NASA Mars Rover Spots Its Ultimate Destination 101
coondoggie writes "It has been years in the making but NASA said its Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has captured a new view of the rim of the planet's Endeavour crater, perhaps the rover's ultimate destination. The Mars rover set out for Endeavour in September 2008 after spending two years exploring the Victoria crater. NASA says Endeavour is 13 miles across, some 25 times wider than Victoria crater, and could offer scientists more insight into the red planet's makeup."
incredible (Score:5, Interesting)
They lasted too long. Bad engineering. Big fiasco (Score:5, Funny)
The requirements were for 90 days at a time when we wanted to send up many such vehicles and robots knowing they were cheap and we would lose some.
These little guys have lasted far too long, demonstrating the folks at JPL were not able to meet the requirements the taxpayers gave them.
Far better engineering would have had these things come in at 40% of the cost and had them die on day 97. Then we could have flown more and more of them.
I hope the guys who managed this fiasco were suitably fired before they had a chance to screw the taxpayer and the space program over again.
Re:They lasted too long. Bad engineering. Big fias (Score:2)
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Personally, I commend them for designing the thing as well as they did, because really, the cost of getting a new rover up there every year far outweighs the cost of continued support for this one.
Add in the increased chances of losing a rover during launch or re-entry on mars, and it makes even more sense to get
Re:They lasted too long. Bad engineering. Big fias (Score:5, Insightful)
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Except the majority of the cost is fixed in the rockets to escape Earth and the spacecraft to reach mars, so a longer lasting robot is always better so long as it remains a minority of the cost of the exploration system.
This is incorrect. My understanding is that the two Mars Exploration Rovers cost roughly $850 million for the development, launch, and first 90 days of the mission. Of that, roughly $200 million was development cost, somewhere around $450 million was the cost of building (and other work like testing) the rovers, $75 million for operations, and $100 million for two rather cheap Delta II launches. So the launches took up roughly 12% of the total cost. This is typical fraction of cost IMHO for most satellites,
Re:They lasted too long. Bad engineering. Big fias (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, I bet you're the guy who makes laptops fail two days after the three-year warranty ends.
I am all in favour of careful engineering. Designing things to fail is extremely antisocial.
Re:They lasted too long. Bad engineering. Big fias (Score:4, Insightful)
The GP is not making an argument for careful engineering, he's making an argument for risky cutting edge engineering.
He's not saying YOUR laptop should fail after the three day warranty, because that's not the requirements or what a consumer wants from a laptop.
He's saying a 90 day lifetime rover should die on day 100 having a 10 day safety margin and not a six year safety margin.
At the time, the spirit (so to speak) was for faster, better, cheaper. But we didn't get faster or cheaper from rover, we got better, just as usual.
The reward for dying on day 100 after a successful mission would have been to launch more rover and more rovers.
The punishment for lasting six years is that we've sent no more rovers up there. And the next rover is not the size of a toaster or trashcan, it's the size of an SUV and will be canceled.
Instead of grabbing the public's attention with a series of rovers, we've bored the public to death with the same version of Johnny 5 rolling around not doing much of anything as far as the public can tell for six years.
Grandparent is right, these things were way overbuilt.
What. The. Fuck. (Score:5, Insightful)
You sir, are the very definition of a crab in a barrel. Do you know what happens to crabs in a barrel when one of them tries to escape? The others pull him back down into the barrel.
Instead of celebrating the overwhelming success of the program, you denigrate it by saying it was too successful. Making something fail because of some artificial time horizon is just....well...stupid. My god man, don't you have ANY pride in success?
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Seems like you just bit the troll. Who himself was weirdly moderated +4, Insightful. While good comments got moderated -1, Troll.
I don’t think that there is any doubt left, that the moderation system has been taken over by trolls / 4channers.
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The GP is not making an argument for careful engineering, he's making an argument for risky cutting edge engineering.
He's not saying YOUR laptop should fail after the three day warranty, because that's not the requirements or what a consumer wants from a laptop.
He's saying a 90 day lifetime rover should die on day 100 having a 10 day safety margin and not a six year safety margin.
At the time, the spirit (so to speak) was for faster, better, cheaper. But we didn't get faster or cheaper from rover, we got better, just as usual.
The reward for dying on day 100 after a successful mission would have been to launch more rover and more rovers.
The punishment for lasting six years is that we've sent no more rovers up there. And the next rover is not the size of a toaster or trashcan, it's the size of an SUV and will be canceled.
Instead of grabbing the public's attention with a series of rovers, we've bored the public to death with the same version of Johnny 5 rolling around not doing much of anything as far as the public can tell for six years.
Grandparent is right, these things were way overbuilt.
Except that the two scenarios aren't mutually exclusive- we should have continued to send more robots over there while having the robots last longer than we ever expected.
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Grandparent is right, these things were way overbuilt.
Grandparent needs to read more and I think you do too.
Launch Successes (s) and Failures (f), 1957–1999 [aero.org]
With about a 6%-7% chance of failure of not even making it to the planet, you want to make as few launches as possible and get the most out of each.
Then you have everything that could go wrong during landing. e.g. Beagle 2 and the crater it left in the martian soil.
Yep, thank God NASA is run by actual rocket scientists rather than internet experts.
Re:They lasted too long. Bad engineering. Big fias (Score:5, Insightful)
Far better engineering would have had these things come in at 40% of the cost and had them die on day 97. Then we could have flown more and more of them.
Ah, what a fanciful imagination you have of how engineering works.
Where engineers can guarantee operation in a highly variable, largely unknown environment for X days, yet also nail tolerances so tightly they can predict parts will fail in 1.1X days. And save lots of money in the process, somehow. Even though relative to your own imaginary number the rovers we actually got cost 2.5x, yet lasted more than 25x.
The rovers were engineered as robustly as possible within the weight budget, simply to ensure that they would work at all on the surface of Mars, and therefore had the potential to last for a very long time. This is obviously a win if you think the goal was to have the maximum number of operational rovers on Mars at any given time. But the reason they haven't launched more has nothing to do with rover cost. It's because they don't have the budget to expand operations to cover more; NASA is already busy with this already vastly expanded mission.
The only reason a 90 day mission plan came up was because that was their very rough estimate of how long the solar panels could supply sufficient power before they became too covered in dust. They had always hoped they could continue the mission past that and had contingency plans for the operations budget to that effect, and were very pleasantly surprised that their assumptions were wrong. When the Martian wind turned out to be much stronger than expected, enough to blow dust off of the rovers' solar panels, that constraint on the rovers' life span was removed and their robust engineering could pay off.
Executive summary: The only serious mistake made in the planning, research and design of the rover mission was in predicting a short lifespan for the rovers, and that mistake turned out to be in the mission's and the taxpayer's favor.
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faster, better, cheaper
But I thought I could only pick two!
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Ah, what a fanciful imagination you have of how engineering works.
While I don't agree with his supposition, He's not that far off the mark. In manufacturing, if the expected life is 1 year (with a warranty period of 90 days), and if a $10 part will last, literally forever while a $2 part will last for 1 year of continuous use... You choose the $2 part.
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In manufacturing, if the expected life is 1 year (with a warranty period of 90 days), and if a $10 part will last, literally forever while a $2 part will last for 1 year of continuous use... You choose the $2 part.
Yes. But if the specs for your device includes high-g acceleration on launch, storage in vacuum at very low temperatures during transport, rapid heating during re-entry, another round of high-g deceleration, and finally operation in a thin atmosphere at still very low temperatures, you'll probably need the $10 part anyway. That it'll last virtually forever is just an added benefit.
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Yes because those savings will really start to add up as we mass produce rovers.
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Not only that, since we seem to crash 50% of everything we send to mars, you pretty much have to outlast your design requirements to get an average success rate.
The toughest part of the mission is just getting the thing on the ground in one piece. Some redundancy in engineering to hopefully make the rover last the failure of a few components will almost certainly ensure a long lifespan. Even so, don't forget we almost lost Spirit right in the beginning due to a software problem of all things. THAT would
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Vista is still dead last I checked.
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It's a recommendation to use the "Morose Martian" distro ... no wait, they've already used "M" haven't they ?
Re:Shazam! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exciting. The knowledge contained within this crater will feed millions and advance the knowledge nessesary for the survival of the Human Race by many years, and reveal the secrets of oil spill clean up as an added bonus!
Um, not exactly. Though the discoveries made there could free the minds of millions of people and entice some of the brightest people on the planet to focus their talents on space sciences. Surely that has some value, too.
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the discoveries made there could free the minds of millions of people and entice some of the brightest people on the planet to focus their talents on space sciences
Come on, Opportunity has been on Mars for 6 years now and at this point they are just playing with a VERY cool RC car in the (Martian) dirt. It is not that expensive to run at this point and it is certainly worth keeping unti
Re:Shazam! (Score:4, Funny)
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if they found life, numbnuts.
The remains of a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias in the bottom of Endeavor crater would certainly create some interest.
But the long drives by Opportunity have actually been pretty interesting. It has found several meteors. It has also been able to study an increasingly wide area of mars. A long baseline helps a lot in science and I suspect data from Opportunity will be used decades into the future.
Also if not life, then maybe evidence of life elsewhere. A squatter probe (like phoenix and the vikings) wou
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The remains of a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias in the bottom of Endeavor crater would certainly create some interest.
Someone give this man a cigar ... and quick. I'd hate for the Inprobability Drive to turn it into something that Freud wouldn't be so approving of.
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In all fairness, when compared to the projects that government historically spends money on, blowing a couple hundred million bucks to drive a rc-car around on Mars doesn't seem like a bad investment.
At least NASA and its contractors have come up with a few useful tech advances as a byproduct of throwing stuff into space.
-Restil
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This is exciting. The knowledge contained within this crater will feed millions and advance the knowledge nessesary for the survival of the Human Race by many years, and reveal the secrets of oil spill clean up as an added bonus!
I find your post very enlightening. Spirit and Opportunity should be supplied with Slashdot accounts and reprogrammed to post discouraging comments every few minutes. That would be far more helpful.
Re:Shazam! (Score:5, Insightful)
There are still some people who believe that human achievement is a zero-sum game. Idiots, we call them.
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I think you might be the delusional one. Since what you describe... is called... NATURAL SELECTION!
It’s the principle that all life adheres to. In all of the whole of the universe.
Yes, in a confined space, if you win, I lose! Since “win” always implies gaining some resources (or more people with your mindset). So since the resources are fixed, this means they got taken from somewhere. Which is: YOU.
Even the simplest bacteria in a petri dish follow that basic rule.
You live in a happy hippie
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Start the Reactor!! (Score:3, Funny)
FREE MARS!
Ah yes, (Score:5, Funny)
" and could offer scientists more insight into the red planet's make-up"
Mars: the rouge planet!
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" and could offer scientists more insight into the red planet's make-up"
A planet full of Republicans?
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Either that or Communists.
Impact crater (Score:2)
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Re:Impact crater (Score:5, Informative)
It will cause deformations to the underlying rock strata, but that strata will still be visible and measurable. At the Haughton Impact crater in northern Canada, the cliffs that make up the crater rim maintain their structure. The material that was ejected has wound up as big breccia hills within the crater, and was also distributed around outside the crater.
Also, most of the hydrological (and dare I say hydrodynamical?) features actually come up after the impact, and can tell you a lot about the underlying mineralogy. As the heat from the impact dissipates, it heats water, which dissolves some minerals, which then bubble up to the surface. These hydro-thermal events that occur after the impact is also where you can best expect to find microbial life. In effect, you have all the needed ingredients for life present in a hydrothermal vent... warm, running water and associated minerals.
Re:Impact crater (Score:5, Informative)
Go to Metor Crater in Arizona and take the tour.
The impactor buries itself in the ground. then explodes. The explosion peals back the layers and stacks them upside down outside the crater like a shattered layer cake. They are easier to get to on the outside. That is why all the Apollo astronauts came to the crater to study geology.
Go here read the geology section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_Crater [wikipedia.org]
cool stuff
Papers please... (Score:2)
Alternates to solar panels (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what alternates to solar panels they've considered. Seems like a satellite could collect solar energy 24.6583 by 7 and beam it to the rover(s) using microwave or something. And the rover could carry less equipment, not have to worry about dust so much, and operate around the clock.
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As a side bonus, the satellite can power multiple drone / base / whatever on the planet. So you can reduce future payload after that.
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Because it took the Great Morloch 6 days to build Mars, and then he rested on the seventh. Don't kids know anything about galactic myth these days?
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The proper physicist's notation is so boring. "A satellite could collector solar energy 1 of the time."
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Martian calendar (Score:1)
Seems like a satellite could collect solar energy 24.6583 by 7
How do you know the Martian week is 7 days long?
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They've done pretty well with solar.
What they considered was nuclear - the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be nuclear powered, and so will not have to rest for the winter.
The security implications of carrying a nuclear battery do substantially increase the mission cost, however.
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how does that work? (Score:2)
How, exactly, can electricity/power be "beamed" from a satellite to the rover? As far as I know, we can't "beam" any significant amount of electricity because so much is lost in the medium. While I know it's possible to do some induction (like Wii remote chargers), I don't think that technology scales up very well.
Can you explain this please?
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Let's take the light example. In other words, a laser. Can you build a laser big enough (as well as a receiver that is big enough) to transmit the energy required to run one of these rovers? I am asking a question about scale. I realize you can transfer some energy via laser. My question is: can you transfer enough to run a Rover? I don't think you can. I don't think we have advanced the tec
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Let's take the light example. In other words, a laser. Can you build a laser big enough (as well as a receiver that is big enough) to transmit the energy required to run one of these rovers? I am asking a question about scale. I realize you can transfer some energy via laser. My question is: can you transfer enough to run a Rover? I don't think you can. I don't think we have advanced the technology even close to achieving that.
Yes, you can transfer enough. Getting that capability into Mars orbit is a different and currently very expensive problem. Just look at the power levels of lasers currently in operation. My understanding is that we already have continuous lasers in the 1 to 10 kW continuous range. They'll have to be green or blue, I think, to be usable by solar panels.
Same problem with microwave or any other non-wired technology. If this could be done from satellite to the mars surface, then why don't we all have "wireless power cords" by now?
Because the economics doesn't make sense. Do you want to pay say $1 to $100 per kilowatt-hour when you could plug into the wall for $0.10 per kilowatt-hour po
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I wonder what alternates to solar panels they've considered. Seems like a satellite could collect solar energy 24.6583 by 7 and beam it to the rover(s) using microwave or something. And the rover could carry less equipment, not have to worry about dust so much, and operate around the clock.
I understand the current obstacle is converting that power to electricity again. For example, I was informed that if you use somewhere around 2-3 GHz frequency for your beam, then you're limited to somewhere around 200 W per square meter (which is roughly comparable with solar on Mars for efficient solar panels) due to the breakdown voltage of the Schottky diode, which is needed to rectify the microwaves to DC current and the effective area of a dipole antenna (more or less the smallest effective antenna yo
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Uuum, you do know that there is already a huge satellite there, that beams power down all the time? It’s called the sun!
And just as much as any “power beam”, it transmits the energy in form of electromagnetic waves.
And guess what the dust would do to those satellite’s EM waves...
Exactly.
Re:robots in space, why bother with humans? (Score:4, Interesting)
The robots may be much cheaper, but a human on the surface of the planet would be much more efficient.
Re:robots in space, why bother with humans? (Score:4, Informative)
Funny how you should mention equipment, when a manned mission would have to carry huge, huge amounts of equipment to make sure said squishy little thing doesn't die on the way there from temperature, radiation, lack of air, water or food. Same goes for heat shields, parachutes and thrusters to not get killed during landing - landing like the rovers would leave them a bloody smear. Again all the environmental requirements applies on the planet, you'd need a huge solar panel just to keep the habitat at a survivable temperature. Most likely their operational reach is limited by getting home by nightfall when it's -80C (-110F) at best. Never mind that they probably want a way to return home that'll take even more room for a launch vehicle. In short, the whole expedition is huge long before you have the tiniest bit of scientific equipment.
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Robotic exploration of the planets has been tried, and found to be incredibly slow. This is partially technology, and partially politics, but the experiment has been tried, and that's the result.
Here is an example - the Viking Mars orbiters were assumed to not need biological sterilization and were put in an orbit with a 50 year lifetime, because surely in 50 years we would know if there was life on Mars, right ? 50 years from Viking is 2025, which is now not that far off. (And, incidentally, the satellite
Mars Robotic Missions Positive (Score:1)
Late-breaking news from the Council! (Score:5, Funny)
K'breel, speaker for the Council, emphasized that the site for the final battle was well-defended:
"Gentle citizens, it has been years since the twin mechanized monsters touched down on our sweet red soil, but the Council is pleased to report that the last remaining mobile invader from the blue planet has been sighted by sentries approaching the rim of End-Devaur crater. The invader set out for End-Devaur last summer after spending a year at Victory Hole; Planetary Land Defense Forces have pinpointed the invader's location to a point in the trackless wastes at least half a year's journey from End-Devaur."
"The enemy's slow progress across the wastelands leaves us with ample time to amass an overwhelming counterforce, and at last we shall see this campaign through to its end. Rejoice! Within half a revolution around our star, this monstrosity from the blue world shall find its ultimate destination!"
When a junior reporter mentioned the persistent rumor that the invader was merely a scientific probe operating at least order of magnitude past its design lifespan, K'Breel raised a spirited toast "to an opportunity for victory!", and devoured the ends of the reporter's gelsacs.
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Thank you! I'd been missing the updates from K'breel!!!
Obl. XKCD (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Obl. XKCD (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.theonion.com/articles/mars-rover-beginning-to-hate-mars,2072/ [theonion.com]
Objectives met (Score:1)
What an "opportunity"!
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For me this is an example of how equipment generally can last longer away from Earth. Our environment is corrosive and toxic. Water gets into enclosures. Metals oxidize. Science stations in open space last the longest. On Venus they last the shortest time. Mars is nearer to the long end of the spectrum for survival time.
If I was going to be programmed into a robot I might choose to live in the asteroid belt. Things decay slower there.
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Pretty interesting life, you'd have.
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Crossing my fingers (Score:1)
Links Links (Score:5, Informative)
Home Page
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/spotlight/20100430a.html [nasa.gov]
Images
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/press/opportunity/20100430a.html [nasa.gov]
Next target, please (Score:2)
Not ultimate. Next.
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I do know what you are getting at and I don't want to see them die, but I don't think you quite grasp how *big* this crater is. It is 13 miles in diameter. Opportunity's total odometer is under 13 miles. It still has another 8 miles to go to reach the crater. Then, to even get *around* would require a doubling of its current lifetime. The crater is just *that* big.
No, sadly, this will be the ultimate destination, but it will be an AMAZING one!
So much for ... (Score:1)
Success vs failure (Score:1)
Personally, I'm with the optimists on this one.
the red planet's makeup (Score:2)
The secret is this: Blush. Lots and lots of blush.