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Space Science

Mars Rovers Still Going Strong, Mission Extended 165

Posted by michael from the a-okay dept.
Loconut1389 writes "The Mars rovers' missions have been extended from 90 days to about 250 and have been upgraded with some new software to give them extended single run distances as well as other features. Yahoo has a similar article, also at Reuters. I think it's great that these initially plagued robots are doing more than expected and are still going strong, mostly thanks to engineers figuring out how to make the most of the software and hardware onboard and figuring out how to diagnose an unfunctioning, unresponding machine millions of miles away. The whole project amazes me and I'm happy for NASA to be getting some good news for a change."
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Mars Rovers Still Going Strong, Mission Extended More

Mars Rovers Still Going Strong, Mission Extended

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  • View as they View (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:11AM (#8829743)
    My whole kid's class is using Maestro [telascience.org] to view the Mars photos in a similiar fashion to the NASA engineers.

    Great science... and great learning as well. It's java driven... and crunches older computers. However, it really shows the excellent work that we are doing there.

    AC

    • Re:View as they View (Score:5, Informative)

      by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:38PM (#8831199)
      My whole kid's class is using Maestro to view the Mars photos in a similiar fashion to the NASA engineers.

      Wow, really glad to hear that! I'm one of the Maestro developers and I am very proud to see it being used in educational settings. Don't forget that you can also build mockup activity plans in the very same way that the scientists do! It's more than just an image browser :)

      Great science... and great learning as well. It's java driven... and crunches older computers. However, it really shows the excellent work that we are doing there.

      Sorry about the speed, the main problem is that in order to handle certain real-time image processing (band arithmetic, mosaic warping, image rescaling, anaglyphs) etc, we had to use an architecture that burns significant RAM. The data sets are huge and you wouldn't believe what's going on behind the scenes. Also I believe that on the network at JPL most operations are IO bound so making the code faster would not speed the application for the scientists.

      Much of this is because we weren't able to spend much time on the public version of our tool due to funding reasons. If you like this kind of software and want to see more of it, write to NASA and ask that they fund it. It's part of NASA's mission, to inspire the next generation to explore and to take part in science and engineering.

      If you email maestro@telascience.org today I'll get you more info on how to do this.

      Glad to see you're enjoying the software, and I hope your kid's class now has a better understanding of what it's like to explore mars.

      Cheers,
      Justin Wick
      Maestro/Science Activity Planner Developer
      Mars Exploration Rovers

      • Re:View as they View (Score:3, Insightful)

        by sahonen ( 680948 )
        Your sig should say "Karma: Insanely Great, because I work at NASA and deserve it."

        Stuff like what you guys do is why every kid wants to be an astronaut until the school system beats all their creativity, curiosity and ambition out of them.
        • Your sig should say "Karma: Insanely Great, because I work at NASA and deserve it."

          Ha, well it's true that NASA has definitely increased my Karma quite a bit (see this post [slashdot.org]) working there is quite reward enough. It's a privilege to be paid by the taxpayers to help understand the universe better (especially our little corner!)

          Stuff like what you guys do is why every kid wants to be an astronaut until the school system beats all their creativity, curiosity and ambition out of them.

          Yes, it would be ni
          • ...okay spelling is important but that's about it...

            Actually, you should remember Thos. Jefferson's words, "I have nothing but contempt for a man you can spell a word in but one way."

  • It's amazing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:15AM (#8829751)
    How even though given the anti-intellectual culture of the US we are still the only ones able to land this very successful rover, and I feel the world actually respects the US for it(almost makes up for the other stuff), unfortunately, unless we get more kids interested in science, and more funding for research, the rest of the world will quickly catch up and surpass the US. Hopefully having this mission be more than anyone ever imagined, it will counteract both of these things.

    • The real problem is ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:40AM (#8829796)
      The thing that keeps us ahead of the rest of the world is innovation. As long as our kids grow up thinking they can do anything, we're ok. If we let the safety grannies and lawsuit lotteries prevail, then we're sunk.

      American education has, in my lifetime, been a lot less rigorous than European or Asian education. Don't play Trivial Pursuit with a German. Don't argue about equations with a Japanese engineer. Yet most of the innovation has come from the USA.

      Our success has mostly to do with freedom. Our real enemies are things like software patents and DMCA.

      • Re:The real problem is ... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I have to disagree on that, it's not the freedom that makes the USA the innovator no.1, it's the money. For research you need a lot of money, that's a fact, without research no innovation. If the EU would agree on a similar mission on mars, and have the money to do it, they would be able to do it as well. Another part is that many engineers and researchers are not educated in the USA, i think about a third of all phd positions iirc. Another problem which complicates the whole thing is that many big compa
        • You are both right. The money comes from the freedom. Liberty is the solution to the human condition.
        • I believe Einstein, when asked why he got involved with physics, said, "It's all about the Benjamins!"

          Yup, good ol' American greed is what drove every scientist to pursue their careers. That's why we have researchers earning seven figure incomes.

          And who can forget the contributions of private companies like the DARPA corporation to the innovations in computer technology and the Internet.

          Thank god none of the innovations we take for granted today were funded by governement programs. Or for that matter s
        • Money buys the engine, sure I think we all agree with that, but our dreams are the fuel that make it go.

          In the US, you're free to dream, and there's money to make your dreams go.

          But, we'll not keep a monopoly on that for long, which is a good thing.

          -ave

      • Re:The real problem is ... (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Don't play Trivial Pursuit with a German. Don't argue about equations with a Japanese engineer.

        I have done both of these things and won. Education is a tool; you can do as much or as little as you want with it. The engineering education that I received (admittedly, 30 years ago) was as rigorous as any that I compared notes with from European engineers. I have worked with many foreign engineers that I wouldn't accept on any team that I was a part of and I have worked with some that I respected and admired.

      • foreign education + immigration = USA innovation (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Myrmidon ( 649 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:07PM (#8830976)

        American education has, in my lifetime, been a lot less rigorous than European or Asian education. Don't play Trivial Pursuit with a German. Don't argue about equations with a Japanese engineer. Yet most of the innovation has come from the USA.


        Yeah, that's because both the German trivia master and the Japanese engineer are living in the USA and are working for innovative American companies and universities.

        Or at least, they were back in the 20th century. Now the Department of Homeland Bureaucracy imposes vast amounts of red tape on foreign nationals. (Don't you dare go home to Germany for a visit - you might not be allowed back into the US.) Meanwhile, foreigners (as well as American citizens) can be imprisoned without trial. And the President has declared war on stem cell research.

        I wonder which nation will become known for innovation in the 21st century?
      • While I agree that software patents and DMCA are enemies to future success. I think the education needs to improve drastically. We've been coasting on the fact that the US has a combination of better political freedoms and a better ideology about work and innovation than most of its competitors. Eventually, if China or India really become as free as the US, or Europe or Japan wins out against their unions, then we'll be screwed. Our kids won't have the smarts and the immigrants who have helped power our suc

    • Re:It's amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @08:14AM (#8829850) Journal
      How even though given the anti-intellectual culture of the US we are still the only ones able to land this very successful rover
      I think one of the factors contributing to the success of the US, is the mindset of its people. Unlike most other countries, the US is a 'nation of winners' as someone put it once, where people celebrate success, are proud of their achievements, and not afraid to be #1. (disclaimer: yes, it's a generalisation, not all Americans are like that, and these qualities can be found in people of other nations as well).

      Americans have the will to risk money and lives on visionary stuff, on going somewhere first. Looking in and around my own country in Europe, I do not see this drive for success. We'd rather spend our money on health care, railroads, and other such mundane things. We do not have grand visions, and if anything, success is scorned. "These people may be sooo proud of their little rover, but they still shit the same color as we all do. They're no better than us". Discuss the history of our country with others, and everyone will focus on the bad stuff (slavery and such), on how much we suck, rather than the things we did well (and our country has plenty to be proud of). Such a nation will never put anything on Mars.

      There are other nations with the drive to go to Space, though. They have some catching up to do in terms of technology, and they are certainly not as rich as the US, but they'll get there.

      • Re:It's amazing (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ninejaguar ( 517729 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @11:01AM (#8830536)
        Looking at the amazing inventions, discoveries and adventurers from Europe, particularly during the Victorian and Edwardian eras, gives me the impression that the Europeans have the "Right Stuff" too. The problem may very well be that those inventors, discoverers, and adventurers weren't hampered by legalities and red tape as they are now. Also, America wasn't ravaged by two great wars. Sadly, even without the wars, America has been heading the way of stagnanation in creativity due to legalities and red-tape (patents and lawsuits are only symptoms of the problem).

        Despite not having the same rigorous educational system, when Europe passed the torch to America, our creativity (which was also present during Europe's creative height) is what kept us ahead of other countries where governments kept tighter control over their citizens' behavior. We've proven that it isn't Math or Science that gives a country an advantage, it's the creative use of them, even if your average citizenry shows lower math and science proficiency than in other countries. However, in this current American era (really quite short in European standards of achievement), control appears to be more important than independent thought and invention. Unfortunately, control stifles creativity, just as it stifles liberty.

        = 9J =

      • Re:It's amazing (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Phisbut ( 761268 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @11:38AM (#8830761)
        Americans have the will to risk money and lives on visionary stuff, on going somewhere first.

        The NASA is american, granted. However, just because the NASA succeeded in something, it doesn't mean that it's an all american success. NASA is just a name, the name of a group of people. It's the people inside NASA that count. And somewhat (not based on any real numbers, they didn't allow me to walk in there to count heads), I doubt that every single engineer or other innovative guy in NASA is american.

        Just because something happens in the US, the Americans take it for their own and tell the whole world they were the first one to do it. What happens really is someone thinks of something (either an american or someone from anywhere else in the world), then the United States have the money to do what the guy was thinking about, and all of a sudden, it's American Genius at work.

        The USA were the first country in the whole world to have the technology to build and use an atomic bomb. But did the americans have any idea on how to build one and how to use the energy that was concealed in atoms and such? It was all Albert Einstein, a German. A guy from Germany had the brains to innovate, and the US had the money to make it happen, without caring about the consequences (that we all know today).

        There are other nations with the drive to go to Space, though. They have some catching up to do in terms of technology, and they are certainly not as rich as the US, but they'll get there.

        Fighting or running a race to figure out who can reach Mars first is ridiculous. When a scientist from another country (with some exceptions) figures out he could help mankind set foot on Mars (or anywhere else in the universe), he doesn't try to start his own space program in his country. He goes to NASA, which can provide the funds, and then works there with a whole bunch of other geniuses. He does that because he doesn't care that the piece of metal he'll be shooting up comes from the USA, from Canada, from Spain, from China or whatever. He just wants to help mankind achieve something.

        When Christopher Columbus came to America, he was from Spain. When Jacques-Cartier came to America, he was from France. From one continent to another, it's on the same scale. But when someone goes to Mars, whoever that is will be coming from Earth, not from the USA, or from Russia, or anywhere else. When we meet a martian, we won't tell him "Hi, I come from Canada", he won't care what a country is. We'll tell him "Hi, I come from Earth, that big rock over there".

        For years and years, we've been saying that in the end, we're all the same no matter where we come from, we're all human beings. When it comes to space exploration, it can only be more true. We are not americans or canadians or french or japanese, we are earthlings.

        • We Americans have the only 12 people (or Earthicans) to ever set foot on the Moon! Yep... there are 6, count them, 6 American flags on the Moon. (Along with at least 6 Lander Platforms and 3 Lunar Rovers!)

          You know what, I'm proud of that fact. ;-)

          "We came in peace for ALL mankind."

          Bill

        • For years and years, we've been saying that in the end, we're all the same no matter where we come from, we're all human beings. When it comes to space exploration, it can only be more true. We are not americans or canadians or french or japanese, we are earthlings.

          Yes! Even just living in a different country (as I've done in moving to Japan from the US) really brings this point home. People, cultures are different--and that's good! variety is the spice of life and all that--but everybody shares the sa

    • Re:It's amazing (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not really, you have loads of failed missions under your belts, this just happens to be two (and one design) that has gone right.

      Think of the US as a western-european nation, times 5. I'd actually expect far more from the US.

      This 'freedom' reason for innovation is rubbish, Americans seem to think they're the only 'free nation' in the world, when in fact nations have been 'free' for hundreds of years before America existed. It comes down to money - the US has a bigger population and a bigger economy, more

    • Re:It's amazing (Score:1, Troll)

      by Ilgaz ( 86384 )
      Watching blown up mosques etc in Iraq and dead civilians, I don't care a shit about whether you go to Mars or Mercury or even Pluto, I don't respect you.

      Also World doesn't.

      Poor JFK shouldn't have get killed.

    • "How even though given the anti-intellectual culture"

      -- the rover is more about science, engineering and pioneering than it is about anything intellectual.

    • Re:It's amazing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sugar and acid ( 88555 )
      America has money which helps a lot. This is apparent right through funding for science, not just the big ticket items like space exploration. This money attracts many bright people from other countries to america to tap into these funding sources. Space exploration costs 100's of millions of dollars to do anything at all, most other single countries don't have the size of economies to fund these types of endeavors so they concentrate in other areas, or piggy back on american missions (like the ill-fated be
      • America has money which helps a lot.

        I hate to shock ya, but where do you think that money came from? That's right, the rest of the world loaned it to America. Oh by the way, you don't appear to have any means of paying it back, and the debt is getting bigger and bigger every year. Eventually the foreign banks / bond investors will have had enough, and Bad Things will be happening to the USA, and oh how the trailer parks will resound with the cries of uneomployed pizza delivery boys. Of course, a nation f

  • unfunctioning, unresponding? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sapgau ( 413511 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:15AM (#8829753) Journal
    I don't think you understand how these robots actually work. They could not have been debugged and fixed if they were "unfunctioning" or "unresponding".

    • I don't think you understand how these robots actually work. They could not have been debugged and fixed if they were "unfunctioning" or "unresponding".

      The unfunctioning and unresponding rover would be the Beagle [beagle2.com], the British one that disappeared without a trace...

      IIRC, these have just had some minor obstacles to overcome... perhaps the poster of the article is just confused. =P

      • no confusion, perhaps just bad word choice. All i meant was that the rover wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing, ie moving around, radioing back, etc (unfunctioning) and wasnt responding at all. They had to know what to send to it and hope that it got it and did what they told it to without getting any feedback. Its pretty hard to debug a system that won't even chirp at you.

    • Re:unfunctioning, unresponding? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by snake_dad ( 311844 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:49AM (#8829803) Homepage Journal
      There's more he got wrong. Plagued? One filesystem bug on Spirit and one broken heater on Opportunity (it can't be turned off), and one or two communication issues. Pretty impressive too me, on such complex systems.

      The flight software update is not done yet, it will take 4 days to upload. Spirit should reboot and run the new software monday or tuesday, Opportunity shortly after that. I'd expect them to wait with the Opportunity reboot until they've seen it succeed on Spirit.

      Some good news finally? What about Stardust? A huge success. Cassini/Huygens? Going great. Spitzer Space Telescope doing just fine, MESSENGER about to be launched to Mercury. Let's stop confusing the troubled manned space program with the hugely successful robotic exploration.

      I'm happy to see space exploration articles on Slashdot, I just wish the editors would pick a more informed submission to run than this one, with better sources than cnn, yahoo or reuters who are almost always days behind the space related websites..

      • While there have been great robotic successes, it is important to note that NASA is also getting rid of some of its more prominent programs such as the Hubble Telescope. NASA is reducing funding to many of its programs so that they can design and create a new space shuttle. The Hubble Space Telescope, for instance, is no longer going to recieve maintenance and in a few years it will no longer be functional. We must not look only to our past and current robotic successes (and failures) but also to the fut
      • So perhaps plagued reads too strong, would hampered be better? or perhaps hindered?

        Would "good to see some more success" fit better?

        i had a couple more sources on there originally, my submission was edited slightly. Still were the same sort of article. What's wrong with CNN other than the delay you mention? I didn't see the post anywhere on slashdot, so nobody else had picked up on it and submitted it. just thought it was interesting and should be shared. im sorry if the wording wasnt pristine. For my own

  • Not something unexpected... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Scorillo47 ( 752445 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:33AM (#8829783)
    Actually this is just a game to set the right expectations. They designed whole thing with a much larger project life right from the beginning.

    But, given the fact that the rover technology is low-cost and still unproven, they expected a certain risk for various glitches. So, a 250 days "published" interval followed by a deadly clitch would mean a very bad image for NASA.

    NASA played the same "stay on the safe side" tune on many otehr missions - see for example the Voyager missions, etc.

    • Re:Not something unexpected... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) * on Sunday April 11, 2004 @12:51PM (#8831308)
      Actually this is just a game to set the right expectations. They designed whole thing with a much larger project life right from the beginning.

      This is utterly untrue. I have been working on the project since 2000 and allow me to explain where the 90 days figure came from.

      It's rather complicated, however it boils down to how many solar panels they could bring, and how fast reduces the effectiveness of the panels. They tried everything they could think of in the lab to figure out some way to remove the dust from the panels however that proved to be something they could not solve, so they took data from the mars pathfinder mission, and came up with a number describing the conservative estimate for the lifetime of the solar panels given the dust on Mars (and remember, Mars has a lot of dust).

      I've talked to mission physicist Geoffry Landis about this extensively and I have seen the data, which basically indicates that the rate of power dropping is about half of what we expected. This is very good news! This means we have a good shot at a very long extended mission, because if it continues at this rate, eventually the solar days on mars will increase in length faster than the dust buildup occludes power collection. It is believed therefore that the solar panels will not, as expected, be the final limiting factor on the length of the mission.

      However, because that number was basically 90 days, every other instrument on the craft was designed to last at least 90 days, but not necessarily any longer. There are many motors that have a very short lifespan, which could now very easily fail at any time now. This includes a Rock Abrasion Tool motor, along with the azithmuthal actuator for the Pancam Mast Assembly. Also the wheel motors are put under a lot of stress and so they are good candidates for failure. Also, a single thermal failure in the middle of the night can destroy the Mini-Thermal Emission spectrometer, and the other spectrometers are not very useful if the Instrument Deployment Device fails either.

      NASA played the same "stay on the safe side" tune on many otehr missions - see for example the Voyager missions, etc.

      It is true that NASA made conservative estimates for things, which is proper engineering practice in situations that are as unknown and dangerous as this. I do not believe NASA was covering their own butts so much as trying to figure out how to use the 90 days they thought there were mostly guaranteed as best as they could, and then deal with more as they came.

      Disclaimer: I am "just an intern" but I've been on this project for almost 4 years and what's stated above came from actual mission scientists and engineers and is not just speculation.

      Cheers,
      Justin Wick
      Science Activity Planner Developer
      Mars Exploration Rovers
      • Can I ask what you did, what your major was, etc. before you got to work on this project? I really, really want to work in space operations and my original plan was to join the Navy, log some military high-performance jet flight time, then either get out and go to grad school or go to Naval War College for engineering. Unfortunately, the Navy idea has since been nixed and now I'm sort of floating around and not knowing what my next step should be.

        I would just take the GRE and apply to grad schools (proba

        • Re:Question (Score:3, Funny)

          by QuantumFTL ( 197300 ) *
          Can I ask what you did, what your major was, etc. before you got to work on this project?

          Well basically I just went in and interviewed to work for Professor Squyres as a freshman in 2000, my very first week of school at Cornell University. After that I landed internships at JPL every summer working on related software. I picked up the skills I needed on the way, however I had been programming since 3rd grade. The design aspects were actually much more difficult than the programming. I'm now one seme
      • Can I just say, this is why i love slashdot. I never would have heard this interesting view except through a community like this.

        Mod me off topic if you will but posts like the parent are what makes all the FPs, trolls, and patriotic pissing matches worthwhile.

        Thanx, Justin, for your post
    • "NASA played the same "stay on the safe side" tune on many otehr missions - see for example the Voyager missions, etc."

      Even worse than that though, is that in the future the satellite will fall into some kind of blackhole where very powerful beings will find it and send it back to Earth in an effort to locate "the creator".
    • So you're saying that NASA's engineers are applying the Scotty principal? Yeah most engineers do that when they can get away with it.

  • It's all lies! Lies I tell you!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paul Townend ( 185536 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:34AM (#8829784) Homepage
    Oh no! Another 160 days of cover-ups and conspiracies [weirdload.com]! Well...perhaps, anyway! :-)

  • Good for NASA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PlatinumInitiate ( 768660 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:35AM (#8829787)

    There are some really smart and talented people at NASA, and it's nice to see that their work has finally been recognized after a period of NASA-bashing. It really peeves me that people have settled into this anti-American groove over the last few years.

    Some of the top minds in history have been American, few modern scientific or engineering feats have been untouched by Americans in one way or another. Half the people who criticise Americans haven't actually been to the United States. I studied in the US for 3 years, and before I left for the US from South Africa, I had a few pre-conceived ideas about Americans, all of which turned out to be untrue. So before you bash Americans, think about these things, and consider actually spending some time in the US.

    • Re:Good for NASA (Score:5, Funny)

      by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @08:06AM (#8829830)
      So before you bash Americans, think about these things, and consider actually spending some time in the US.

      And risk being imprisoned indefinately without a trial ? I think not.

      Come to my lair, said spider to the fly.

    • As an American, thanks for the kind words. They apply to Americans too; not everybody else is bad!

      Its depressing that many Americans are so xenophobic and US centric that they think everyone else evil or stupid (cough bush cough). It would probably be good for every American student to spend some time studying overseas, learning a different culture and realizing that people are people whether black, yellow, white; Muslim, Jew, Hindu.

      Thanks again for the kind words, I at least have some hope that there are
    • My congratulations to NASA. I really hope that NASA figure out that Mars can be achieved (aka Mars Direct), and avoid a waste of time and effort on the large ball of rock that orbits earth.

      Regarding "Anti-American" feelings: The problem - at least from my point of view - is the policy that essentially states that the US can invade whoever they want. They bitch and moan when developing countries don't obey treaties developed by the US for US interests, but drop anything that is inconveneient - like Global W

  • Wow 4 day upload (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:38AM (#8829792)
    Next week, once the four-day upload of the software is complete, Opportunity will head for Endurance crater

    Isn' that really sad? those rovers that are millions of miles away get their data faster than I can download anything from eMule these days, right here on good old earth.
  • and autonomous decisions ...who thought Gator?

  • Red dust makes me cough (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kryxan ( 767161 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @07:49AM (#8829804)
    I find it amazing that NASA put something together that can last 3x as long as they required it to last. I never expected it to last the full 90 days, thought at least one of them would have just died out by now and the other would be moving along at a crippled pace trying to get everything done. But it appears my early misgivings about the mission were completly unfounded.

    So far everything about this mission has shocked me, at least to some extent. We havnt just been rovering around mars to say we could do it. Thats what the previous mission felt like. But we have found amazing signs of water and the conversations around what has been found has sparked for many a rekindeled interest in our favorite planet. Since the rovers have gone up I have been watching slashdot more closly for news from these bots.

    I have seen reports of evidence of water and watched as we all ooo and aaa over what that could mean. I have read the debates on the possibility of methane producing microbes in the soil of mars, or the cows hiding out in a hidden green pasture. We have all wondered about the possibility that we could jumpstart the life on mars or make it inhabitable for us with teraforming. Basically I have seen more interest in the red planet in the last few months than ever before. I cant wait to see what another 160 days can do for our imaginations. Do you think anything new and amazing will be found as this trek on the red planet continues, I certanly do.

  • The cost! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It amazes me that, having spent so much money to get the suckers there, that the plan wasn't originally to run them until they broke.
    • That was the plan. That's how almost all spacecraft work. But you also need PR. You can say "We expect it to last 90 days," and most people will think "Wow, that's a complex spacecraft", and when it lasts 90 days, they think it's going really well. However, NASA also has to plan for the thousands of things that could go wrong, and hope that they don't happen within the first 90 days.

      The Viking spacecraft were only supposed to last 90 days; they ended up lasting over a year (not sure exactly how long, b

    • Re:The cost! (Score:5, Informative)

      by mbone ( 558574 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:04AM (#8830029)
      Of course it was. But you do these things in stages - first you have a brief "warranty period" (with full funding) and then "mission extensions" (with ever decreasing funding) as the spacecraft keeps on going.

      This keeps the initial cost under control - if you plan for 90 days, things need to work for several times that. If the mission goal is, say, four years, then you have to test things accordingly - which really drives up the cost.

      The perfect example of this is Voyager - still going after 26 years, although the primary mission was only to get to Saturn (6 years) - and Congress specifically refused to fund a mission going to Uranus and Neptune. Of course, once the spacecraft was actually _going_ to Uranus and Neptune, getting the money to complete the tour was pretty easy.

      Also, as the mission wears on, you can do ever riskier things with the spacecraft. You've already completed the mission, so there is less of a downside if it breaks.

      As the mission wears on, the staff keeps decreasing, which is a danger in and of itself. The Viking 1 Lander was killed after 4 years by a bad software upload - at a time when no remaining Viking staff member was fluent in the assembly language used to program the Lander !

  • Batteries (Score:5, Informative)

    by rijrunner ( 263757 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @08:03AM (#8829824)
    The main driver is really the batteries. They have to maintain a certain level of heating during the night cycle to get the rovers viable. Otherwise, there is some pretty nasty thermal cycling as the electronics ramps up in the day cycle as the solar panels. That requires a certain percentage of the electronics to run all night. It was the battery failure that immediately preceded the other landers and rovers major hardware problems.

    Kinda funny what the press latches onto. In February, the issue was "Oh, my god. The solar panels are collecting dust which will shorten the mission". ehhh.. Nope. Doesn't look that way, does it? As long as the panels are able to provide power to the batteries, they can keep extending this. They just have to slow down their power discharge during the days to allow the rover to store up enough energy to make it through the nightcycle. Eventually, that means immobility, but they don't really need that as much after a certain point.
  • ... debugging while the software is live! :}

    Still, an amazing feat. These people deserve a medal.

  • As I've said before (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @08:21AM (#8829870)
    It's a real shame the Beagle 2 didn't make it, to be quite honest it was better than both our American bots, because it could carry out real complex tests on the soil, smell the soil and air for certain chemicals etc, it could really do much more, and with what Spirit and Opportunity have found out - which have lead to estimates - Beagle could have solved these, it's a shame, but lets look to the positive, 2/3 ain't bad.

    • Re:As I've said before (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'd be careful about a generalization like that. Viking 1 and 2 thought that they could detect life as well. It goes to show that without the extensive testing required (something that Beagle 2 did not have--constrast with the Mars Exploration Rovers) your science as well as other equipment is not guaranteed to work or give you scientifically provable results.
    • But the rovers have proved to be more robust. The Beagle didn't have the rockets to slow it down, while most succesful landings involved retro-rockets at some point (vikings, pathfinder, MERs). Instead, the Beagle had a parachute and three airbags*. Imagine one of them getting punctured, and you're in deep problems.

      I agree with you that the scientific payload of Beagle seemed very impressive, but if the lander doesn't do it's job, there's not much scientific return..

      Was the failure a freak accident or a r

  • "initially plagued robots"? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @08:32AM (#8829900) Homepage Journal
    To further pick apart the wording of this summary...

    I'd hardly describe them as "plagued". Both landers have been astonishingly successfull. They did suffer what MIGHT be characterized as a minor glitch and that was quickly circumvented.

    Really the hardware and software have worked fine. I'd be more interested in seeing some reporter cover the people aspect of the mission, which I don't think has gone perfectly, but maybe with so many smart people involved couldn't have. Consider:

    (1) Reporters early on asked how soon Opportunity would leave the crater it landed in to explore other areas. The scientists seemed to be unable to tear themselves away from those rocks and go topside and peek around. Had they done that they would have discovered several other outcrops like that in the area they characterized as flat an uninteresting. They could have always gone back into the crater, but it was almost as if they were afraid the rover would topple over on its way out and didn't want to run any risk. I wish they had been more open about this. Even Spirit spent way too much time hanging around its landing platform IMHO. Spirit had the misfortune of landing in a less interesting place than Opportunity. Still they spent days taking pictures of the lander. I think they could have done better by driving farther, sooner, and they'd bee almost to those hills by now.

    (2) It was announced with great enthusiasm that the rover teams were going to "go to mars time" which meant each person would report to work during the Martian day for the rover they worked with and go home for the corresponding Martian night. Within a couple of weeks they were all complaining about how horrible this was. It's called jet-lag otherwise, but most of the staff seemed unable to cope with it. So why hadn't they experimented with that during the several years it took the rovers to get to Mars? It's almost as if they didn't actually expect both landers to land successfully, so they never bothered with the logistics that would be involved. Now, according to the last press conference they have had to re-invent their planning process so that more can be done during the Earth day and they seem willing to sacrifice some downtime for the rovers activities when the Martian day and Earth day don't coincide. At least that's the way it sounded to me.

    (3) Personnel changes: The director of the mission (I forget his name) got promoted several weeks after the landings. Couldn't that have waited a few more months? I rather know how government works, and this promotion thing is just about all they think about, but why shuffle everyone around now? I would think maybe after both rovers had passed the 90 day mark would be a better time for any discretionary staff changes.

    (4) Reporting to the public. It really started out great, with live video of the control center during both landings, daily press conferences and a great web interface for making pictures available to the public. But I really don't understand why you get different content if you go to http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ than when you go to http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html Seems clear to me the first one should just point to the second one. Looks like a case of dueling webmasters to me. But my real gripe is how quickly the coverage has scaled back. The press conferences went from daily, to 3 times a week, to once a week to every other week, and then turned away from raw information sharing to more dramatic presentations from the east coast. Other forms of communications rapidly tapered off too. For example the simple two minute long flight directors update is now much less frequent. At least the text based updates are still daily, almost. I've wondered whether this was more a burn-out issue or if public interest has dropped off that fast. In either case, Americans sure have a short attention span these days. You would wonder whether the expected "lifetime" of 90 days for the landers didn't almost

    • Re:"initially plagued robots"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Surazal ( 729 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:05AM (#8830034) Homepage Journal

      (1) Reporters early on asked how soon Opportunity would leave the crater it landed in to explore other areas.

      Because it was a scientifically rich target. Besides, Opportunity would have spent that first half of its mission looking for a decent target with what happened to be in front of the rover when it landed in that mimi-crater. Besides, what is the hurry. In order to understand the stuff on the plain well, it pays to investigate the crater so that we have data to compare (control and variable in experimental contexts).

      (2) It was announced with great enthusiasm that the rover teams were going to "go to mars time"...

      They have done experiments on this in the past... it's challenging to do this. I would have said the team should have at least warmed up a couple of weeks on the new schedule.

      (3) Personnel changes: The director of the mission (I forget his name) got promoted several weeks after the landings.

      It's not like day-to-day operations are as demanding as they were. Practice makes perfect, and now they don't need as many people to run the rovers as they used to.

      (4) Reporting to the public. It really started out great, with live video of the control center during both landings...

      So go to this web site [nasa.gov]. It's got daily updates with streaming video. So I have no idea what you're talking about there. At the very least you can take a look at the raw images there being downloaded from Spirit and Opportunity. It's easy to "make your own Mars images" with Photoshop or the GIMP with these pictures. :^)

    • Re:"initially plagued robots"? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by snake_dad ( 311844 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:17AM (#8830101) Homepage Journal
      1) The outcrop in the crater shows deeper layerings and thus were more interesting than the few patches of outcrop on the plain. They did peek over the rim rather early, remember the parachute pics?

      2) They have tested working on "mars time" before the landing. The longer working "day" was needed because planning each sol was pretty difficult in the earliest sols. Now, with over 90 days of experience running the machines they can do more in less time, hence the switch back to normal time.

      3) It was time to get more work done on the next mission. It makes sense to take experienced people from projects where their involvement is no longer absolutely needed. If they don't a lot of people will be ready to complain (and rightly so)about human resource management when the next lander fails because everything had to be learned from scratch by the people on the team. IIRC this was determined to be one of the factors in the failure of the Mars Polar Lander mission. The project manager did a great job with the MER's, left it in capable, experienced hands, and moved on to make sure the next project would be just as successful.

      4) Agreed. I'd like to see things like maps with each days planning and progress, and maybe some more daily notes from the scientists. I can understand about the daily briefings getting fewer tho. The room where they were held was emptier each day, and I'm sure it was a burden for the scientists and techs to prepare and conduct a briefing each day, or every other day. Personally a weekly briefing is fine with me, just wish they'd do them an hour or two later :)

    • Re:"initially plagued robots"? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mbone ( 558574 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:34AM (#8830162)
      The attention is definitely waning - here is plot [americafree.tv] of the NASA web site traffic. (The plot is courtesy of Alexa [alexa.com] and may not work in all browsers, so I put a JPEG of today's ranking up.)

      You can clearly see peaks for both Landings - according to Alexa, greater than the peak at the time of the Columbia disaster and a decline more or less to baseline since.

    • Re:"initially plagued robots"? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tmortn ( 630092 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @10:54AM (#8830489) Homepage
      Just a note on the Mars time issue.

      That is most likely not so much an issue of lack of preperation/dedication as it is simply something that does not work well.

      Shift work is a royal PITA as anyone who has worked it knows. Shift work with constantly sliding start/stop/handover times would be a PITA^umpteenth power.

      The world and human physiology just do not work well for off nominal working routines... telemarketers/relatives/friends/banks/restraunts/p arties have pretty set routines that if you don't match up with causes problems. Crossing up day/night cycles leads to circadian rythem problem which leads to sleep problems which just feeds a whole host of other problems. This is all bad enough if you are single and free to do odd stuff without affecting others around you but it can have catastrophic effects on families.

  • Future Uses (Score:3, Funny)

    by Quill345 ( 769162 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:13AM (#8830072)
    Maybe now that we're experts in Martian exploration we can send one of these to Iraq to finally find the WMDs or to SCO to locate the infringing code.

  • A bit cynicism here (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bluenawab ( 595006 )
    i always wonder how these people first decide the estimated lifetime of these probes? i mean is the factor of safety huge or something? literally everything that they throw into the space, if it survives the unit conversion mistakes made by the designers, outlives its expected short lifetime. i guess they keep their estimates VERY conservative... you can then celebrate once the probe/rover outlives your estimates!
    • hmm you misunderstand probability.

      Say you want it to last 1 week. So you build it with a 99.9% probability of lasting 1 week.

      However this means that the chance of surviving for 3 weeks is around 99.7% (assuming the probability of failure is time-constant.)

    • Expected lifetime is also influenced by unpredictable conditions, such as dust build-up. Apparently the degradation of the solarpanels by dust is less severe than expected or feared.

      Secondly, it's not so much estimated lifetime, but designed lifetime. Designed to last at least 90 days. Designed lifetime is a design parameter that has a big impact on cost of the project, designing for longer lifetimes automatically means more extensive (thus expensive) testing, more engineering difficulties within the same

  • So they are leaving them on Mars? (Score:5, Funny)

    by smchris ( 464899 ) on Sunday April 11, 2004 @09:40AM (#8830194)
    Did anybody else notice the top-of-the-hour news announcement on Air America, I think, that the mission was extended and the probes would "remain on Mars"? Yup, I bet they will. Few things amuse me more than confused science reporting.
  • Did you know Mars has peeps [ibiblio.org]? ;)
  • I'll tell you how things could get really innovative. Instead of sending one little rover here, one little rover there, why not send many little rovers, each of which can, once on Mars, attach to the others, to form a really big rover. You don't have to send all the rovers at the same time. It's enough that you launch them so that when one runs out of power, the next one arrives, attaches to it, gives it more power, and continues to operate. Within 10 years, you'll have a huge rover the size of a building d
  • I'll be interested to read the details of the nuclear powered Martian rover(s) planned for 2009
  • Is NASA using Energizers?

  • This kind of "extending operational lifetime" is a long-lived and ubiqituous part of the "space engineering" culture.

    It partly starts from conservative design practices: most of the time you don't have the option to go back and fix mistakes (Hubble is utterly anomalous in this respect). Reprogrammability is also a key element of enable remote reliability.

    These conservative design practices almost automatically mean there's some usable, extendable margin on operation. Thus "pulling extended life out of

  • Rovers to become Flying Dutchmen of Mars? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11, 2004 @04:56PM (#8832889)
    Just a thought.

    Remember that movie Silent Running? Or the tribute at the end of Babylon 5 to Silent Running where they blew up the station because of Navigational Hazards?

    I was just wondering if there was a 'kill' switch or plans to Euthenasia the two rovers when they're crawling across the mars scape with a half productive wheel drive, or a crotchy old camera arm trying to fullfill their latest commands?

    Its kinda sad..

    When the Pioneers and Voyagers crawled across deep space with stiff fingers as it were.. they got a second chance.. and proved they could make it to Galactic frontier before going silent.

    But on the other hand.. if they're never silenced.. will the martian rovers become the new Flying Dutchmen of mars? The Mary Celeste where future travelers will listen for whispers from corners of mars long since abandonned.. but pleas for new commands go unanswered?

    Once every Summer season when the Sun rises in the murky Martian sky.. and the sandstorms have accidentally swept their solar panels clean.. will they wake like the Ghosts of Mars and call
    home?

    Sounds silly.. a martian Ghost story..

    I'm sure NASA will carefully park them in some well known crater.. and generations from now they'll wind up in a Martian Smithsonian Annex exhibit near Gustave Crater.

    - john
  • I wish these guys would help program the Windows OS. Just think how much more we could get out of it.

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