference....

      Bart: Don't you mean shining?

      Willy: Shh. D'ya wanna get suuuued?

  • This never shoulda happened (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:04PM (#12593333) Homepage Journal
    They should have packed a trunk monkey on the rover. Even if he could only hold his breath for 30 seconds, he would have plenty of time to pull the rover out and still be able to squeegie the solar panels clean.
  • Of the story "The Little Engine That Could" [amazon.com].

    "I think I can! I think I can! I think I can!

    Kinda makes me want to cheer our little martian rover on. "Come on buddy! Just a little bit more! Come on!"

    • Oh, you mean that one by Major Payne? Here, I adapted it for you:

      Once upon a time deep, deep in the Martian samds, there was a little rover that could. He was chugging his way acroos the desert..... Chuggah chuggah chuggah chuggah chuggah chuggah chuggah chuggah- TOOT TOOT! This little rovers's mission was to take some AK-47's and nuclear bombs over the mountain to the twenty sixty three battalion. Needless to say, there was plenty of opposition. You think that stopped the little rover that could? No sir

  • On Opportunity's first three drives to get out of the sand trap, the rover has advanced a total of 7.4 centimeters (2.9 inches) in getting off the dune. Each of the first two drives -- one on sol 463 and one on sol 465 -- turned the wheels about two and a half rotations, enough to drive two meters (7 feet) if there were no slippage.The team was encouraged by the results, and decided go ahead with a 4-meter (13-foot) commanded drive for sol 466.

    So we can expect Opportunity to move approximately 5.8 inche

  • It is interesting that these rovers have exceeded all initial expectations. Every once in a while, something happens to one of the rovers that people say will make it unusable, and the rover has overcome whatever problem occurred and continue onward. I wonder how much of this is just because of good engineering by all the people involved in making the rovers, and how much of it is just plain luck.

    Eventually of course, something will happen to make a rover unusable, but it is interesting that the rovers h

    • I don't believe they exceeded expectations. I think the expectations were understated on purpose - using the worst case scenario.
      • that and i bet it gives a nice pump up to say we made somethign that worked longer and harder than we thought it would! we rule!!! give us money!
    • The rovers have exceeded their design specification lifetime, but how different would the design of a rover to last 2 years be to one designed to last 3 months? I suspect not very different at all.

  • Practicle Joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by lbmouse ( 473316 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:09PM (#12593399) Homepage
    Maybe it's becuse it's a Friday afternoon following a long week... but wouldn't it be fun to sneak up to Mars and plays some jokes on the JPL guys? Wait for them to go to bed each night and move the rover 10 feet.

    Is it time to go home yet?
  • Oh great! There goes the economy! If they're working free it's going to lower the bar on wages for the rest of us! How's a guy supposed to afford a gold-plated Ferrari when the rovers are working free?
  • maybe extraterrestrial robots should go with a vast assortment of tools and materials - you never know what you'll run into untill you get there and the ground teams seem quit adept adept at coming up with solutions - provided they have the tools and materials, like a general purpose arm (make that TWO arms, in case one breaks the other can fix it) and a storage locker full of duc[t,k] tape.

    • Re:make robots very flexible (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:40PM (#12593724) Homepage Journal
      Doubling the components more than doubles the probability of a fault developing, so that's really a Bad Idea, although it sounds good at first. What would be better would be a way for system components to repair themselves (therefore making spare parts unnecessary), and for components to be over spec by enough of a margin that potential situations are within the design tolerences, rather than so close to the limits.
      • Not necessarily - a raid 1 (mirror) disk is much more reliable than a single disk, and it's exactly double the components - you're spreading the risk. By having two independant robot arms, each one is as likely to fail as having just one, but you still have a working arm. What you're talking about is double the complexity in a single system - I'm talking about fault tolerant redundancy.

        Actually the whole point of my suggestion is just to have a more flexible platform for the ground team to work up solution

        • Re:make robots very flexible (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@yahoGINSBERGo.com minus poet> on Friday May 20, 2005 @05:09PM (#12593988) Homepage Journal
          Yes, fault tolerence through that kind of redundancy (similar to a scheme Sir Clive Sinclair proposed, about 20 years ago) would certainly improve reliability. As demonstrated by Sir Clive, such a design is practical and workable, and I would agree with you that using it would produce a more flexible, more reliable device.


          Sir Clive's "Great Idea" was to use wafer-scale integration to produce massive redundancy of any given electronic component, and then use filesystem/networking techniques for marking bad regions and routing round them. What you'd end up with is a chip that could take massive punishment and survive physical destruction of even large portions of the surface.


          That would cover electronic systems, and mechanical systems could be duplicated with some sort of tie-in. For example, if joint A on robot arm A fails, and arm B is physically linked, then you can use joint A on arm B as a stand-by.


          If, then, joint B on arm B failed, you could still use joint B on arm A, for the same reason, giving you fail-over at the component level, not the device level.


          That would be something that NASA should definitely explore, and schemes like it, as ways to improve the flexibility and durability of the hardware it launches.

  • "hello, OnStar" (Score:5, Funny)

    by visionsofmcskill ( 556169 ) <vision AT getmp DOT com> on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:14PM (#12593446) Homepage Journal
    Onstar: "hello, onstar"

    Customer: "help, im stuck in a sand dune"

    OnStar: "ok, you seem to be off our GPS grid for some reason, can you tell me where you are?"

    Customer: "mars"

    OnStar: "......."

    Customer: "hello?"

    OnStar: "just, uh, keep spinning your tires..."

  • Hackneyed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skiron ( 735617 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:14PM (#12593448)
    It is a terrible shame when quite unbelievable stuff goes on, and is treated as mundane.

    To me, being born before the space race, man on the moon etc., this is still fascinating. Why current the current generation is interested in the slightest, I don't know.

    What all these guys are doing was totally unthinkable 20 years ago.

    Lets hope we will get another 20 years when the next generation filter through.
    • I agree with you on the comment about kids these days, and how fascinating it really is.

      But I think it's worth mentioning that Viking 1 (the original Mars lander) landed on Mars almost 30 years ago, so this kind of thing wasn't totally unthinkable 20 years ago.

      But this is something that is teaching us loads about our universe and I am also suprised about how little most people (even a lot of so-called geeks) seem to give a rip.

    • Ohhh, so close.

      Done 25 years ago by the Russians: http://www.synlube.com/moon.htm [synlube.com]

      Should have been: totally unthinkable 40 years ago

  • Well it's a robot. It should work for free. Especially if its solar powered.
  • Uh-oh, I bet R2D2 is gearing up for a bitch slap!

  • AAA (Score:5, Funny)

    by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @04:36PM (#12593671) Homepage Journal
    Hey zplork, looks like that funny car has a problem again.

    What, solar panels dirty again? We just cleaned them last week!

    Naw, it's stuck in the sand.

    Fuggit - let AAA* take car of it!

    (*AAA - Aries Automobile Association).
  • watch that mutha burn silicon !!!!!!!

    • Re:yeah ! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Electronik ( 821589 )
      You mean:

      "watch that mother burn silicon dioxide", which is in fact 'burnt' already, and wouldn't burn any more in the thin martian atmosphere.

      Sorry for sucking the fun out of that one...
  • Who else read that and thought "Wait, it was getting paid before?"
  • They forgot the HiLift jack!
  • Actually, I think it's being held onto by JFK and Marilyn Monroe. They are just off camera and it's their little joke after being banished to Mars by a conspiracy of Free Masons. This is the most fun they've had since JFK went limp in 1995 and they had to stop boinking.

  • 4 days old news. Still not out (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Frans Faase ( 648933 ) on Friday May 20, 2005 @05:08PM (#12593984) Homepage
    Please note that the last report is from May 16. That is four whole days ago. There are some images of three days ago. I guess they haven't made any substantial progress in the past days. To me it seems that they did go backwards a little, but there are also signs that some of the wheels are digging in. And they are still not out of the track. I wonder if they will ever manage to get out of them. It seems to me that the top layer of the sand was actually a little stronger than the stuff below it, and I wonder whether they will be able to get on top of it again. I guess that there is still a substantial chance that Opportunity will not get out, and that this is going to be the resting place of the rover. And mind you, that does not mean the end of science work. There is still much to learn from the daily remote sensing operations. And of course, they will make every attempt to get the rover moving again. Time is on their side.
  • I have a dream!

    And operational wheels ...

  • Thank God, because I heard that NASA's AAA coverage was not renewed by congress.
  • I remember seeing some science show about this rover and the exhaustive efforts that they went through to design and test the wheels in various conditions.

    Perhaps I'm simplifying it, but for all the money the spent on the wheels, they could have designed them to have inflatable monster-mudder style blades, like tractor tires have, to pop out of the surface when needed, such as has been the case recently????
  • I think I can... I think I can... I think I can...

  • Free as in beer? Or free as in speech? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Neither, it seems. We will have to add another one... "Free as in Mars Rover".
  • I've made movies of the images posted on the MER website over the last few days of Opportunity's front left and right rear wheels. It's clear that they're making considerable, consistent (if slow) progress. In particular, in the last couple of days the front wheel has begun to slog its way through the dirt, where it had just been digging in for the first three days.

    I've got the movies up on my ADSL line at

    front hazcam [216.102.153.252]
    rear hazcam [216.102.153.252]

    Higher bandwidth mirrors would be most appreciated

    Thad Beier

  • If the machine is that plucky, it deserves a better name!
  • Working Free? Is there no minimum wage on Mars?

    kybred

  • You know, they also call that slave labor.
  • So, after very careful, thorough analysis of the situation, including attempts to simulate the exact conditions here on earth, what was the team's decision?

    It sounds like "Ah hell, just gun it!"

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