Rovers May Survive Martian Winter 266
yokem_55 writes "According to this article on Yahoo News, Mars rover engineers are beginning to consider the possibility that the rovers may be able to survive the oncoming Martian winter in a hibernation mode, and then return to activity when spring returns to the red planet. The article ends with a quote from Steve Squires speculating that, 'we're looking at the final demise of these vehicles perhaps as late as the onset of our second winter on Mars.'"
Re:Why wouldn't this work (Score:2, Insightful)
-Ashton
Props to NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Props to NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dusty solar panels (Score:5, Insightful)
A dust cleaner would be another thing that could fail... as would anything else to extend the mission time frame. Instead of a more complex system that could run a year, they made a simple system to last a couple months. Simple seems to be a really good thing when you can't go over and kick it if it gets stuck.
--
Evan
Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Two words: Insurance Policy.
NASA can't keep paying insurance on the rovers for years and years, so they plan (in the budget) for limited life times. Set your targets low, get as much done as you can within the limits of those targets, and get out.
But we should never forget that our estimations for how long things last are completely arbitrary
The lifetime of the rovers is not so much about science as it is about beauracracy and politices, and ultimately 'responsibility'.
Personally, I don't see why we just kick out the beauracrats entirely, throw all Insurance premium mafia ripoffs to the winds, and build harder rovers.
Maybe we don't need to keep going to Mars, maybe we just need to 'learn to stay there' technologically longer than our society is currently capable of supporting. (Insurance is a 'society' thing, it isn't technological...)
Re:Couldn't they think about this sooner? (Score:5, Insightful)
These things are engineered to last a certain ammount of time, as component specifications are generally conservative equipment will often last longer than it was designed for.
Take the voyager 2 probe, this was launched with the intent of exploring Jupier and Saturn. But they managed to extend the mission out to both Neptune and Uranus.
Of course they thought about these posibilities, they chose the launch date such that they could continue their slingshot in that direction :-)
Re:Problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyhow to awnser your question, allow me to quote the article: "Part of the wintering over strategy will involve positioning the rovers to soak up as much continuous sunlight, even as the Sun moves low in the martian sky, Bell said. Secondly, the robots are to be oriented so that communications links with orbiters zipping overhead is maximized, he pointed out."
In otherwords, they will go into low power mode, but not be switched off, and hopefully be positioned so that they wont loose communication for very long, if ever
Re:The sweetest sight. (Score:5, Insightful)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 9000ms, Maximum=10000ms, Average=9100ms
Re:Problems? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're right to say that if you were to keep in continuous radio contact it would use too much power, but waiting for the spring and then getting into radio contact shouldn't use that much power. After all, the rovers will have been in hibernation for many months on the journey to mars.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of a Scotty quote, I can't seem to find it online, but it had something to do with him always telling the captain that it would take 10 hours to fix something when it would really take 5, so when Kirk told him to do it in 5 it would make him look brilliant. The rule of halfs I guess. But what if your superior asks for it in 4 hours? I guess you're screwed then.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:3, Insightful)
As compared to a capitolistic society where companies always overstate their goals and products just incase their compeditor does the same. Its interesting that we have two sectors: the government, and free enterprise; and they both have similar goals- be profitable, provide for their 'customers', remain in business. And they have evolved to completely opposite tactics, in some cases.
I'm sure there are some companies that don't overstate their products, and I know that some government agencies do, But there have been plenty of times I have gone to X government agency and been surprised at all they can do for me, and lots of times products have not lived up to expectations.
Re:EOL underestimated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The important question... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:here we go again (Score:3, Insightful)
Solar works well for Mars and closer, but once you get to Jupiter and beyond it just isn't a realistic option. Imagine giving Cassini two solar arrays, each 9 meters by 32 meters. JPL has, and and they've got diagrams [nasa.gov].
And I personlly believe nuclear power sources are more environmentally friendly than all the batteries you'll need to get you through those long, dark winter nights.
Re:Is it just me... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah go to another planet more than 300 million miles, land safely do a whackload of experiments, travel around on the surface for miles, transmit all the results and pictures back flawlessly and while driving on Mars have multiple feature enhancements added...
I guess project management is a skill you have yet to aquire?
Also they were overbuilt. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowadays, the beancounters have much more say over the engineers, and the "overbuilding" is done to a much lesser degree.
MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
They supported over 30 FIRST [usfirst.org] teams when I was in FIRST - I would bet they support more now. Look at the link, it's an incredible program. If possible, get your company or school involved in it. FIRST was one of the best experiences of my career.
Note: FIRST stands for:
For
Inspiration and
Recognition of
Science and
Technology
Re:Why wouldn't this work (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does everybody assume they thought of something that NASA didn't?
Re:Low aspirations and PC (Score:3, Insightful)
damn politics getting in the way of science.
Re:length of winter (Score:3, Insightful)
The point I think that NASA is making is that their predictive models used fairly pessimistic assumptions as to how badly the solar cells would degrade over time, and the actual cell performance and dust coverage is proving to be better than their predictive models anticipated. That plus the fact that they've managed to almost completely overcome the relatively few hardware failures suffered so far, is grounds for being optimistic about the rover's lifespan.
The flip side of the coin - somewhere a budget analyst is kicking himself because he let the engineers talk the rover team into building in excess power margin based on a more pessimistic prediction on solar cell dust coverage. In a "perfect world" according to the budget people, they'd spend only enough to ensure that the rover dropped dead the day AFTER it completed the planned mission. It now looks like they apparently overbuilt the rovers based on what's happened with the 2 rovers at widely separated mission locations, and that's bad news for whoever controls the checkbook. Hopefully the next set of landers won't fail prematurely due to a redundancy or excess margin backlash because of how well these rovers have performed.