Smivs writes "The BBC reports that NASA is to send its Mars rover Opportunity on a two-year trek to try to reach a crater called Endeavour.
The robot will have to move about 11km to get to its new target — a distance that would double what it has already achieved on the planet.
Endeavour is much bigger than anything investigated to date, and will allow a broader range of rocks to be studied. Detailed satellite imagery from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will help pick out the best route ahead; and new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path. Opportunity has just emerged from the 800m-wide Victoria Crater. Endeavour, by comparison, is 22km across."
I did smile at the joke, but I still have a lot of admiration for NASA. I am a brit, and yes I was disappointed when the Beagle 2 probe was lost.
However, I still remember as a kid, I used to be awed with NASA, and its space shuttle launches, etc. As a child it was what I associated America with: space, advancing to new frontiers, etc, and NASA usually was the center of my aspirations. I used to dream of being on a Shuttle, and often felt jealous (in a positive way) for what our friends across the pond was up to.
In recent years, and recent news, which unfortunately put the USA in a poor light amongst some, NASA with their exploits brought back some memories about why I aspired towards America; that "can do attitude".
Sure they have messed up, at times. but space exploration is like that. Their successes usually are just as great.
These rovers were built to run for 3 months. They are running for on their fifth year now. Absolutely amazing!
The official reason of how they underestimated the abilities for the wind to clean the sensors, may be correct, but in this day and age, where items are engineered to last their intended lifespan, whoever designed these things still didnt "cheap out" on the rest of the vehicle.
These are not cheap little radio controlled dune buggy models for use on earth, but self maintaining vehicles that for nearly 5 years have operated in a hostile, largely unknown environment with no physical attention!
So hats off to NASA and JPL. And god speed on the new mission. And thanks for giving this older man a thing something to smile about in these times of drab news.
It's an estimate right now. They're not sure where the Endeavor crater will actually be. Once Atlantis does the rescue mission Endeavor will be redirected to mars in order to create it's crater.
There really should be a moderation tag for "most people aren't nearly as funny, or as obvious as they think they are".
Funny is admittedly somewhat subjective, but any Slashdot reader interested enough in Mars exploration to read this article would no doubt be familiar with the Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org] and the error involving conversion of metric units that caused its failure; so I would call the joke fairly obvious.
An inch is exactly 2.54 cm (by law, in the US). With that and a calculator, you can do any English to Metric (or Metric to English) length conversion exactly.
Godspeed, Opportunity!
Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!
Godspeed, Opportunity!
Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!
Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!
So either the rovers are overachievers or we just set their goals WAY too low!
I guess they are taking a page from Scotty's manual.
KIRK: Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
SCOTTY: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?
So either the rovers are overachievers or we just set their goals WAY too low!
I guess they are taking a page from Scotty's manual.
Its both as I understand it the big win was the martian wind kept the solar panels cleaner than expected, it was dust build up (and thus power loss) that was expected to kill the mssion
actually a better mechanism would be to use compressed atmosphere to blast the dust away. Wipers have more points of failure and would likely abrade the surface of the solar panels, permanently reducing the efficiency fo the cells.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday September 23 2008, @10:37AM (#25121343)
I agree with you on it is an amazing feat for them to have lasted this long my issue is with how old these robots are getting up there why risk a risky two year voyage over a distance of about 6.8 miles to get to a creator that is 13 Miles wide and will take another couple of years to explore and probably end up causing a catastrophic failure of Opportunity to me this is a complete miss use of the opportunity they have with a functioning robot up there yet the functionality they have built into these robots donâ(TM)t give them too many more things to-do but explore
I also agree with you on this amazing feat for you to be able to have such an enourmous run on sentence with no punctuation whatsoever even though it seems like a risky voyage over all of those keystrokes just to get to the submit button to wait and see if your content got posted or if you got the slow down cowboy screen and then you have to wait for a while and just stare at the ceiling until you can submit again but back to the rovers I too hope they don't have a catastrophic failure when it goes to the new crater but hey what else can you do since it has explored everything else in the area that it is in and it might as well go someplace new to see something else because it isn't the destination but rather the journey
Opportunity saw its first electrical spike in one of its motors recently - the same problem that has basically crippled Spirit.
This was described (8 paragraphs down) in this press release [nasa.gov]. That's why they got out of Victoria Crater post haste.
Of course, the terrain in Meridiani Planum is much more navigable than Gustav Crater, so even if they do lose a motor, they may still be able to make progress.
This is a suicide mission, NASA wanted to shut down the rovers years ago, and the public outcry repeatedly stopped it. Now, if the rover goes on a 2 year drive and dies, what a poor little heroic guy, finally succumbed to the elements.
And NASA gets to free all the funds to build newer and bigger and better and... Don't forget, these are the guys that canceled the last Apollo missions for the fuel bill; they already had the rockets, trained astronauts and everything else in place.
I distinctly remember Congress canceling the last Apollo mission (Apollo 18), by not giving NASA the money. This was indeed deep in the planning stages, intended for some volcanic domes near the Marius crater IIRC.
Don't forget, these are the guys that canceled the last Apollo missions for the fuel bill; they already had the rockets, trained astronauts and everything else in place.
And the money to pay the army that would be needed to build and run the missions. Ending Saturn was a good move. The rocket was too expensive. Replacing it with the Space Shuttle though was one of the worst mistakes NASA ever did.
It may be true that this specific mission seems a bit suicidal, but what else are you going to do with it? Nothing? The rover was meant to run until it died, and this seems like as good a cause to die for as any.
The rover isn't just going on a boring 2 year long road trip, it's also exploring the rocks and terrain along the way. Even if it doesn't reach its destination, the trek will still be of scientific value.
Wasn't Opporunity half-designed by kids as well? Props to NASA for getting our money's worth out of this thing. Talk about the little engine that could.
A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle. And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments. And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.
So while human exploration of Mars may be expensive, it is probably much cheaper when comparing results.
I know the/. crowd has a strong, somewhat irrational animosity towards manned exploration. So I'll burn some karma, big deal:o)
Leaving aside - for now - the part where a human mission to Mars is almost certainly a suicide mission, if you want to make the case that other people are irrational your best bet is probably to present your own rational ideas for a fully-costed human mission, including all the associated life-support requirements both in transit and once on the surface.
Then we can compare your ideas against the cost of the Spirit and Opportunity missions
I don't care to read the book, but I will give you rational, plausible, budgeted and non-suicidal. "Justified"...now that is where our parlay will break down. Justified, like art, is in the eye of the beholder and often requires some selling to get the justificatee to agree (yes, I just made up that word). One way of thinking of it is that justification isn't a property of an object, but is something that is done to it.
The only justification I've seen is an effort for Mars missions is to prove that life
It does? I've observed quite the opposite: most of Slashdot is very gung-ho about meaningful manned exploration. The only animosity I've seen regularly expressed is towards the Shuttle and ISS.
A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle. And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments. And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.
Well, we'd never have been able to put people there nearly as cheaply, or for nearly as long. We haven't solved the problems of getting people in space for long enough for the journey, keeping them alive, feeding them, and having them inhabit the surface of a strange planet without any real support.
The rovers have been absolute bargain in terms of the cost for the science achieved. And, they give us a lot of the basic information we need to know if we're ever going to put humans there. The value vs cost of the these rovers is not something you can characterize as expensive for what we get -- the initial mission was, what $300 million or so?
I think until we can overcome an incredible amount of technical hurdles, the rovers are still a good idea. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to develop some of the stuff we'll need for manned missions. Likely we'll need to work on some closer missions and return to the moon before we try to get to Mars in my opinion -- that'll at least let us try to sort out the really big challenges.
Try breathing the martin atmosphere and weighing only a few dozen kgs and eat nothing but sunsine below zero. We haven't even started with how you got there.
Soft humans are not as well adapted to space and mars as you seem to think.
Mars: the newest frontier.
These are the voyages of the rover Opportunity.
Its two-year mission: to explore strange new craters; to seek out new life and new land formations;
to boldly go where no robot has gone before!
"new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path"
What is the origin of that? I can speculate: 1) English origin: Very polite. You just don't go around the corner, you politely ask under what conditions it is allowed. "I beg your pardon, dear corner. Would it be inconvenient to you if we continue our way as indicated by you? 2) American origin: Don't take anything for granted. You may be sued by a corner before yo
I thought Opportunity was due to have a bum wheel, like that of Spirit. They've discovered voltage spike patterns that match that of Spirit's wheel before it croaked. This would suggest that Oppy can only go about another mile before the wheel gives. While flat territory may not be a signif problem, Oppy has had problems getting stuck in sand dunes in its area even with good wheels. Getting out of sand traps with a stuck wheel is going to be an interesting challenge.
They were only supposed to last six months, so dust shouldn't have been a problem. They're in the 5th year. My guess is that future robots may have blowers or wipers or something to keep cells clean.
I suppose what I'm saying is that future rovers should be designed for as many possible contingencies
If you want a general purpose tool that can adapt to many scenario, send a human. (Also, go to the bank, you're going to need to make a biiiiiig withdrawl)
If you want to do science on a budget(which NASA has to do since it gets diddly squat for funding compared to certain other institutions) then you simply plan out what you think are probable tasks that'll be done, and design your robot to be able to do them cheaply and effectively. Trying to make a robot for "as many possible contingencies" will mean it
I know that NASA are a bunch of good people, and I know that there are very good reasons for why they do things the way they do. But PLEASE!!! 2 years to go 11 km? I know that the Rover will stop every now and then to check out soil samples etc, but 2 years???
Dude, it's around 2 feet long and being remotely controlled on a very long time delay and it's, what, several million km's away??
It can only go so far each day before it has to shut down, recharge, and wait for new driving instructions. That usually in
11 km (Score:5, Funny)
That's about 11,000 inches, right? Shouldn't take that long.
Re:11 km (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Parsecs are old hat. It's 36.8 microseconds (of light travel time).
On Barsoom, please... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:11 km (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you've heard of it. It's the rover that made the Endeavor run in less than 360 femtoparsecs.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:11 km (Score:5, Interesting)
I did smile at the joke, but I still have a lot of admiration for NASA. I am a brit, and yes I was disappointed when the Beagle 2 probe was lost.
However, I still remember as a kid, I used to be awed with NASA, and its space shuttle launches, etc. As a child it was what I associated America with: space, advancing to new frontiers, etc, and NASA usually was the center of my aspirations. I used to dream of being on a Shuttle, and often felt jealous (in a positive way) for what our friends across the pond was up to.
In recent years, and recent news, which unfortunately put the USA in a poor light amongst some, NASA with their exploits brought back some memories about why I aspired towards America; that "can do attitude".
Sure they have messed up, at times. but space exploration is like that. Their successes usually are just as great.
These rovers were built to run for 3 months. They are running for on their fifth year now. Absolutely amazing!
The official reason of how they underestimated the abilities for the wind to clean the sensors, may be correct, but in this day and age, where items are engineered to last their intended lifespan, whoever designed these things still didnt "cheap out" on the rest of the vehicle.
These are not cheap little radio controlled dune buggy models for use on earth, but self maintaining vehicles that for nearly 5 years have operated in a hostile, largely unknown environment with no physical attention!
So hats off to NASA and JPL. And god speed on the new mission. And thanks for giving this older man a thing something to smile about in these times of drab news.
Parent
Re:11 km (Score:4, Funny)
It's an estimate right now. They're not sure where the Endeavor crater will actually be. Once Atlantis does the rescue mission Endeavor will be redirected to mars in order to create it's crater.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
or 32 microts
Re:11 km (Score:5, Funny)
There should seriously be a moderation tag for "sarcasm impaired".
Parent
Re:11 km (Score:5, Insightful)
There really should be a moderation tag for "most people aren't nearly as funny, or as obvious as they think they are".
No, it really was funny and obvious. You're just not nearly as sharp, or as bright as you think you are.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Those of us with a sense of humor.
Re:11 km (Score:4, Insightful)
Those of us with an username.
Parent
Re:11 km (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny is admittedly somewhat subjective, but any Slashdot reader interested enough in Mars exploration to read this article would no doubt be familiar with the Mars Climate Orbiter [wikipedia.org] and the error involving conversion of metric units that caused its failure; so I would call the joke fairly obvious.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nope. 11,000 metres
Re: (Score:2)
An inch is exactly 2.54 cm (by law, in the US). With that and a calculator, you can do any English to Metric (or Metric to English) length conversion exactly.
Amazing (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Godspeed, Opportunity! Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!
Oops, read that "4th year", my apologies.
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
Godspeed, Opportunity!
Remember that Opportunity and Spirit are on their 5th year on the Martian surface. Their mission were initially planned to last no more than 3 months. Bravo!
So either the rovers are overachievers or we just set their goals WAY too low!
I guess they are taking a page from Scotty's manual.
KIRK: Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
SCOTTY: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So either the rovers are overachievers or we just set their goals WAY too low!
I guess they are taking a page from Scotty's manual.
Its both as I understand it the big win was the martian wind kept the solar panels cleaner than expected, it was dust build up (and thus power loss) that was expected to kill the mssion
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Amazing (Score:5, Funny)
I also agree with you on this amazing feat for you to be able to have such an enourmous run on sentence with no punctuation whatsoever even though it seems like a risky voyage over all of those keystrokes just to get to the submit button to wait and see if your content got posted or if you got the slow down cowboy screen and then you have to wait for a while and just stare at the ceiling until you can submit again but back to the rovers I too hope they don't have a catastrophic failure when it goes to the new crater but hey what else can you do since it has explored everything else in the area that it is in and it might as well go someplace new to see something else because it isn't the destination but rather the journey
Parent
Let's hope the motors hold out. (Score:5, Informative)
Opportunity saw its first electrical spike in one of its motors recently - the same problem that has basically crippled Spirit.
This was described (8 paragraphs down) in this press release [nasa.gov]. That's why they got out of Victoria Crater post haste.
Of course, the terrain in Meridiani Planum is much more navigable than Gustav Crater, so even if they do lose a motor, they may still be able to make progress.
Re:Let's hope the motors hold out. (Score:5, Interesting)
And NASA gets to free all the funds to build newer and bigger and better and
Don't forget, these are the guys that canceled the last Apollo missions for the fuel bill; they already had the rockets, trained astronauts and everything else in place.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I distinctly remember Congress canceling the last Apollo mission (Apollo 18), by not giving NASA the money. This was indeed deep in the planning stages, intended for some volcanic domes near the Marius crater IIRC.
Re:Let's hope the motors hold out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, and given that there was never any plans to get the rovers back, this was always a "suicide" mission.
But you are right, JPL will keep running these until they physically fail.
Parent
Re:Let's hope the motors hold out. (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't forget, these are the guys that canceled the last Apollo missions for the fuel bill; they already had the rockets, trained astronauts and everything else in place.
And the money to pay the army that would be needed to build and run the missions. Ending Saturn was a good move. The rocket was too expensive. Replacing it with the Space Shuttle though was one of the worst mistakes NASA ever did.
Parent
Re:Let's hope the motors hold out. (Score:5, Insightful)
The rover isn't just going on a boring 2 year long road trip, it's also exploring the rocks and terrain along the way. Even if it doesn't reach its destination, the trek will still be of scientific value.
Parent
Opportunity proves it: (Score:2, Funny)
studying ... rocks!
ok, maybe only studying ... rocks ... rocks.
If you get an ... opportunity.
Allright I stop, I'm killing myself.
Re:Opportunity proves it: (Score:5, Funny)
studying ... rocks!
ok, maybe only studying ... rocks ... rocks.
If you get an ... opportunity.
Allright I stop, I'm killing myself.
That's the Spirit
Parent
Re:Opportunity proves it: (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Opportunity proves it: (Score:4, Funny)
We're just cratering to our audience. :/
Parent
Re:Opportunity proves it: (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Sweet.... (Score:2)
A case for manned exploration (Score:3, Insightful)
A human would take no more than a few hours to get there, on foot, much less with some vehicle. And would be able to do much more and diverse probings and experiments. And let's not forget that in those 2 years, the rover has a very high likelihood to break down.
So while human exploration of Mars may be expensive, it is probably much cheaper when comparing results.
I know the /. crowd has a strong, somewhat irrational animosity towards manned exploration. So I'll burn some karma, big deal :o)
Re:A case for manned exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
irrational animosity towards manned exploration
Leaving aside - for now - the part where a human mission to Mars is almost certainly a suicide mission, if you want to make the case that other people are irrational your best bet is probably to present your own rational ideas for a fully-costed human mission, including all the associated life-support requirements both in transit and once on the surface.
Then we can compare your ideas against the cost of the Spirit and Opportunity missions
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't care to read the book, but I will give you rational, plausible, budgeted and non-suicidal. "Justified"...now that is where our parlay will break down. Justified, like art, is in the eye of the beholder and often requires some selling to get the justificatee to agree (yes, I just made up that word). One way of thinking of it is that justification isn't a property of an object, but is something that is done to it.
The only justification I've seen is an effort for Mars missions is to prove that life
Re: (Score:2)
It does? I've observed quite the opposite: most of Slashdot is very gung-ho about meaningful manned exploration. The only animosity I've seen regularly expressed is towards the Shuttle and ISS.
Re:A case for manned exploration (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, we'd never have been able to put people there nearly as cheaply, or for nearly as long. We haven't solved the problems of getting people in space for long enough for the journey, keeping them alive, feeding them, and having them inhabit the surface of a strange planet without any real support.
The rovers have been absolute bargain in terms of the cost for the science achieved. And, they give us a lot of the basic information we need to know if we're ever going to put humans there. The value vs cost of the these rovers is not something you can characterize as expensive for what we get -- the initial mission was, what $300 million or so?
I think until we can overcome an incredible amount of technical hurdles, the rovers are still a good idea. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to develop some of the stuff we'll need for manned missions. Likely we'll need to work on some closer missions and return to the moon before we try to get to Mars in my opinion -- that'll at least let us try to sort out the really big challenges.
Cheers
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Soft humans are not as well adapted to space and mars as you seem to think.
Mars Trek (Score:2)
These are the voyages of the rover Opportunity.
Its two-year mission: to explore strange new craters; to seek out new life and new land formations;
to boldly go where no robot has gone before!
Negotiate? Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
"new software recently uploaded to Opportunity will enable the rover to make its own decisions about how best to negotiate large rocks in its path"
What is the origin of that? I can speculate:
1) English origin: Very polite. You just don't go around the corner, you politely ask under what conditions it is allowed. "I beg your pardon, dear corner. Would it be inconvenient to you if we continue our way as indicated by you?
2) American origin: Don't take anything for granted. You may be sued by a corner before yo
Bum Wheel? (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought Opportunity was due to have a bum wheel, like that of Spirit. They've discovered voltage spike patterns that match that of Spirit's wheel before it croaked. This would suggest that Oppy can only go about another mile before the wheel gives. While flat territory may not be a signif problem, Oppy has had problems getting stuck in sand dunes in its area even with good wheels. Getting out of sand traps with a stuck wheel is going to be an interesting challenge.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I suppose what I'm saying is that future rovers should be designed for as many possible contingencies
If you want a general purpose tool that can adapt to many scenario, send a human. (Also, go to the bank, you're going to need to make a biiiiiig withdrawl)
If you want to do science on a budget(which NASA has to do since it gets diddly squat for funding compared to certain other institutions) then you simply plan out what you think are probable tasks that'll be done, and design your robot to be able to do them cheaply and effectively. Trying to make a robot for "as many possible contingencies" will mean it
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Dude, it's around 2 feet long and being remotely controlled on a very long time delay and it's, what, several million km's away??
It can only go so far each day before it has to shut down, recharge, and wait for new driving instructions. That usually in
Re:More than a suggestion (Score:4, Funny)
This actually is some pretty challenging stuff.
You make it sound like it's rocket science or something on that level. Sheesh.
Parent