Spirit Outlasts Viking 2 Lander

ScottMaxwell writes "Spirit, the Mars rover designed for a 90-day mission, has now outlasted the Viking 2 lander. Viking 2 survived until its 1281st sol (Martian day); Spirit is now on sol 1282 and counting. Assuming both rovers continue to weather the ongoing dust storms, Spirit's sister, Opportunity, will reach the same age in a few weeks. They aren't breathing down the neck of the all-time record just yet, though — the Viking 1 lander lasted 2245 sols on the surface of Mars; Spirit and Opportunity won't break that record for another 2.7 Earth years."

Nuclear powered

[FTL]

Mars lander trivia:

• Both Viking landers were nuclear powered [space.com] (RTGs).
• So are both of the rovers, to a certain extent. Both rovers contain slugs of plutonium [harvard.edu] which keep the electronics boxes warm and reduce the amount of solar power needed for heating.
• Viking 2 lasted 1281 sols and died when its batteries failed. Although the RTGs would have produced usable power for another ten years, the power levels were too low for 70s electronics. So the RTGs would slowly charge the batteries then the batteries would power up the lander for short durations.
• Viking 1 lasted 2245 sols and lost contact with Earth when a bad command [unmannedspaceflight.com] was sent which instructed Viking to point its antenna in a different direction (sort of like typing "shutdown -h now" on the command line of a remote server, there's no recovery short of a house-call).

Re:NASA

[TheSuperlative]

Got me on Challenger, but Columbia, no. The shuttles were all designed with a 10-year lifespan in mind - they have more than outlasted that expectation

Sorry, not Barry Bonds here

[Tablizer]

that needs a big fat asterisk. Seriously, a "90-day mission" and it's still going 3 years later? Something is rotten in Mars.

Most thought that dust on the solar panels would end the missions after a few months. Turns out that whirlwinds clean them every now and then. They didn't know such would happen since long-duration solar missions hadn't been done yet.

And mechanics *are* wearing out, it is just that they find workarounds. Spirit drives backward because of a failed wheel, and Oppy holds its elbow in a single place most of the time, using wheels to maneuvor instead of bend the bad elbow. And some if it is probably luck; the electronics could snap at any time due to heat-cold cycles. (Oppy's front wheel is showing signs of wear also.)

It is also true that statistically, once missions get past the early phase, they tend to last well. The failure spots are usually early in most missions if there are failures.
       

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

The shuttles were designed with 100-flight airframes. The original specification called for one launch every month - per orbiter. Thus each orbiter would wear out after a decade.

As it turned out, the maximum flight rate they could get was about one launch per year - per orbiter. An order of magnitude less than the spec. Thus it is little wonder that the shuttles "lasted" longer than their design life. Each orbiter has only flown an average of 30 times.

Re:Nuclear powered

[nelsonal]

From the summary, it looks like sunrise/sunset cycle on the local planet (~24 hours on earth). My knowledge of the solar system is fuzzy (it's been a long time since I was a "junior astronomer" but I think the martian day is about 25 Earth hours (their year is considerably longer, though).

Re:Nuclear powered

[Anonymous Coward]

A 'sol' is a day in local time. Different planets rotate at different speeds making the length of their days different. One sol on Earth is 24 hours. One sol on Mars is 24.5 hours. One sol on Venus is a staggering 243 Earth days.

Re:NASA

[Short Circuit]

In the ST:TNG episode Relics [memory-alpha.org], Scotty criticized Geordie for giving Picard accurate repair time estimates.

Re:Oh my goodness me

[big-magic]

Assuming I counted correctly, there have only been 5 successful landers/rovers (Viking 1 and 2, Mars Pathfinder, Opportunity, and Spirit) and 1 partial success (Mars 6). Check the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars [wikipedia.org]. There were a lot more missions to Mars than I realized, most of them failures. Going to Mars is hard, which makes the success of Opportunity and Spirit even more amazing. It would be a mistake for us to get cocky and think we've got this mastered, just because our couple missions went really well.

Re:NASA

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference being that mission parts that are replaced in the orbiter's downtime are not what have an impact on the operational lifespan of the vehicle. The platform's non-replaceable parts were meant to last ten years--the time on Earth is much harder on them than a high operational tempo.

Each orbiter was only meant to last, structurally, for ten years. The number of missions it flew is largely a separate issue, given that much of the vehicle is replaced after each mission. Time was and always has been the enemy.

Re:Nuclear powered

[camperdave]

This [solarsystem.org.uk] is a good site to bookmark. It includes a virtual scale model of the Solar System. It is quite informative to scroll from Sol out to Pluto. BTW, Mars has a rotation period (sol) of 24 hrs, 37 mins, 22.66 secs, and a year of 686.98 Earth days.

Re:Nuclear powered

[KDR_11k]

They could but why bother? The rover probably already did everything it was equipped for while the other bot wouldn't be much cheaper to make and could just be outfitted to do everything the Viking 1 could and more.

Re:no significant space achievements my a$$

[agengr]

Since the early 70s we (NASA, its partners, and American industry) have accomplished such more than a few minor feats:

- The Shuttle program has logged almost 9 times the spaceflight of the Apollo+Skylab program
- The Shuttle program has averaged more than twice the flight rate of Apollo+Skylab
- The ISS joint-venture will triple the flight time of Shuttle by the time the station is closed in 2016, so that's approx 27-fold over Apollo+Skylab
- We since launched robotic missions to every planet (including Pluto) in the Solar System
- We have revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos using orbital telescopes (3 out of 4 Great Observatories launched by Shuttle)
- Private industry has demonstrated reusable suborbital flight with surprisingly good economics

I really hope you were joking when you asked "where are the interstellar probes." The fact is, we have made significant progress in spaceflight these last 20-30 years but those accomplishments have been overshadowed due to irrational expectations such as your own. It is inconceivable that we could have gone from Apollo to Lunar colonization, Mars missions, space industry, etc without further maturation of spaceflight technology. And as a stepping stone, the Shuttle/ISS have given us tremendous experience and capability that we did not have post-Apollo.

The greatest tragedy of all is that after debugging the Shuttle fleet of so many design issues, we are just going to retire them as soon as possible. If we were to build a new fleet of orbiters from scratch, we could implement a myriad of design improvements that would greatly lower cost and improve safety. Instead we're going to go pander to the "exploration" crowd...

Re:Nuclear powered

[kayditty]

ifdown? isn't that some shitty red hat script? why not ifconfig eth0 down? or uh.. /etc/init.d/network stop || /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 stop || service network stop or what have you?

Re:Oh my goodness me

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't nuclear reactors. They were RTGs [wikipedia.org]. There was no reaction, they were powered by the heat produced by radioactive material.

Re:Nuclear powered

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

because not everyone in the world speak english. and nasa colaborates wit the ESA, wich is composed by many countries wich speak latin languages (portuguese, spanish, french, italian,...). and "sol" comes right from latin.

it's all about being nice with their partners.