Mars Rover's Epic Trek For the Crater Endeavor 145
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."
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
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.
Re:A case for manned exploration (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 once existed there. When I was young, the hope was that we'd find some weird alien creepy-crawlies scurrying about. Now the hope is that there is some water that a microscopic lifeform might have once inhabited. The basis for the need of effort is to prove that life can autogenerate anywhere. You may not believe it, but the vast majority of the people who pay taxes respond to this sales job with a great big "Who the f&&k cares?!"
You and I may believe the expense of a manned mission is justified, but we are woefully/painfully outnumbered. That leaves us with one of two options. Sell the manned missions as an escape route from a dying Earth. That puts us in the "OH, NOZ!! We're all gonna' die!" alarmist category. Unless we can point out a REAL viable threat to the Earth, we will soon be marginalized. "There is a 1 in 8 billion chance of a catastrophic asteroid impacting the Earth within the next 1000 years" does not cross the 'valid' hurdle in mind of most people.
The second option is to send cheap probes. People like them because of the gee-whiz features, and they're not expensive enough to cause economic pain. They can also see useful applications for much of the technology involved. The science is slow, but it is progressing. The things we learn from the probes will make a manned mission safer and cheaper, since some possible eventualities will be eliminated and not need to be planned/prepared for.
In short, a manned mission has not been justified, evidenced by the complete lack of support for it. Just look at the tepid response Bush's Mars plan garnered. And I believe half of the positive response was little more than nostalgia for the Space Race heyday. Bush didn't justify the need to expend the resources necessary, and neither has anyone else.
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.
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.
Lots of pretty picture = good VR (Score:2, Interesting)
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.