Mars Rover Rolls And Turns 339
hcg50a writes "MSNBC reports that overnight, 'the golfcart-sized rover cut the final cord tying it to the landing platform that it came in on 10 days ago, then backed up about 10 inches (25 centimeters) and turned 45 degrees. These were the first maneuvers planned in preparation for having Spirit roll 10 feet (3 meters) down a ramp onto the Martian surface on Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.' The NASA Mars rover website has complete animations from numerous cameras of the 45-degree turn. Driver training was never this cool!"
Fer fook's sake! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! Metrics! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! Metrics! (Score:3, Funny)
I bet Nasa uses metric. You can't say "within hollerin' distance" in space, because in space no can hear you scream (or holler).
Re:Wow! Metrics! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! Metrics! (Score:2)
Down with Imperial units! Metric now!
Re:Wow! Metrics! (Score:5, Interesting)
More steps, arcane conversion factors to remember, lots more chances to screw up.
How many cubic inches in a gallon? Shit, I don't know. How many cubic centimeters in a litre? 1000. Everything's a power of 10. Doesn't get any easier than that.
It gets worse when you're outside of familiar measurement units. When you start talking about slugs, even a farm-raised midwest american boy like me thinks "OK, that's a unit of mass, not weight, so it's converted to grams."
I am immersed in imperial measurements, and don't have an intuitive feel for metric, but I know that if the US switched and it was full immersion, within a year I'd be thinking in metric. The problem is, you can't do full immersion, because people will always speak in the language that they know. The problem is, even future generations will not switch, because the US is big enough that they never have to deal with metric except as a curiosity in school.
Re:Wow! Metrics! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm Canadian and have never known anything but metric. We were taught it in grade school. But I still tell people my height in feet and inches and my weight in pounds. I order meat from the supermarket in pounds too and the clerks don't ask me to repeat my order in kilograms. We still measure first downs in yards and photo sizes in inches. In fact, I just returned to school to study graphic ar
Re:Wow! Metrics! (Score:2)
Re:YHBT (Score:2)
Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:4, Funny)
"Hey, this gizmo thingy is pretty nifty."
"You shouldn't fiddle with that, its highly delica-"
"Dude, this thing has fourwheel drive! Can I go offroad? Please?"
"Damnit, you can't just wa-"
"Watch me do a barrel roll! Weeeee!!!"
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh shit, I just ran over a Beagle"...
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:5, Funny)
Great. We're not on Mars yet and it's already gone to the dogs.
Soko
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:5, Funny)
I'd say this is about as far "off road" as you're gonna get.
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:2, Funny)
speaking of off-roading... here's hoping they didn't use firestone tires.
"Ummm... well, Boss... it appears we lost a little tread and blasted back into orbit."
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:2)
Shouldn't that be sixwheel drive?
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:2, Funny)
No.
Are we there yet?
No!
Re:Parallel parking is worth ten points (Score:2)
sounds like a Zim plot to me.
Shit... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shit... (Score:2)
But a headline consisting of Mars Rover Turns wouldn't really be a headline, would it!
Re:Shit... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, that can be a good thing.... (Score:2)
Re:Shit... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Shit... (Score:2)
that would be cubic meters
linux at nasa (Score:5, Interesting)
here [nasa.gov] is the image.
-bk.
Re:linux at nasa (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:linux at nasa (Score:2)
The video from the control room clearly shows a number of Sun Workstations (or at least Sun-branded monitors.) The personnel were also using quite a number of Titanium PowerBooks, incidentally. Gee, what's missing from this picture? Moral: when it really counts, use a Unix based OS.
Re:linux at nasa (Score:2)
Re:linux at nasa (Score:5, Informative)
Re:linux at nasa (Score:3, Informative)
Re:linux at nasa (Score:3, Interesting)
could be any *nix (Score:2)
Re:Looks like Windows to me (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter what linux GUI designers try, they'll be criticised.
ignorant but curious... (Score:5, Interesting)
Reasons why it takes so long (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, this is a fair question. Here are four big reasons.
1. As soon as it disembarks, there are hundreds of new risk factors that come up. So they want to make sure that if anything fails (e.g. airbag catches a wheel and knocks it over, breaking off the high gain antenna), at least they've gotten something for their incredible effort.
2. They ARE conducting scientific experiments while it is safely on the lander. It is furthermore slightly elevated and able to take panoramic photos from a position it will not again regain when on ground level.
3. Getting off the lander is DELICATE. There is a ~10 minute communications lag, which means ~20 minutes to give a command and see the results. This means everything must be done very carefully and very cautiously to make sure each minor step went off perfectly.
4. If they did it quickly and something broke, every "genius" on the internet would be saying how stupid NASA was for rushing ahead and how they never get anything right and were just trying to get publicity and blah blah blah blah blah. So let them do it the right way so the mission is a success.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) [axonchisel.net].
Re:Reasons why it takes so long (Score:5, Interesting)
If I were them I wouldn't want to take any more risks than necessary until after the second lander is safely down, and of course there is a significant chance that it will vanish and never be heard from just like the Beagle2. With all the work that went into this thing they have every right to be cautious.
Re:Reasons why it takes so long (Score:2)
There's no need for that anymore. Today's command protocols are pretty much bulletproof, and you can also send up a whole bunch of commands ahead of time as command macros .
Re:Reasons why it takes so long (Score:2)
-aiabx
Re:ignorant but curious... (Score:3, Informative)
Firstly, going through engineering logs sent from the lander/rover. Every move, every action has to be verified and checked to make sure all went to plan. You can't just rely on a camera for that. You need sensor feedback, etc.
Secondly, they have to survey the area to pick out possible travel routes and areas of interest.
Remember, before they landed they had a -general- idea of where the lander was going to end up, but could only verify and pinp
Re:ignorant but curious... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ignorant but curious... (Score:2)
Re:ignorant but curious... (Score:2)
If you had a four-hundred-million-dollar car, you'd drive carefully, too. Especially if the nearest mechanic were a hundred million miles away.
I guarantee you we're every bit as eager to get driving as you are. Have patience, friend. We're doing science already, and we're only about one more day away from egress.
Re:ignorant but curious... (Score:2)
Drivers ed. (Score:5, Funny)
If NASA failed this driving test it would be huge waste of resources. How could they ever live it down? Imagine the headline:
"Rover drives off the side of ramp, breaks off two wheels, and a solar panel."
And the story afterward!
"Felix Milton man in charge of rover navigation watched in horror as the picture feed reached earth. "The rover wheel slipped off the side of the ramp due to some... er.. martian dust," Milton reported. All in all the rover took a five meter trip, and then reported fell 25 cm to the unforgiving martian ground. NASA spokesmen report the trip took 8 agonizing minutes to reach its conclusion. "
Ahh well I hope its fun for them, expensive remote control toy if you ask me. I hope we get solid answers for the questions this project was sent to investigate.
Re:Drivers ed. (Score:2, Informative)
Grandma (Score:5, Funny)
nice big ass picture (Score:2)
Question.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Question.. (Score:5, Funny)
So disgusting, even dirt crawls away.
Re:Ground disturbance (Score:5, Interesting)
Further out, there are numerous marks where the lander bounced during its landing stage and the airbags deformed the soil from impacts.
So basically, as far as I can tell, all the markings are from the airbag, either bouncing or scraping on the surface.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) [axonchisel.net].
Re:Question.. (Score:2)
Re:Question.. (Score:2, Informative)
To use an analogy, if you're standing up and looking straight ahead, you can't see your shoes.
Unless you're Ronald McDonald, of course.
Re:Question.. (Score:2)
There are a couple of likely bounce marks in Sleepy Hollow. Look approximately in the current egress direction, straight up from the rover's right "wing" in the panorama. The dark circular features are where the airbags disturbed the soil (or this is the current belief, at any rate).
There's another one just above the tip of the right "wing."
You can see a few more in the panorama, but the locations are harder to describe.
Re:kilometers? (Score:2)
NASA writes "kilometers" instead of "km" because they are trying to target as wide of an audience as possible, and there still are many people in the US who have NO IDEA that "km" means "kilometer."
Re:Question.. (Score:2)
What happened to Beagle? (Score:5, Informative)
It says that the atmosphere was much thinner than expected, because of a dust storm. NASA changed the chute to deploy earlier because of this, but even with this adjustment the chute opened a mile lower than expected. As far as I know Beagle's chute deployment was never adjusted for the thinner atmosphere, so maybe that explains why they haven't heard from it
Re:What happened to Beagle? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What happened to Beagle? (Score:4, Informative)
Spirit did however use rockets to slow the descent horizontaly and verticaly just before the rover was released from the chutes. (See the Spirit animation for a cool view of that) If they hadn't used the rockets the airbag might have popped and Spirit would certainly have bounced and rolled much farther. I don't know if Beagle used any retrorockets, and if they didn't Beagle might have skipped and bounced into a crater.
Re:What happened to Beagle? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/sta
"Meanwhile, two changes have been made. Spirit will unfurl its parachute two seconds sooner than originally planned to compensate for current Martian weather conditions.
"A dust storm seen on the other side of the planet has caused global heating and thinning of the atmosphere at high altitudes," said Mark Adler, the rover mission manager for cruise and entry, descent and landing (EDL)."
The question is: Did Beagle also make this adjustment?
The perils of creationism (Score:4, Funny)
"Kathy Sarvak of Burlington, Vt., points out that European Space Agency's "Beagle 2," named in honor of Charles Darwin's vessel, failed at Mars while NASA's "Spirit," with its quasi-religious name, succeeded. "God's sense of humor is a wonderful thing," she declares."
Personally, I am shocked and appalled that our NASA technicians are giving quasi-religious names to scientific equipment. This shows no faith in reason and deduction. It would not surprise me if the data from Spirit is cooked up by creationists in the Bush administration to shore up their own wacky beliefs.
I hope NASA's scientists use more common sense next time.
Re:The perils of creationism (Score:5, Interesting)
And I quote from the winning child's essay that named the rovers:
I used to live in an Orphanage.
It was dark and cold and lonely.
At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better.
I dreamed I could fly there.
In America, I can make all my dreams come true.....
Thank-you for the "Spirit" and the "Opportunity"
-Sofi Collis, age 9
Heaven forbid that NASA names the rovers after the things that make America great. Oops...probably shouldn't have mentioned Heaven
Re:The perils of creationism (Score:2)
Re:The perils of creationism (Score:2)
GOD Bless America!!!!! We Remember 9/11!!!!!!!
ETC!!!!! ETC!!!!!!!
Things that make America great (Score:2)
Like "Shock" and "Awe?"
(Things that make America "Great" as in "the Great Tzar of Russia" or "the Great San Francisco Earthquake.")
Re:The perils of creationism (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The perils of creationism (Score:2, Funny)
The next two rovers we're planning on sending are "player" and "bacardi 151".
Re:The perils of creationism (Score:2, Insightful)
Faith, huh?
Re:Jenkins' Supplement to Godwin`s Law (Score:2, Interesting)
That aside, people can occasionally come to rational conclusions about politics. It just doesn't happen very often.
More: Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) (Score:5, Informative)
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) [axonchisel.net].
Spammers Using Mars Rover as Relay (Score:5, Funny)
Spammers Using Mars Rover as Relay [bbspot.com]
"NASA engineers first became aware the issue when the images of the Martian landscape from the pancam started to resemble hot young girls"br>
"NASA promised to track down the people responsible. "Please send to us any spam you receive originating from the '@spirit.mars' address, so we can track down the offending spammers. Don't forget to include the pictures too,"
Oh wow the world is going on a big road trip. (Score:2)
BigTrak! (Score:3, Funny)
Whoop Whoop. (Score:2, Funny)
Martian Highway Patrol (MHP): Whoop Whoop! Pull over!
Rover: Wirrrr Click
MHP: You got a license for that thing?
Rover: Wirrrrrrrr Click Click Zoommm
MHP: Funny guy eh? (pulls ray-gun(tm))
Rover: !
ZAP!
90 days (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:90 days (Score:5, Informative)
And before anyone says; it's unlikely that just tilting the panels will shift it as it'll be held in place electrostatically. Also, there aren't any "wipers" - more possible failures and the dust is likely to scratch the panels if wiped.
And finally; the data gathered in those 90 days will take years to process and study anyway.
Re:90 days (Score:2)
"Hey, dusy solar panels, mister. Let me just give them a quick wipe"
Re:90 days (Score:3, Informative)
Unless it could fly with an RTG (Radio-isotope Thermal Generator), which adds to the weight and danger at launch, there isn't really much that NASA can do.
Re:90 days (Score:2)
I believe that another limiting factor is that Mars seasonal changes will increasingly decrease the amount of time the sun will be able to charge the solar panels. So, it will be getting colder, and draw more power to keep it's components heated, just as it begins to create less and less power.
Naturally, that's not as much of an issue with orbiters.
Re:90 days (Score:3, Informative)
(Not to mention the heat from that mighty 20 Mhz radiation-hardened PPC running the thing.
Lots of Reasons (Score:2)
It should also be pointed out that this thing is a hellva lot more complex than any run of the mill satelite aro
Why can't the lander survive longer? (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be really great for slashdot to have a Q&A with the Mars rover designers and engineers. I'd love to ask questions about the type of CPU/OS used. How the optics differ from your standard digital camera (other than being expensive and high quality) and so forth. Anybody want to second that? There is some information on the engineering specs, but it's very spotty it seems and hard to find!
Either survival, or limited continued operation (Score:5, Informative)
As some of the other posters have remarked, the major problems are:
First the science boom wouldn't deploy properly, then the primary radio receiver failed, leaving NASA with a backup receiver that also was a bit flakey, and along the way more things started to go awry (like to camera-platform movement started to become really limited at a certain point).
Nonetheless, the Voyagers are still used as science intruments: currently, they are taking measurements of the interplanetary magnetic field, plasma, and charged particle environment while searching for the heliopause. They function as mankind's most distant sensors in this respect.
In fact, this kind of limited operation isn't strange to NASA: many probes first serve an extended mission after the primary mission has ended, and then limited operation may continue until the probe fails altogether (e.g. ca. 2015 for the Voyagers).
So in fact, when Spirit isn't able to drive anymore, we may still use its camera and other instruments to gather as much data on the surrounding soil as possible. Still later, when available power has dwindled to such an extent that even the advanced camera's can't be used anymore, we could still use the temperature sensors. Finally, when the high gain antenna fails, the mission might be over altogether, or they might still use the low gain antenna, until, finally, Spirit reaches the end of its agony and dies a slow electronic death.
I do agree fully with the parent on that we should organize a Q&A on this. How do we set this in motion?
Re:Why can't the lander survive longer? (Score:2)
See page 45, last paragraph, of the linked PDF. For those PDF weinies out there, here's what it reads:
The computer in each Mars Exploration Rover runs with a 32-bit Rad 6000 microprocessor, a radiation-hardened version of the PowerPC chip used in some models of Macintosh computers, operating at a speed of 20 million instructions per second. Onboard memory includes 128 megabytes of random access memor
You can see the engineers now! (Score:2, Funny)
"Hey, Phil! How long's the dorsal solar panel s'posed ta be?"
"10 feet, Bob."
"We ain't as'posed ta use feet nomore. What's that in meters?"
"Well, let's see. Darth Vader is 2 meters tall, and this is definitely bigger than him, but shorter than an Olympic swimming pool, which is fifty. 3 meters, Bob."
NASA drinking game (Score:2)
Re:NASA drinking game (Score:2)
> get stuck on something, take a drink.
Maybe the guys sending commands to the rover should play this game, that would liven things up a little!
I want to see the rover doing a few handbrake turns and Dukes Of Hazzard style jumps off crater edges.
If only there were a few gratuitous stacks of empty cardboard boxes and fruit stalls to aim at...
fast site (Score:2)
Large QTVR of the Spirit Panorama Images (Score:3, Informative)
Infrastructure? (Score:2)
Re:Latest Mars images available thru apt-get (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Latest Mars images available thru apt-get (Score:5, Informative)
This is a complete fake. Neither host nor domain exist, nor is the information sufficient to populate a sources.list (the file isn't even called apt.sources), and the apt-get update command doesn't accept a package name, either.
sigh
Re:Latest Mars images available thru apt-get (Score:2)
At least you didn't find a gaping red hole.
I would call it a good day.
Re:Latest Mars images available thru apt-get (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:But OS X users can download Maestro (Score:2)
Re:Remember! Don't drink and drive. (Score:2)
Uncle Jimbo: Now boys, boys, I, I need to get serious for a minute. I want you to understand a few basic rules of interplanetary rover RC, since this is your first time. First, don't ever walk with your gun unless the safety's on. Second, don't shoot anything that looks martian and third, never spill your beer on the mission control computer.
Peter Theisinger: Uh, Uncle Jimbo, we don't drink beer.
Uncle Jimbo: You what?!?
Ned: Moh yeh, that's right, I don't think geeks drink beer, mmm.
Jan Chodas: I like chocol
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:5, Insightful)
Updates on the progress of the rover are NEW, and they are NEWS. I completely understand if you don't find it interesting, but in that case why do you click on the headlines, read the stories, and post about them? Just ignore them.
--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
Mars Exploration Rover Highlights (AXCH) [axonchisel.net].
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Am I the only one? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Am I... (Score:2)
What sort of sad geeks are we?
Re:paint drying (Score:2, Informative)
"...and the $600 toilet seat..."
It wasn't a "toilet seat" like you have in your bathroom. It was a fiberglass enclosure for a chemical toilet unit installed in an ORION C-3 aircraft. The seat was an integral part of the enclosure.
It cost ~US$600 due to the fact that there were less than 50 needed and as such, were essntially handmade by skilled craftsmenn/women.
It was more cost effective to have them handmade, rather than set up a factory assembly line or some other automated set up.
There