Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Space Science

Mars Rovers Alive Until 2005? 269

Posted by michael from the or-until-the-martians-find-them dept.
maggeth writes "The BBC is reporting that negotiations are under way to extending funding for the Mars rovers beyond this September. Originally designed to work for 90 Martian days, they now predict they may last well beyond the 250 Martian days they had announced previously." hoferbr writes "A new analysis by Phil Berardelli at the United Press International quotes Steve Squyres, chief scientist for the Mars rover mission, in which he says that the Mars rovers '... could go into 2005'. Spirit and Opportunity will complete six months on the Martian surface on July."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Mars Rovers Alive Until 2005? More

Mars Rovers Alive Until 2005?

Comments Filter:

  • Great News (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flewp ( 458359 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:35AM (#9643672)
    This is great news. Not only for the science, but it also adds to NASA's credibility. Sure, they thought it would only last 250 Martian days, but when it comes to funding in the future, this may help, however little.

  • Martian days / Earth days (Score:5, Informative)

    by vlad_petric ( 94134 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:36AM (#9643675) Homepage
    A Martian day is not much longer than an Earth day - 24 hours, 37 minutes as opposed to 23h, 56m.

    • Missing 4 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by crow ( 16139 )
      Can that be right? 23:56 for an Earth day? Where are the extra 4 minutes? That's two hours a month of slippage--that can't be right.
      • hmm.. no, that's not quite right

        A year ~ 364.24 days. So it'd be more like 1 1/2 hours a month or 3 minutes a day.
      • On Earth, the mean solar day is (almost, but not quite exactly) 24 hours.

        The Earth sidereal day is 23:56:04.

        A Martian sol is a Martian solar day.

      • Where those four minutes went... (Score:5, Informative)

        by xmark ( 177899 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:54AM (#9643930)
        The parent refers to the length of an Earth day when the planet's rotation is measured against the "fixed" stars (sidereal time). More precisely, this "sidereal day" is 23 hours 56 minutes 4.091 seconds. Measured against the sun, however, the length of an Earth day is 24 hours. When you use the fixed stars as a frame of reference, the motion of the entire solar system puts a little extra "English" on the spin of the Earth.

      • Re:Missing 4 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Thagg ( 9904 )
        That's an astronomical day, as opposed to a solar day. The sun is in a different place with respect to the more distance stars every day, that's where the extra four minutes goes.

        Another way of saying it is that every 24 hours (more or less) the sun is at the same place in the sky, while every 23:56, the stars are in the same place in the sky.

  • Damn, I wanted a bout... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Iscariot_ ( 166362 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:36AM (#9643685)
    I read that last line as " Spirit and Opportunity will compete six months on the Martian surface on July."

    I hope they do. Might as well go out with a bang after such success. Might be a way to get funding too.

  • If they had a wisk broom... (Score:4, Funny)

    by VernonNemitz ( 581327 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:36AM (#9643686) Journal
    Just one extra mechanical arm with a small wisk broom to brush dust off the solar panels, and those rovers might last for a decade.
    • Slashdotters have gone over (many times) all the ways that the solar panels could have been cleaned, and always point back to the Nasa quotes about how it's not really worth it. The just decided to put larger solar panels on instead of cleaning equipment (if I'm remembering correctly).

      One thing I haven't heard mentioned, perhaps because it wouldn't work, is coating the panels with Teflon. Is there some reason you can't put Teflon on solar cells, or is this something they already do? Just seems like a si
      • Fans? Wipers? Vibrating panels? Why was nothing considered, given the huge price tag of these things?
        • One would think that it does get windy on Mars. Couldn't you time a series of 'jiggle' menuevers with the panels facing into the win? It would be like shaking sand out of your bathing suit on a windy day.

          I would think that the next rover type deployment would make better use of the landing pad. I'd also like to see missions to Mars to potentially recycle machinery there.

          Imagine a space tow-truck that can go and 'jump' previously expired machines?
        • Those, plus many other ideas were considered, and rejected. The best solution they found, as others have pointed out every time this comes up, was to simply use larger-than-needed solar panels. -that gave them the best chance of things working as long as possible. If you rely on any of these other "devices", then they become a potential weak link that could cause the entire mission to fail early.

    • Re:If they had a wisk broom... (Score:5, Informative)

      by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:47AM (#9643836) Homepage Journal
      I forget the title of the Arthur C. Clarke story, set on the moon, but it presaged another part of the problem, here.

      But basically, if you whisk off the solar cell panels with a broom, you have to worry about static electricity buildup. It's just possible that by wiping the solar panel, you'll build up a static charge and attract even more dust.

      Of course this possiblity suggests another possability - some sort of static device to repel the dust, so you need no moving parts, beyond deployment.

      Or you just estimate the dust accumulation rate, the solar panel degradation due to that, and the design lifetime of the mission. Then make the panels sufficiently oversize to accomodate, and live with it. Don't forget that one rover already has a bum wheel, so other things are showing wear and tear besides the panels.

      • "A fall of moondust" is the story you're thinking of.
      • Bill Nye (the science guy!) sat on one of the committees when they were designing the rovers. I got to meet him afterward and ask him a few questions.

        I asked: If the rate limiting factor is the dust build up on the shields, why not have windshield wipers?

        The answer: They've tried just about all of those sorts of things. Or at least thought about them. But suppose you have a wiper mounted on a mechanical arm. So now your solar plates will be always dust free, because the wiper brushes them off. But eventua
    • Why didn't they use them instead?

      Even if the mechanical elements of the rovers were to break or become unusable and they couldn't drive around or dig, it would still be very valuable to have functioning cameras and other sensors on Mars for some time to come.

      It just seems odd to spend so much money and take so many chances flying something to Mars to not do everything possible to ensure that the device worked for a long, long time.

    • Re:If they had a wisk broom... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:02PM (#9644018) Homepage
      Actually they are looking at the technology used on nascar outside cameras. The problem is that current polymers do not stand up to the increased UV light on mars and the thin film blocks more light energy than a 2 month's worth of dust on the panels will.

      If we can find a thin polymer that can transmit more of the light energy and not age/yellow so fast in higher UV environments we might be able to simply "roll the solar panels clean" by roling up the thin film for the width of the panel. have enough film on the roll to be rolled up 3 times and you just extended the life of the solar panels by 3!

      this is the same technology that cleans the lens on the nascar cameras and is used on motocross helmet's and goggles.. (except the helmet version is a tear-away.)
    • I say just add this to the ever-growing list of why we need a permanant mars base. The only problem is figuring out how to put this job on your resume later (official mars rover solar panel cleaner from July 2008-June2009).

    • NASA report on dust accumulation (link) (Score:5, Informative)

      by addie ( 470476 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:33PM (#9644375)
      This has been debated a few times here at slashdot. I learned everything I needed to know from the following NASA report:

      PDF file here [nasa.gov]

  • Some Solid Engineering (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Laivincolmo ( 778355 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:38AM (#9643710)
    I'm glad that NASA and JPL have had such a great success with the two rovers. Maybe the amazing results of this will inspire manpower and funding for future missions.

    Unmanned robotic missions are great for doing science work, and they should definately continue without scaling back funds. However, it is equally important to continue working on human space flight simply to prove that we can do it and to prepare for the time when a human colony on the moon or mars is paved by the groundwork of unmanned missions.

  • That's cool... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mysticalfruit ( 533341 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:38AM (#9643714) Homepage Journal
    If anything it'll give us some good data on what Martian conditions do to hardware in the long term.

    I know that right now one of Spirits wheel motors was starting to act up a bit.

    As Martian "Winter" approaches, it'll be interesting to see what really cold weather does to the rovers (other than breaking them).

    However, with that all said, I think we should be vigorously working on putting a colony on the Moon.

    • Mars, not the Moon (Score:3, Informative)

      by kippy ( 416183 )

      However, with that all said, I think we should be vigorously working on putting a colony on the Moon.

      Not to be a knowitall but it's actually going to be a lot easier to develop a colony on Mars than on the Moon.

      - Mars has vast, known supplies of water on the poles and there's good evidence that it can be found in the ground too.

      - The Moon has temperatures both a lot higher and a lot lower than Mars. That makes it harder for equipment to work and us to live.

      - The Martian day is tailor made for Humans,

  • Apparently (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:39AM (#9643723)
    Starbucks have just opened on Mars and the helpful staff have offered to clean the rover's solar panels once a day and stick in a couple of extra AA batteries.

  • Impressive... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:39AM (#9643725)
    But for 900 million bucks, you'd expect they could do just a little better than 90 days :). In all seriousness, though, good news for NASA, and it might raise morale in the organization while they try to re-organize to become a bit more effective. Re-orgs always hurt morale - at least they're standing a little higher when they take the hit.

    This is the first of many such outstanding successes, I hope :).

    -Erwos

  • All that extra time... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zorilla ( 791636 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:40AM (#9643733)
    In other news, NASA plans on visiting all 3,158 Starbucks locations on Mars.

  • Scotty Factor (Score:5, Funny)

    by nucal ( 561664 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:40AM (#9643735)
    Scott: "Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now, and they want it their way. But the secret is to give only what they need, not what they want!"

    LaForge: "Yeah, well I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."

    Scott: "How long would it really take?"

    LaForge: "An hour!"

    Scott: "Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did you?"

    LaForge: "Well of course I did."

    Scott: "Oh, laddie, you've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker!"

    -- "Relics [36el.com]", Stardate 46125.3

    • Bah, this reminded me off some sad news about James Doohan, he's suffering from Alzeheimer's [yahoo.com]
      • When he was diagnosed, he asked the doctor what he should do. The doctor said to go home and forget about it.

      • Well, don't just feel sorrow for what he has now, feel joy in what he has accomplished in his life!

        And that dialog is one of my favorite "Scotty-ism's". My next favorite is the one in the movies (I forget which one) where Scotty is walking through the ship muttering something like "I know this ship like the back of my hand", and then he walks into a head-knocker and knocks himself out.

    • A joke, I know (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:06PM (#9644060)
      But the real logic is along those lines. NASA doesn't want to over promise, that will lead to trouble for them. If they say they'll get six months out of a device and it dies of normal wear and tear after 3, well then people are going to want to know who fucked up.

      I'm sure NASA figured that, to a high degree of certianty, the rovers could pull 90 days no problem. So you report that as the expected life. If they last longer, great, but if they don't no one is going to bitch. Given the big unknowns of a mission like this, you want your estimate to be nice and conservative.

      Also, you want to priortise your research. If you put a 90 day cap, you make sure to priortise the most important stuff to happen in that window. Then you can move on to other stuff, even if that's not the most efficient way of doing it. Even if you have to sacrafice some efficency, yuo don't want to do low priority stuff first because that's more efficient, only to find that your hardware broke so you never get to do the high priority stuff.
  • Inquiring minds want to know.
  • Johnny Five is Alive!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • I bet they'll find some reason to stop support... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:41AM (#9643760)
    ...the second they release Mars Rover: Longhorn.
  • Having spent $X billion so far, (and worth it, imho), the worst blunder possible is to deny the additional funding. Now that the probes are up and operating, a dollar spent here is worth ten (if not more) spent tomorrow, because the risk phase is over. Everything we get now is bonus.

    <semi-sarcasm>Anyway, most of our politicking seems to be based on "not telegraphing weakness"... So, don't cut short the mission, or else the terrorists win.</semi-sarcasm>

  • heh... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vmircea ( 730382 ) <vmircea@t j h s s t .edu> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:42AM (#9643774) Homepage
    isn't it convenient that it will work for way longer... and NASA will get more money? not to badmouth or anything, I personally think that NASA is a great agency for our country, and space is important, once we run out of resources we hopefully want to be able to go into space and get resources from other places, and NASA is definitely helping us out there, although other non government companies are doing things, space is a very expensive deal, and it is hard to do, which is why NASA needs so many resources. But it definitely would make sense if NASA underestimated purposefully just so that they could be able to impress, but that is just my opinion

  • NASA: Good science, bad budget (Score:4, Interesting)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:45AM (#9643801) Homepage Journal
    This is another example of NASA doing the technical stuff right (rovers that can last much longer than the original project speicifications required), but bad budgeting. They pay huge amounts to build the rovers and rocket them to Mars, but then they have to negotiate whether they can fund continuing to use them once they're already there?

    The real headline here is "NASA considers turning off working rovers because they project budget was exeeded."
    • Even if Rovers are wildly succesful from a scientific point of view, sooner or later the (scientific) returns from investment are bound to decrease ; that may happen in a year or tomorrow and only the -scientist- will be able to tell us "ok, it's pointless to continue digging holes in the rocks with the current instruments".

      They of course would like to dig holes with Rover forever and maybe find something unexpected : that would be nice, but maybe it would be nicer to divert resource from a project that is

  • why does mars rover do it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by blue_adept ( 40915 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:45AM (#9643802)
    His website offers insight into why he does this ('to be different') and has pictures of the 4000+ craters he's visited.
  • Isn't this overkill? Doesn't this mean they spent too much money on engineering this thing?

    Not to be too trollish, but if you are building a bridge to hold 10 tons and it ends up holding 100 tons, you are wasting resources.

    • Re:Devil's advocate (Score:5, Insightful)

      by applemasker ( 694059 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:52AM (#9643904)
      I don't think the analogy quite fits. Even if they are over-engineered, the extra rover lifetime isn't wasted as the hypothetical bridge's load-bearing capacity would be. Their extra life is probably even more valueable when you factor in the realities of how infrequently we have the opportunity (mod me down for the pun, i'll burn the karma) to conduct this sort of research. Unless we run out of rocks to look at and gullies to traverse, let the rovers operate as long as they are able to return useful data.

    • Re:Devil's advocate (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Kevin Stevens ( 227724 ) <kevstev.gmail@com> on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:01PM (#9644017)
      Not if you are still within your budget...

      In addition, like most engineering projects, you have *minimum* requirements, and that is what you build for. A bridge in the US by code MUST be designed to hold 6 times (iirc) the maximum weight it is designed to carry- in the case of a bridge, this would mean 6 tractor trailers filled to the brim w/ heavy cargo stacked six high. In Nasa's case, I am sure all the components have a mean time before failure calculated, and then probabilities are calculated as to how long it will last. So lets say they built the thing and took on a 10% chance of failure before the mission's intended end ( which I believe was 90 days). So now they are seeing that the components are more rugged than they estimated for, and will last longer. I dont see this as bad.

      Im sure this is not entirely by chance- I am sure the Nasa leaders understand that headlines like "Mars rovers may last over a year past their 3 month intended life" go over much better than "Mars rovers fall short of intended year mission" regardless of the actual length or ambitiousness of the mission.

      I really hope you are not in the bridge building business...

    • Re:Devil's advocate (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:08PM (#9644089) Homepage Journal
      "Not to be too trollish, but if you are building a bridge to hold 10 tons and it ends up holding 100 tons, you are wasting resources."

      As if your mama reads those signs before she crosses.

    • Re:Devil's advocate (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:55PM (#9644625)
      Not to be too trollish, but if you are building a bridge to hold 10 tons and it ends up holding 100 tons, you are wasting resources.

      The reliability of a complex system made of thousands of parts depends on statistics, whereas the reliability of a bridge depends on much simpler stress calculations.

      If you design a complex system such that there is very little chance that any one of its components will fail within 90 days, then each component must be individually designed to last much longer than 90 days. The center of each component's reliability bell curve must be well beyond 90 days so that the product of the tails at the 90 day mark is acceptably low. The system as a whole will therefore probably last much longer than 90 days. If it does, that's not necessarily a sign of overdesign.

    • Re:Devil's advocate (Score:3, Informative)

      by rjstanford ( 69735 )
      Not to be too trollish, but if you are building a bridge to hold 10 tons and it ends up holding 100 tons, you are wasting resources.

      That's easy enough to do when you're doing something that's been done thousands of times before. Very difficult when breaking new ground (so to speak). And, to stick with your bridge theme, its the reason that the Brooklyn bridge is still standing when almost none of its contemporaries are. The designer realized that he was going beyond the bounds of his experience and the

  • What happens.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Unnngh! ( 731758 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:48AM (#9643853)
    I did not rtfa, but I wonder what happens if funding is declined, and the rovers are still in running condition. Will they be shut down? Could I build a big antenna in my back yard and hack them from afar, having my own personal mars rovers to do my bidding?

    If only...

  • I only wish that marsnet had been establish first so that we could have done more science at a faster pace.

  • Damocles' sword. (Score:4, Informative)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @11:50AM (#9643871) Homepage Journal
    The hardware may work or may fail, workarounds for errors may be found or not, things may be fixed, with cautious use the rovers may last for years...

    Until a storm comes.

    Martian dust storms come with wind at 200km/h or faster, carrying sand and smaller rocks, picking anything that isn't attached to the ground and carrying it for hours. One storm, and the rover is past, pieces of it scattered over several thousands of kilometers. And a storm will come sooner or later.

    That's why there was a design of "tumbleweed" style rovers: they never deflate the airbags and let the storm carry them, letting them travel for half the planet in random direction, gathering data, until the storm weakens and leaves the "tumbleweed" in place until the next storm comes.

    Current design... may live until 2005 or longer... if the storm doesn't come.
  • Able to salvage parts from the Beagle wreckage then? :)

  • the location of beagle. I know we're probably talking a long distance, but its not as if we're doing anything else with them.
  • Originally they predicted 3 months, extended to 8... now they're talking about over a year of operational time. Is anyone else concerned about the extreme miscalculations that must have taken place to result in such a poor estimation and re-estimation? I realize this IS NASA, that these scientists are brilliant and that there are many factors that I do not know that come into play, but I also realize this is a group who smashed millions of dollars of equipment due to use of improper units. The end result

    • Re:Is anyone else BOTHERED by this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by TEMM ( 731243 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:26PM (#9644295)
      They were bad estimages, they were safe estimates. They designed the rovers to be tough enough that they would work for 3 months even under the worst situations (Like a bad landing, or bad dust storms and the like) So when none of these potentially bad things happen, the life expectancy of the rovers increases. Its like cancelling a cable substription and having them not disable your account for a month afterwards. You planned on having it terminated at the end of the month, but as a bonus you got free cable for a month.

  • Guaranteed funding... (Score:3, Funny)

    by wine_slob ( 793174 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:25PM (#9644279) Homepage

    All NASA needs to do is find some evidence of materials that could be used in the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and we'll have Rovers all over the red planet.

    Of course the new Rovers will be contracted out to the biggest campaign contributors and NASA will quickly be integrated into the Department of Homeland Security and tasked with finding fossil fuels throughout our solar system...

    ANWR, hell! We got Jupiter!

  • typical (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hb253 ( 764272 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @12:31PM (#9644342)
    As far as the rover's longevity, it's a simple matter of underpromise and overdeliver. This is typical behavior of anybody setting performance review goals and objectives. It's also done by middle managers when they discuss departmental goals with upper management.
  • I hope that the Huygens probe gets an extra lucky landing spot and provides us with the maximum data possible...

    And motivates NASA to send rovers there, and elsewhere!

  • Many space probes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sploxx ( 622853 ) on Thursday July 08, 2004 @05:45PM (#9647861)
    Maybe this sounds childish, but I'm really amazed what now is out of earth's orbit and (still) working:

    - The 2 rovers and numerous orbiters @ Mars
    - Cassini/Huygens @ Saturn
    - Both Voyager missions at the edge of the solar system
    - Rosetta
    etc.pp.!

Slashdot Top Deals

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein

Close