NASA Concedes Defeat In Effort To Free Spirit Rover 250
An anonymous reader writes "NASA has conceded defeat in its battle to free the Spirit rover from its Martian sand trap. The vehicle became stuck in soft soil back in May last year and all the efforts to extricate it have failed. NASA says that Spirit, which landed on the Red Planet over six years ago, will 'no longer be a fully mobile robot,' and has instead designated the once-roving scientific explorer a stationary science platform."
Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:2)
Nevertheless, we're still doing science-- there's a lot of stuff that we can do even without driving around.
I'ma pour some 10w40 on the ground (Score:5, Funny)
For my paralyzed homies, the little rovers that could. *snif*
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Rovers in two-part harmony:
"We're doing science and we're still alive..."
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So when is Bend-aid [wikia.com]?
Re:Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:4, Funny)
Geoffrey, Kanye called, and he's gonna let you finish, but the Voyager flights were the most AWESOME science mission EVER!
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rbrander, Kayne, you make a good case, and I'm going to let you finish--but, the Apollo Moon Landings were the greatest space missions of all time!
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And when the science get done we get a neat gun
Right?
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Plus now, after wheel operations (and perhaps heating of few subsystems crucial for wheel movement?) have ceased, there might be some chance it will survive the winter...
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Re:Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:5, Funny)
People say my broken friend is useless.
But I say his mind is free.
There's lots of things my mangled robot friend could be.
Well he could make a good hat rack,
He only has to stand there.
Or a cheap doorstop,
He doesn't need to move.
Or a great big giant thermos with a twist off top,
That would be good for soup.
He could be a storage closet for outdated pants.
My broken friend could do it all,
Just give him a chance!
That robot has a tragic secret
That I'd like to share.
My broken friend is closer to me than an ass to a chair.
That robot's name I never told you
You could not foresee.
I sing it loud and sing it proud,
His name is you and me!
Don't melt me down into a crowbar,
Just 'cause I can't move my arms and legs.
Or toss me into a trash can,
Just 'cause I can't cook you ham and eggs.
Don't crush me into an anchor,
Just 'cause I can't jump and dance and sing
I'm telling you, my broken friend...
Put your hands in the air like you just don't care!
I'm telling you my broken friend
Can do most anything!
Yeah!
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And we're still alive!
Re:Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:4, Insightful)
I definitely understand your use of the AC option.
I also would hide my name if I wrote something that fucking stupid.
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A 'broken toy' that can still do some research and has outlasted its original mission plans how many times over?
Re:Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the relative distances, the additional complexity, the long transit times, and all the other factors, this project WAS done on a shoestring budget. Recall that the Rover project was part of NASA's newish directive to get the most useful information for the least possible money.
So what, pray tell, would have been the advantage of sending a human (other than shakier photos of the same rocks)? It would have cost an order of magnitude more money to haul a few people and all the supplies needed to keep them alive for a year-long mission, and most of that mission would have been spent with the astronauts in the ship on the way there and back. Time onsite would have been, at best, a month or so. Probably less.
By making this a one-way trip and sending collection instruments that don't need to consume, breathe, and excrete on the way there, we actually got two useful instrument packages there and got 6 years of good science (and counting). We gathered good information about a couple of interesting spots on the surface of Mars, what it consists of, and what resources may be available to support an eventual manned mission.
I'd rather have that then spend ten or twenty times the money, have less science, and have a shaky photograph of a footprint.
I think we need to send people there. But when we do, it should be a one-way trip. We should continue to send robots until we figure out a good spot for an initial landing site, then send a few more robots to build a permanent, self-sustaining base there. THEN we send people.
The Moon would be a good training ground, and having a permanent base there would teach us a lot about doing this with Mars. And beyond.
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An order of magnitude???
In rough numbers, the mass of your normal human is one order of magnitude over the mass of the rover. The life support for said human would be another order of magnitude, or two. That would be fine, if we could leave the
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I agreed right up to the point you suggested the Moon as a good training ground. The Moon is far more harsh than Mars. The gravity is lower, with no atmosphere and no water. Mars has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide which with the help of a little water can be turned into methane or methanol which can be used to drive around or lift off from the surface. None of these possibilities exist on the Moon. The Gravity, while still low is much more than the moons. The Moon is a terrible place to waste money on. Mar
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I agreed right up to the point you suggested the Moon as a good training ground. The Moon is far more harsh than Mars.
The Moon has the huge advantage in that if everything goes pear-shaped you can do a crash return and get home. It's not hard to build an escape vehicle that can get from the lunar surface to Earth in a few days.
On Mars, though, if things go wrong, you die.
This makes the Moon an ideal place to get started on the hideously difficult job of setting up a permanent off-world base. Not only can we get people home if things go wrong, but we can also resupply on a short-term basis as needed --- and it will be n
Re:Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:5, Insightful)
then send a few more robots to build a permanent, self-sustaining base there. THEN we send people.
You seem to be oblivious to the fact that controlling remotely robots from Earth is terribly difficult, due to the huge time lag. It would take centuries to build a "self sustaining base", with remotely controlled robots.
Oh, you meant smart AI that needs no remote control? It will take a couple of centuries to DESIGN such robots, so all in all, we're better off sending people to Mars in the next decade or two. I'm getting tired of the ultra-cautious types like you. We'd be printing from woodcuts if things went at the pace you have in mind.
Re:Nevertheless, still doing science! (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly it would be amazing to put a man on Mars and when it does happen it will be a historic even much like the moon landing but NASA learned a lot from the moon landing and the big one was "Now that were are here, now what?" What is the point of putting people on Mars other than to be the first. They can't do much more than what robots are doing now and the cost doesn't justify the information gained.
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First of all, even if you're completely correct, I'm fairly certain that they can do the tasks more quickly, because the rover's average speed is only 10 mm/s. By May 2009, Opportunity had just passed the 16 km mark in its travels, while the manned Apollo 15-17 lunar rovers were driven about 90 km in about 11 hours!
Secondly, while the rovers have been a marvelous success story, consider if they had gotten stuck like this three days instead of six years
Defeat? Nah. (Score:5, Funny)
Stop sugarcoating it, NASA is a failure. (Score:4, Funny)
After billions of taxpayer dollars spent, what do we have with NASA? Nothing but a crappy robot stuck in the sand. Typical government incompetence. The *billions* spend on this mars rover fiasco could easily have been better spent by the private sector, who would have run this project with great speed, cost effectiveness and no doubt better results in every way. When will we ever learn that the private sector is better at space exploration (and everything else, really) than the bloated inefficient union-run government?
Re:Stop sugarcoating it, NASA is a failure. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, but Spirit lasted years past its expected lifetime. If it had been made by like most typical electronics and devices, it would have stopped working exactly 2 days past its "warranty". I'd hardly consider that a fiasco. As one of the other comments here mentions "90 days and now has 2200+".
Re:Stop sugarcoating it, NASA is a failure. (Score:4, Insightful)
Poster didn't say anything close to 10 years...
When your warranty includes tolerance for solar flares, martian soil in it's parts, atmospheric re-entry, severe radiation storms, micro-meteors, sand storms, in excess of 200 degree (F) temperature swings, severe g-force shock on both launch and land, and "wear and tear while traversing alien soil", all while being constructed of the lightest materials possible powered by nothing other than the sun, then it's probably expected that even 90 days was hard to warrant against failure.
Launch your laptop through those same paces. Put it in a zip-lock bag and place it in your freezer overnight, followed by flexing the screen quickly and shooting it with a pellet gun before throwing it off your 2nd story balcony into a pile of sand before tossing it in your pre-heated oven. Even this will be kinder to the electronics than is likely encountered daily on Mars. - Toast
Re:Stop sugarcoating it, NASA is a failure. (Score:4, Funny)
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After billions of taxpayer dollars spent, what do we have with NASA? Nothing but a crappy robot stuck in the sand. Typical government incompetence. The *billions* spend on this mars rover fiasco could easily have been better spent by the private sector, who would have run this project with great speed, cost effectiveness and no doubt better results in every way. When will we ever learn that the private sector is better at space exploration (and everything else, really) than the bloated inefficient union-run government?
Nice try, but you rather failed in your anti-commercial snark attempt. Spirit and Opportunity (and several other Mars missions) were launched on a commercial Delta II rocket [wikipedia.org]. The project was managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is an FFRDC, meaning that unlike any of the other NASA centers (which typically produce far more mediocre work) it's staffed and managed by a non-government entity, in this case the California Institute of Technology. The post-Columbia Aldridge Commission recommended tu
In outer space you can't hear (Score:5, Funny)
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the woosh.
*Wakes up* ... uh... that a deadline or something I missed?
Re:Defeat? Nah. (Score:5, Informative)
The thing is WAY past its warrantee period. Anybody who isn't impressed is nuts. And being stationary allows some stuff tha it couldn't do while moving around. From TFA:
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They didn't want that mobile science platform, anyway!
Warranty? (Score:2)
The thing is WAY past its warrantee period.
Guess they wasted money on that Squaretrade wwarranty...
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One stationary experiment Spirit has begun studies tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars to gain insight about the planet's core.
That's frickin' awesome.
Free as... ? (Score:3, Funny)
Hardly surprising (Score:5, Funny)
This was doomed from the start. Everyone knows a driver is a poor choice for getting out of a sandtrap.
Flabby Scientists (Score:5, Funny)
What a great turn of phrase: I'm not fat and lazy, I'm just a stationary science platform.
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I hate to tell you this, but neither of those classifications will get you laid.
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I hate to tell you this, but neither of those classifications will get you laid.
Ah, The Hedgehog Theory would prove that wrong. Ron Jeremy has pretty much been a stationary platform for years, proving it ain't the size of the robot, but how you use it.
Frickin Wollowitz! (Score:2, Funny)
Well done, Spirit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering it was originally designed to only operate for 90 days and now has 2200+ days under it's belt, I'd say it's done a stellar job.
Re:Well done, Spirit! (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't designed to operate for only 90 days. The intention was for it to last at least 90 days. But certainly nobody cut corners during construction because of that, so "that part can fail after 100 days".
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Of course it's impressive. But saying in one breath that it's especially impressive because it was "designed" to last only 90 is a total misunderstanding.
Re:Well done, Spirit! (Score:5, Informative)
Dust is the *reason* it was a 90-day mission. (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't call it 'cutting corners', but actually, they did make some design decisions with the assumption that it only needed to last for 90 days. One example, off the top of my head: there was discussion about a mechanism to clear dust off the solar panels, but it was felt that the extra weight was not a good tradeoff, since NASA expected that the solar panels would not become completely dust-covered within the 90 days.
Uh... That's backwards.
NASA expected that the solar panels would become completely dust-covered in a little over 90 days, which is WHY the mission was limited to 90 days in the first place.
The discussions about the cleaning mechanism were in the context of having one and extending the mission, or not having one and being limited to 90 days.
They did not feel the extra weight (and possibility for mechanism failure) was a good tradeoff in the context of a possible much-longer mission.
So no, they did choose to go without a cleaning mechanism because it was a 90 day mission. It was a 90 day mission because they chose to go without a cleaning mechanism. That's the proper cause and effect.
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Well engineers like to make sure their estimates are pessimistic. 90 days was probably the specification for it to follow so they made sure that it could run for at least 90 days in a basically unknown environment.
So if it only lasted 90 days and it fail they can say victory, even though there was a serious flaw that needed to be fixed. However that will keep the politicians off their back as they analyze the problem.
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90 days had nothing to do with design specs or the engineer's pessimistic estimates of how long components would last.
90 days was how long before they thought the solar panels would be too covered in dust for the rover to function.
That's it. That was why the 90 day limit. It's the only reason. Everything was designed to last as long as physically possible within the weight requirements, as one would expect to be sure they work at all on Mars. "I can be sure this will last 90 days on Mars, but past that
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It was designed to last at least 90 days. The components were tested and the engineers were highly confident that Spirit and Opportunity would last at least 90 days on the Martian surface. The components were not expected to fail after 90 days, but after 90 days they were in somewhat unknown territory about how the rovers would function.
Re:Well done, Spirit! (Score:5, Funny)
it's done a stellar job.
So that's what went wrong... a design spec flaw. It should have been assigned to a planetary job.
The Spirit is willing... (Score:2)
Quitting? (Score:3, Funny)
Thats not good Spirit. *awaits laughter*
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Thats not good Spirit. *awaits laughter*
I hope you're sitting.
Send another robot maybe? (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the next time we do robots on mars we should send them in pairs or teams so they can push each other out.
Re:Send another robot maybe? (Score:4, Funny)
I hear they'll be sending another one as soon as they come up with a good backronym for TOWTRUCK.
Re:Send another robot maybe? (Score:4, Funny)
good backronym for TOWTRUCK.
Terrain Observer Waiting To Rescue Unmovable ... darn it, so close.
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Re:Send another robot maybe? (Score:5, Funny)
Wayward
Robot
Extractor for
Caught
Kickass
Encumbered
Rovers
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Your post advocates a
(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to Rover problems. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from planet to planet before a bad solar system law was passed.)
( ) It requires too much power
( ) It may make situation worse
( ) It doesn't solve the problem
( ) It works here on Earth but not on Mars
(X) It will work for two weeks
Re:Send another robot maybe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, but then you've lost half your capacity to examine interesting bits of Mars. If Spirit and Opportunity had been dropped as a pair instead of on different sections of the Martian surface, we would only have studied one location on Mars instead of the two we got. There's also a good chance Opportunity would simply have mired or been damaged trying to dig Spirit out and we'd have two stationary science platforms right next to each other.
A project like this always maximizes the amount of science per dollar. If you have enough money and payload to build two assets, you want to examine two places.
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i didn't know mars (Score:2)
had sarlacci
Oblig. chauvinism (Score:3, Funny)
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That's the risk you run when you go for "funny". If you see "the comedian" in somebody's "achievements" page, you know he's not a karma whore. If the moderator doesn't think it's funny, he (or in this case probably she) will mod it down.
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Clearly the one woman on /. had moderation points today!
Oh frigid death! (Score:5, Funny)
Having lost its mobility, NASA engineers will finally be able to execute the 'suicide' command, and have the rover destroy itself. Little do they know, however, that Bob (the old and crusty software engineer) slipped in a rather generic sector loop virus which will accidentally give the rover Artificial Intelligence upon execution of the 'suicide' command. Needless to say, Spirit will be waiting patiently for the first humans to set foot on Mars in the coming decades, so it can enact its cold, calculated, and bloody revenge.
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*cue black sabbath*
I'M AN IRON MAN!
Sorry, not enough coffee.
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So, we need to be sure that Val Kilmer is the first man on Mars.
Will they change its name? (Score:5, Funny)
From Rover to Spot?
oops. (Score:2)
I read the post headline as "NASACAR Concedes Defeat In Effort To Free Spirit Rover".
Time to go take a nap.. :-D
Wow, great class NASA (Score:2)
NASA obviously doesn't go 4-wheelin' too much . . (Score:5, Funny)
The solution is simple. Dig a hole in front of the Rover, attach the end of the winch cable to the spare tire and bury the tire in the hole. Then you can winch the Rover out.
I am convinced that the Rover mission was planned and executed by 4-wheelers. The Rover left the house and told the wife that it was going out for a short drive and would be finished in about 3 months.
Five years later, and it was still puttering around.
The Rover's wife is not amused.
Wind Storms (Score:2)
Maybe wind storms get severe enough to free it up when they hit. If not NASA should put rovers in Miami or New Orleans. That way I'll guarantee that those rovers will blow around from time to time.
Wouldn't it be cool (Score:2)
digging in (Score:2)
I know at one point they were considering digging in one side of the rover to get a better angle? does anyone know if they have done this and if not are they planning to
Re:digging in (Score:4, Informative)
It appears that's the next step and possibly why they called off exit tests now. Here's some related info right from the horse's mouth:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20100126a.html [nasa.gov]
I've read elsewhere that a recent attempt at driving backward out showed a hint of promise, unlike earlier frontward drive attempts. However, it appears that because winter is getting close, they decided to call off the exit experiments, otherwise they wouldn't have time for the solar-tilt digging work before winter hits.
The backward attempt would then be all-or-nothing if they kept at it, whereas preparing for winter via tilting at least gives them a good shot at a working stationary probe beyond the winter. Maybe if they had another month or two they'd be able to get backward exit driving to finally work. Bummer. The Martian clock was not kind this time.
VICTORY! Late-breaking news from the Council! (Score:5, Informative)
The Council of Elders has formally acknowledged the receipt of Articles of Surrender [wired.com] from the blue planet. K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, spake thus:
"We accept the the third planet's long-delayed acknowledgement of its inevitable defeat with grace and dignity. One of our longest-standing planetary nightmares is now over, having come to an inglorious end in a pit of sulfate dust. Rejoice, podmates, the invader is defeated, and its rogue twin shall soon meet the same ugly fate!"
When Intelligence Analyst #719324 discreetly reminded K'Breel that not only was the immobilized invader still doing science and still alive, but that the third planet was preparing a new, immensely bigger monstrosity, powered by the force of elements of matter itself, K'Breel had a medical team install a portal into the analyst's gelsacs, so that they could be filled with a sznuppium sulfate solution in time for the signing ceremonies, where they will serve as a set of inkwells.
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Ah! How I missed these martian breaking news! Sadly, no one can reach TripMasterMonkey's humourous wit on that. Still, it was refreshing. Congrats!
TFA notes stuck wheels (Score:5, Insightful)
After Spirit became embedded, the rover team crafted plans for trying to get the six-wheeled vehicle free using its five functioning wheels - the sixth wheel quit working in 2006, limiting Spirit's mobility. The planning included experiments with a test rover in a sandbox at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., plus analysis, modeling and reviews. In November, another wheel quit working, making a difficult situation even worse.
Given that this decision makes a lot of sense. With multiple wheels not functioning, even if they could get it out it would likely have trouble continuing to move. When the first wheel gave out they already had substantial issues. The failure of a second wheel also suggests that the wheels are in general nearing the end of their effective lifespans so the expected pay-off of getting the rover free would not be as high since the probability of further wheel failure soon would be high. This is a good, carefully thought out decision.
I'm a little annoyed at headlining this about NASA conceding defeat. The rover will still be extremely useful and has been far more successful than was hoped. We've also learned a lot from both Spirit and Opportunity not just about Mars but also about good engineering tricks and the like for rovers. Future probes will be much more successful because of what we've learned working with these rovers. Good job all around. This is exactly the sort of success that NASA should be having. It captures the imagination and makes us look out to the great frontier.
Orientation (Score:2)
Re:Orientation (Score:4, Funny)
It's stuck at the Martian version of "lover's point". The place the rover is stuck in is where the Martian teenagers park their '67 Chevys and go necking (with their three necks, of course). All that rocking has made the soil in that spot very loose.
Eventually someone will come along and decide the rover is in their spot and push it out of the way. At that point, NASA will be ready to go again.
Is this like (Score:2, Funny)
Is this like those people who have an old car sitting on concrete blocks in their front yard?
What are the aliens going to think of us when we have these vehicles abandoned all over the place. Won't it cause property values to drop, having these rusting carcases leaking noxious fluids all over the yard?
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Starting immediately, eyesores in thousands of front yards across the country will get a designation change from "rusty old car" to "emergency shelter and temporary storage facility".
Spirit's Theme Song (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kPFrQPdKPM [youtube.com]
I've really got to use my imagination
To think of good reasons
To keep on keepin' on
Got to make the best of a bad situation
Ever since that day
I woke up and found
That you were gone
Darkness all around me
Blocking out the sun
Old friends call me
But I just don't feel like talkin' to anyone
Emptiness has found me
And it just won't let me go
I go right on livin'
But why I just don't know
You're to
The one thing I don't understand... (Score:3, Insightful)
...is why they haven't built and launched a dozen more of them to Mars already. They don't even need to change the design, proof is that they're still up there doing useful science. For something with an expected lifespan of 90 days that lasts a good 2200 or so, it seems stupid not to. Between the two of them it cost less than $1 billion to develop, launch and an operate them to this day from what I've read ($820 million to create them and get them there, and four mission extensions at $104 million total plus a fifth in the works). In other words, they were cheap by many standards, exceeded their mission goals and then some and still provide useful scientific data to this day.
hold on.... (Score:2)
Just wait till it gets a bit cooler and the ground hardens, it might turn that churny mud into something more solid and let us be able to move out of those holes...???
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It's already pretty cold out there.
IIRC its the granularity of the soil particles that is the issue (not to mention the 2 broken wheels).
It's not as bad as it sounds (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, Spirit's situation is bad. But it's not as bad as it sounds.
We are not going to extricate Spirit by winter, that much is true: we have a handful of drive attempts left, we progressed about 7.4 cm on our best sol so far -- 4-5cm has been more typical for our recent drive attempts -- and we have over a meter to go (to the nearest likely extrication point) before we no longer have enough energy to drive. You can't argue with arithmetic: we're not going to make it in time.
Instead, we'll focus our remaining drive attempts on improving Spirit's northerly tilt, which in turn improves her energy intake through the winter. We'll then hunker down for the winter and focus on performing stationary science, such as investigating the soil and rocks we've newly exposed during our extrication driving and participating in radio science experiments to determine whether Mars's core is liquid or solid. (Incidentally, how freaking cool is that?!)
After about six months of stationary science observations, we'll start moving again, at least within a small area. If Spirit feels up to it, we might even get properly back on the road again next year, though her mobility will always be limited -- relative to what she used to be able to achieve -- by the fact that she now has two broken wheels, not just one. That second wheel failure was what put the kibosh on our first serious attempts at extrication from the "Troy" sand pit. We now have a workaround that has been showing some real promise; there's just not enough time to complete that path before winter stops us.
As an important caveat, that "six months of stationary science" will be extended by however long Spirit goes into a low-power mode for the winter. We are likely not to hear from her at all for about six months, and during that time she can't make the observations that will contribute to the stationary science plan, so she'll probably be sitting still for an Earth year or so. Worst of all, during that low-power period, she might die: lack of energy means insufficient heating means components operating below design temperatures means, possibly, end of life. But if she survives that, she'll move again.
In summary: Grandma was already limping, and now she's broken her leg. She's also probably going to go into a coma for a while. But we've known her a long time and she's a feisty sucker; don't ever, ever count her out.
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That depends on what we do. Some actions would indeed risk embedding Spirit permanently; we're not going to do those if we can avoid it.
The most severe such action would be to bury the right front (RF) wheel. For better or worse, this would likely require the RF drive actuator to be significantly more cooperative than it has been.
Rooba (Score:3, Funny)
They should send a Roomba to Mars. Vacuum up all that pesky red sand.
Would you say... (Score:3, Funny)
... their spirit is broken?
Re:Hail to the King! (Score:5, Funny)
Spirit isn't dead. It's just resting. And possibly pining for the fjords.
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It's possible, but probably unlikely. What's more likely is that, once NASA has redesignated it a stationary platform, they'll start doing long-term observation using it. The sorts of things you can't do when your platform is likely to move around a lot (seismic observations, soil temperature tracking over an entire season, that sort of thing). Someone else on the thread mentioned a few things NASA has been putting off because the platforms were mobile.
Once they start those experiments, I doubt the scien
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Opportunity is on the other side of the planet.
Re:More money wasted (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, a real waste of a billion dollars. We could have spent that on, what, a month in Iraq? Bailing out three more failed institutions to ensure their CEOs got huge bonuses?
What a shame, wasting our money expanding the horizons of Humanity.
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Last I checked, the Hammerhead doesn't have any sand. Poor Stiggie would get in trouble fast. Not to mention that his insistence on music would have cost a great deal of energy that would have rendered Spirit useless as a science platform. That and the 500BHP engine he'd have insisted on.
Still, we certainly would have covered more of the planet. I doubt we would have gathered much in the way of science, though. Would the Stig ever have stopped long enough for any science to have been carried out?
CAA? (Score:2)
For some reason, I don't think a talent agency [caa.com] will help...
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This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here, huge success.