Spirit Rover Disabled on Mars

Nick Driver writes " Space.com is reporting that the Spirit Rover hasn't moved since October 1st and is suffering from two wheels that can no longer steer and thus are being held in a fixed direction by their locked steering motors. Hopefully one of the workarounds being considered will allow the rover to be moved again and still retain sufficient steering control over the remaining wheels to continue the mission."

Send me; I'll give it a push

[justanyone]

Hey:

Send me. I'll give it a push and get it going again. Or, I can fix it. Of course, I'm not a Mr. Goodwrench-certified ASME mechanic. But I do have a Bachelor's Degree!

I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night!

[Picass0]

I have machine empathy and a big hammer. Send me.

Mission over?

[Deanasc]

Wasn't this robots life span only supposed to be 90 days? Hasn't it been way more than 90 days since the mission started? I say 'good work!' Let the little machine retire with some dignity. It's earned it.

Re:Mission over?

[uncoveror]

Here's the real story. The Zhti Ti Kofft (martians) were about to be found, and photographed. To avoid this, they disabled the rover.
Read more about them. [uncoveror.com]

I'm Surprised

[XsynackX]

I'm surprised the rover even lasted this long at all as its life span was only planned to be 90 days.

On another note, I read that another issue that would be happening with the rovers would be dust building up on the solar panels, blocking sunlight (maybe dust jammed the wheels as well?). Anyway, I always wondered why NASA didn't foresee these types of issues and BUILD IN workarounds, like little wipers for the solar panels!?

Re:I'm Surprised

[tzanger]

Anyway, I always wondered why NASA didn't foresee these types of issues and BUILD IN workarounds, like little wipers for the solar panels!?

This has been discussed again and again and again - it was considered, and discounted. These units are already well over their designed lifetime. Armchair quarterbacks such as yourself could only hope to have such a successful mission.

Re:I'm Surprised

[pediddle]

YHBT. YHL. HAND.

Re:I'm Surprised

[Gogo Dodo]

I always wondered why NASA didn't foresee these types of issues and BUILD IN workarounds, like little wipers for the solar panels!?

Argh! Please don't bring this up again. It's been hashed over every time there's a Mars Rover article. I suggest you look up some of the older articles [slashdot.org].

Re:I'm Surprised

[shpoffo]

I always wondered why NASA didn't foresee these types of issues and BUILD IN workarounds, like little wipers for the solar panels

Check it out, here's me talking out of my butt:

'wipers' for the panels would have been made out of rubber, or some other semi-organic compound that could have carried microbes to Mars.

.... of course, if you tell me the wheels are made of rubber then I don't have anything... Moreover, I'm sure you, I and the dozens of others that have thought of the 'wipers' scenario are n

Re:Not worth it

[Bastian]

There are so many things that are likely to go wrong long before dust on the solar panels disables the rover that the mission planners probably decided it wasn't worth the added cost, weight, or complexity.

After all, it's a space mission, Katamari Damacy. [namco.com]

Re:I'm Surprised

[amorsen]

Ok, find a car with dirty windows. Take a brush. Clean windows. Observe that the cleaning is pretty ineffective. Another suggestion seen on Slashdot was to blow the dust away with air. For that, take the dirty car from before and drive it for a while. Notice that the wind seems unable to blow the dirt away.

No, if NASA had been properly optimistic, they would have included a pump/sprinkler system that could use the discovered water. As well as a way to lubricate the stuck wheels with oil made from discovered plants.

It's been a whole week...

[Hell O'World]

and still no post in her LiveJournal.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/spi ritrover/

NASA statement

[blamanj]

here. [nasa.gov]

I know what's going on here!

[vslashg]

There's some danger ahead, so the rover shut its wheels off. It's becoming sentient, you see.

(I learned this kind of science from Star Trek: TNG.)

Re:Steering motors locked up?

[noselasd]

Actually they're running vxworks.

Calm down - Spirit driving again

[Anonymous Coward]

The anomoly seen on Sol 265 was not seen in diagnostics run on Sol 270. Spirit will drive again during activities on Sol 271 (todayish)

Oh well

[iamlucky13]

It was bound to happen before too much longer. Does this make Spirit the typical lazy, fat American or has it simply decided it's time to retire?

I suppose since everything else is still working on Spirit, if they don't figure out how to work around this then we'll being seeing lots and lots of postcards from the top of that same hill.

Re:Oh well

[R2.0]

I think a more proper analogy would be an American that had traumatic brain surgery as a child, made a full recovery, and has been working its ass off for 120 years and finally twisted a knee so bad it has to take a day off work.

Spirit is moving - Look at the images!

[BogoMips]

Just by looking at the pictures taken by Spirit's Front Hazard Camera at 14:23:00 UTC [nasa.gov] and 14:32:06 UTC [nasa.gov] today (look here [nasa.gov] to decode the image time from its name) you can see the rover has moved!!

As of this writing I could'nt find any statement from NASA or from the Rovers' official site [nasa.gov] indicating whether or not this particular problem is resolved. Nevertheless I hope all is well with Spirit and this was nothing but a simple glitch.

Redundancy

[bar-agent]

Good thing we've got two of them.

Usually a simple fix

[JavaRob]

...suffering from two wheels that can no longer steer and thus are being held in a fixed direction...

I find that simply rolling back a bit will often dislodge what may be a bottle cap that's causing the wheel to malfunction. If there's string that has become wrapped around the wheel, however, you're done for, and should probably just take another shopping cart.

Sorry, what are we talking about?

Spin the front wheels Hal!

[GrassyKnowl]

I'm sorry I can't do that, Dave. It would jeopardize the mission.