Mars Rover Opportunity Turns 8 151
New submitter el borak writes
"Never mind all the talk about the revival of the American auto industry. What may be the greatest car the U.S. has ever built is currently a tidy 78 million miles (125m km) away from this world — resting on the edge of Endeavour crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars. It was on January 25, 2004 that the rover Opportunity bounced down on Mars for a mission designed to last a minimum of three months and a maximum of just a year or two."
Great engineering! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty? For me, most of that was stuff made in the 80's.
Considerable accomplishment, designing, accumulating all the bits, assembling it, putting it in a rocket, flying it to Mars, landing it and having it muck about in a place without AAA Roadside Service. Well done.
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?.
Pretty much everything I own, seeing as how most warranty terms are a year at best. No company in its right mind would design a product that would NOT make it past its warranty expiration.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?.
Pretty much everything I own, seeing as how most warranty terms are a year at best. No company in its right mind would design a product that would NOT make it past its warranty expiration.
You don't read the same reviews I do, on Amazon ... "This thing was DOA out of the box ..." "This lasted 30 days and then died ..." etc.
Some stuff holds up well (which I theorize is inversely proportional to how much I use/depend upon) While I experience the same as these unhappy reviewers.
After the learning experiences of Hubble and the failed ("inches? I thought you mean't Centimetres!") Mars Climate Orbiter, you can expect things are held to a very high standard - because failure is so very, very expens
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Still, we had a visitor to our local Astronomy club explain the one oversight which may ultimately doom Opportunity - dust build up on the Solar Panels. Next probe will probably have a little robotic arm and brush to sweep itself off now and then.
This wasn't an oversight, it was well understood that this would happen. They've gotten lucky that dust devils have cleaned the panels a few times.
The next Mars rover is nuclear powered. There are no attempts at any kind of dust cleaning device- it would be far too heavy and fragile to be worth bothering with.
Re: (Score:2)
Coolest Mars Probe Ever is now enroute: Mars Space Laboratory
It has, like, lasers and neutron beams, dude!!!
http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
That's a really irritating web site.
Re: (Score:3)
This wasn't an oversight, it was well understood that this would happen. They've gotten lucky that dust devils have cleaned the panels a few times.
Hell, they originally thought the wind would be completely negligible, and the dust build-up that would result had in that case was the whole reason for the 90 day mission plan. So, yeah, they kinda anticipated the whole dust thing.
Isn't it nice when being wrong is a pleasant surprise? And hey, learning that kind of thing about the planet is part of why we're sending robots there. It all fits together nicely.
Re: (Score:2)
You base that on Amazon review? Are you stupid, or just mildly retarded?
Let me see.. the last consumer grade electronic that didn't live past it's warranty was. hmm. Nothing, actually.
wait, there was a monitor, but I broke it, so not their fault.
and I have been a consumer for WELL over 30 years.
I'm sure if I tried to save more and buy cheaper things my experience may not be true.
Re: (Score:2)
One does have to be a bit brain-damaged to confuse the statistically small number of devices which fail upon first use with the overall population in which the vast majority last the full warranty period, and a smaller majority last twice that period or longer.
While I don't own anything manufactured since 2000 which has more than a dozen years of use behind it, that's due to temporal mathematics, not engineering shortcuts.
Re: (Score:2)
It may be statistically small, but folks like me are also statistically unlucky (five dead hard drives in one year, zero laptops that made it out of warranty before their first failure, a Roomba whose motor gears broke the third time I used it—out of warranty, but only because I didn't use it enough—and a car at 110k that has a rebuilt transmission, a new starter gear on the front of the transmission, a rebuilt power steering pump, a rebuilt steering rack, new seals throughout the top half of th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe he has been on the internet for too long and has lost all hope in humanity.
It is ok though. If he hangs on another 3 or 4 years he will become perfectly ok with the knowledge that the human race really sucks.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't read the same reviews I do, on Amazon ... "This thing was DOA out of the box ..." "This lasted 30 days and then died ..." etc.
Oh, I read those all the time, and they're typically on cheap made-in-china shit that give everlasting life to the term "you get what you pay for". Once you come to terms with the fact that cheapest is rarely best, and start making small investments instead of purchases, your experience will be much better. I can honestly say I have not received anything that has been DOA in longer than I can remember, and the only thing I've had to file a warranty claim on in the past decade has been my Xbox 360. Not to sa
Re: (Score:3)
To be honest, most of those are probably lies. While it's true some are damaged during shipping, it's far more likely that:
* The user bought it, disliked it, and wanted a refund but couldn't get one (remember, you can leave an Amazon review without buying it from Amazon). The only recourse is to break it and claim DOA or "it broke".
* The user bought it, but it had a defect
Re: (Score:2)
From my own experience, if I'm not happy with a purchase, I generally want to have a good moan about the supplier / manufacturer and let everyone else know about it too. On the flip side, when I am perfectly happy with my purchase, I sometimes leave good feedback but generally am too engrossed playing with my new toy to bother doing so.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, my camera (Canon T2i) just passed it's warranty date a few weeks and it's still going strong. So is my 2005 era Kodak point-and-shoot. Heck, the computer I'm typing this on (an off-the-shelf at Best Buy HP Pavilion) is still going strong on it's original OS installation after nearly six years. (It's companion is a year younger and has only required the mouse to be replaced, unsurprising on a machine primarily
Re: (Score:2)
My Kodak DC4800 with 3.1 Mpixels is soon to be 12 years old and works fine. I wish my 2003 32" Sony CRT television would die so I can justify a modern set but it will probably last 20 years. I also have a Sony digital clock radio (with analog AM/FM tuner) that we're still using that is 22 years old.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, we kept waiting for our eight year old CRT TV to die so we could replace it with a flatscreen/HDTV. This last Black Friday there was such a good deal at Costco that we finally just bit the bullet and upgraded.
Re: (Score:2)
Six years and still on original OS install?
You're on /. and you didn't try Vista or Win 7 on it?
I loaded Vista on a crappy old dell c600... didn't look pretty, but it did run...
Re: (Score:2)
Why mess with what works?
Re: (Score:2)
having it muck about in a place without AAA Roadside Service.
I don't know if roadside service [youtube.com] would help in this case.
Well done.
A solar-powered car running for 8 years without any maintenance in a fairly hostile environment -- just astounding.
Re: (Score:2)
having it muck about in a place without AAA Roadside Service.
I don't know if roadside service [youtube.com] would help in this case.
Well done.
A solar-powered car running for 8 years without any maintenance in a fairly hostile environment -- just astounding.
Makes you wonder, when people say we can't do that for consumer vehicles, eh? Where's the Can-do spirit?!?
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Makes you wonder, when people say we can't do that for consumer vehicles, eh? Where's the Can-do spirit?!?
You could, it just costs more. That said, most US made vehicles will run 100K miles with minimal supervision. My 12 year old GMC truck has really been quite reliable and could well run another 10 years. I'm part owner of a 40 year old plane that could fly for another 40 years.
Not everything is an iPad.
Re: (Score:2)
Makes you wonder, when people say we can't do that for consumer vehicles, eh? Where's the Can-do spirit?!?
You could, it just costs more. That said, most US made vehicles will run 100K miles with minimal supervision. My 12 year old GMC truck has really been quite reliable and could well run another 10 years. I'm part owner of a 40 year old plane that could fly for another 40 years.
Not everything is an iPad.
To be fair, with airplanes, hours the engine has run and takeoff/landing cycles are more important than age. Of course, being an aircraft owner, you probably already know this.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure we can. Are you prepared to spend $100M on your next car?
Re: (Score:2)
Where's the Can-do spirit?!?
Presumably still playing in the sand on the other side of the planet. No one's heard from Spirit in almost two years.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
High five, old Honda buddy! 1980 CB400T, still truckin' along, albeit in need of some engine gasket replacements.
Re: (Score:2)
78 Wing. Full Dress.
About to get rid of it and pick up a 96 Wing.
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Informative)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?
Practically all of it, since I don't buy horribly-made cheap crap.
Pay for quality, get quality. Simple.
Re:Great engineering! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course You can afford to
Pay for quality
You're the Pope!!
you probably bathe in a golden bathtub..
Re: (Score:2)
Of course You can afford to
Pay for quality
You're the Pope!!
you probably bathe in a golden bathtub..
I'd be really worried though if he was bathing in a golden shower
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I bought more expensive stuff and they still break down for me like a SCSI Plextor CD burner back in the 1990s that lasted over a year and its warranty just ended. :(
Re: (Score:2)
My 24" iMac is doing pretty well and it's 5 years old.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?
Every ThinkPad I've ever owned (currently on #5).
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?
I'm not senile YET. I'm working on an old PC for a friend who was given an old Dell with a 500 mz chip, 256 meg memory and Windows XP. The only thing wrong with it is whoever owned it before was dumb enough to load it down with crap, including 5 different AVs. The hardware is working fine (just reinstalled Windows for him, it still had the disks).
I bought my TV in 2002. My car was five years old when I bought it in 20
Turning 8 (Score:2)
Images from Opportunity show a life form consisting of a scorpion-shaped body, a disc and a 'black flap".
Re: (Score:2)
Sheesh, not again! Next you'll be telling me they've uncovered a giant black obelisk on the moon...
Re: (Score:2)
Images from Opportunity show a life form consisting of a scorpion-shaped body, a disc and a 'black flap".
Opportunity was on Venus? Does JPL know about this?
Re: (Score:2)
and 5 years more than Michael got for poking little boys in the butt.
Yea ok (Score:1)
1) IT did not actually put those 78 Million miles on its own hardware, its like if I ship a toyota from japan to virgina, I did not DRIVE it from A to B and I shure as hell would not add the shipping mileage to its odometer
2) Are we really that proud that something we built lasted 8 years? that's like the breaking in period for a diesel Mercedes with far more (actual, not shipping) miles on it
Re: (Score:3)
2) Are we really that proud that something we built lasted 8 years? that's like the breaking in period for a diesel Mercedes with far more (actual, not shipping) miles on it
Mars is a harsh mistress...
Re: (Score:2)
2) Are we really that proud that something we built lasted 8 years? that's like the breaking in period for a diesel Mercedes with far more (actual, not shipping) miles on it
Mars is a harsh mistress...
+1 Some details to back you up, ae1294: Temperature in summer days/nights range from: 20 C to -90 C
Let's see a Mercedes work in that type of environment (even at earth normal atmospheric pressures)
Also there's been NO MAINTENANCE done on the rover for 8 years.
Yes, we should be proud, very proud.
Re: (Score:2)
+1
Some details to back you up, ae1294:
Temperature in summer days/nights range from: 20 C to -90 C
Just image your car battery trying to work at -90 C to get an idea of just how great this little guy is..
Re: (Score:2)
2) Are we really that proud that something we built lasted 8 years? that's like the breaking in period for a diesel Mercedes with far more (actual, not shipping) miles on it
Eight years, in an extremely inhospitable environment (extreme dust, an average temperature of -60C), with absolutely zero maintenance. Yeah, let's see that Mercedes run for 8 years with no oil change.
Re:Yea ok (Score:5, Insightful)
A break-in period that consisted of being shipped slowly on a ship compared to a violent launch on the top of a rocket, as well as the re-entry into the atmosphere of a largely mysterious planet, and finally the potentially violent landing.
Then, once in use and with the odometer actually ticking up, the Mercedes gets an oil change every few thousand miles, or every few months; it's also refueled probably every other week, at least. And it's probably not in a hostile environment the entirety of its driven life, at least without serious repair assistance.
So, yes, we really should be proud of the Opportunity for lasting for eight years while 78 million miles from a repair shop.
Re: (Score:2)
and finally the potentially violent landing.
You know, I might actually pay for a Mercedes, if the delivery method involved the successful deployment of rockets, parachutes and giant airbags ... that would be cool.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
no. it's like Toyota building a car, all the packaging, the ship, the fuel. Sent the ship across a million mile ocean, and then flung the car 5 miles to land.
After which it unpacked itself and started driving, and 100 years later it is still driving.
And it was designed to last up to a year. You might want to understand what that means.
Re: (Score:2)
multi-second lag is an understatement.. depending on position around the sun the one way trip for a radio signal from Earth to Mars ranges from 4.3 min to 21 min
well done (Score:2)
Kudos to the Design team.
well done.
Re: (Score:2)
Kudos to the Design team.
well done.
The same could be said of the team that sent the probe into the Sun... even though it didn't last nearly so long, it was indeed 'well done'.
Medals (Score:1)
Re:Medals (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Big companies need to be able to outsource so the can make money and create American jobs. -The Current republican stance.
Re: (Score:2)
Big companies need to be able to outsource so the can make money and create American jobs. -The Current republican stance.
The only jobs that stance produces blow.
Article misses the point (Score:3, Insightful)
The impressive aspect is not that it has operated for 8 years, or that it is "beyond its warranty" (which is a misnomer - there was no warranty). What is impressive is that it has operated in a harsh environment for 8 years WITH ZERO MAINTENANCE! None. No one has touched the device in over 8 years now. And it has continued to operate, by radio, despite dust, vibration, heat, cold and radiation beyond what most Earth-bound devices ever experience.
Sure, my car has well over 100K miles on it and is over 12 years old. But it is only operating because I am performing routine maintenance on the car. If I had not maintained the car, it would have stopped working ages ago. The impressive aspect of the Mars rover is that it has survived without anyone needs to tighten a nut, change oil, replace a battery or wheel or any of the routine operations that we have to use for our normal machines to keep them operational.
Re: (Score:2)
not true, maintenance procedures including re-flash of Spirit's memory and software patch, that patch also applied to other rover as precaution.
Re: (Score:2)
In fairness (and not to diminish your point -- it is astonishing) there are several things on the rover that have pretty much bit the dust. They keep tweaking things to work around the breaking down hardware. Were the rover your car you'd have replaced a lot of it a long time ago because it's barely hobbling along.
That said, you're quite right it's an phenomenal achievement and the lessons learned will make/have made future missions even more amazing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
at 34 km is approaching Lunokhod 37 km record (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It has traveled 22 miles (34 km), according to one of the JPL people who drive it:
https://twitter.com/#!/marsroverdriver/status/162678175388803072 [twitter.com]
Rover? (Score:2)
That must be in dog years.
Bah-dah-bump. Be sure to tip your waitress. Thank you.
Re: (Score:2)
Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission (Score:2)
Re:It's not a car. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for freight cars, of course. "Car" is just a short version of "carriage."
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
oh, do you mean the railroad type?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They designed these things to withstand the worst environment they could imagine and be as durable as possible since maintenance would be impossible. Maybe they overcompensated, so what? In return they got 4x the lifetime and dozens of times the science that they had hoped for, and still counting. Your complaint is idiotic. It's like complaining there's too much cake.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly you aren't and never will be an engineer, we all have different strengths.
The point of engineering is to have "just enough cake." Not too much (overdesign), not too little (underdesign).
Re: (Score:2)
Re:the flipside of reliability (Score:4, Funny)
Which is strange, because during his interview he kept stressing to them that he was "just good enough" for the job.
Re: (Score:2)
The point of engineering is to have "just enough cake." Not too much (overdesign), not too little (underdesign).
But now imagine your equipment is going somewhere that you know very little about (this being the whole point of why you're sending it), and there is no possibility for repair, upgrade (outside of software), or second chances.
Now are you going to aim for "just enough", or are you going to err on the side of over-design? How are you going to determine what "just enough" is, when you don't know what the environment will be like?
The correct way to engineer something like the Mars rover was not to try to make
Re: (Score:2)
You are completely making my point:
You said:
"In the mining industry, where safety is paramount. They typically have entire redundant control systems to ensure no downtime. The systems are designed to last 20-30 years but get replaced every 5 years to make sure that nothing goes wrong ever."
Why not build systems to last 100, 1,000 or even 100,000 years if you care so much about safety? Because 100,000 reliability, even to the non-engineer, sounds like overkill. But you yourself, as an engineer, claim that
Re:the flipside of reliability (Score:5, Interesting)
Estimates were based on experience with the earlier Sojourner rover. Opportunity got lucky in that every now and then whirlwinds clean off the solar panels. This phenom was not known at the time, at least with solar panels.
And the wheels and joints have become creaky and are gradually failing. Work-arounds and adjustments to behavior have allowed it to continue. Thus, the equipment is failing, as expected. Luck and ingenuity in work-arounds should not normally be relied on for engineering duration estimates. Further, the grinder teeth have worn down and the rover is basically gumming rocks, or just brushing rocks instead of grinding.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Opportunity cost" if the device fails before the design lifespan.
The device might be cheaper than the rockets, fuel etc involved in sending it there.
Sometimes you also need to launch something within a particular time range, otherwise the next best time could be decades or even a century later: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch_window [wikipedia.org]
So if you launch it and the stuff fails, you just wasted many millions and many years. The scientists who wanted it there for their research might die before the 2nd try.
Re:the flipside of reliability (Score:4, Interesting)
And, really, why would you want to shave everything down to such a short life: it's not like you could have saved much money for the taxpayer - the component cost of the rovers is only maybe 1/100th the total cost of the mission. Most of the cost is in getting the rover to Mars in the first place, followed by having a full-time staff of dozens or hundreds designing, testing, and running the thing.
Re: (Score:2)
That's exactly what was cooking in my head, but never heard of it before: Deacon's Masterpiece. Yes! I was actually thinking in my head, the perfect engineering solution would be one that last exactly the allotted time then disintegrates, at optimal cost. I didn't know there was a term for it.
I like the next step in the discussion, the statement: "the strut that lasts a few months' time, but would snap on impact." Does this mean that the most perfectly "Deaconized" subgroups/subcomponents cannot be asse
Re: (Score:2)
It would have taken more time to design and build cheaper parts.
Only idiots on /. would think the something going about it's expected life for the same money is bad engineering.
Re: (Score:2)
There was a bare minimum that this rover had to be engineered for. That bare minimum to make sure it worked at all is what also allowed it to last as long as it has.
This rover landed via airbags and experienced some tremendous g-forces. The rover had to be designed to survive that, just the ability to scoot around after that in a low gravity environment was cake compared to the landing.
So if they had designed this to just barely hit the 90 day limit then it might not have survived at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:the flipside of reliability (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it is great that the device was design to last max a year or two, and lasted 8, but on the flipside, this means they aren't really good engineers.
First of all it was engineered to guarantee to work for 3 months which was the allotted project objectives. Based on the budget and capability, this is what NASA had designed the rovers to do. Surviving for years is a bonus.
Just because they erred on the side of a good result doesn't mean the estimates are better. It means their methodology is HEAVILY padded, or if we assume +/-400~800%, they were just lucky that it didn't swing the other way. Given Phobos-Grunt, perhaps space engineering margin of error really is +/-400~800%. Although I suspect huge margins of error were thrown about in NASA>
Of course they padded their estimates and erred on the side of caution. 1) There is no way to retrieve or repair this rover. 2) NASA knew about the sticky dust from previous missions, but they didn't have omnipotence when it comes to the Mars climate. They didn't know that windstorms were capable of cleaning said dust. So you would have rather just wing it and not pad their estimates. So when the rover failed, they can tell NASA "oh well, try again in two years."
If that's the case, huge design buffers, that means they don't understand the underlying physics/materials engineer, and had to heavily overdesign, which means there is a far more efficient design out there.
I don't think you understand that there are different goals in engineering. One goal may be efficiency. The goal in this case was absolute reliability despite any unknowns the rovers may have experienced on Mars.
I'm not knocking NASA engineers, I'm just exploring how to shave down this margin so that they can make more efficient designs at lower cost that behave as expected.
Again efficiency is not as much a priority as reliability in these cases.
Building something that behaves as expected is far, far, FAR more important than building something that blows away expectations by orders of magnitude. The former is good engineering, the latter is waste, or worse, dumb luck!
The engineers never worked on the expectation that you ascribe. People outside of NASA have placed it on them. For them, the mission was successful when the rovers completed their objectives after 3 months. All these years afterwards are bonus.
Re: (Score:2)
Here are the Level 1 System Requirements for MER.
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/37720/1/05-0470.pdf [nasa.gov]
Value Engineering For Space (Score:2)
Within the payload limits, there's no reason not to over-engineer the hell out of a space platform. Value engineering a rover closer to the mission plan would have saved time/money, but would have added to the risks of failure. Utter mission failure is the major cost sink for working in space, so it pays to add sigmas when possible.
The critical variable is the limited number of opportunities for interplanetary launches as a function of time and lining up rockets. NASA could be lofting $1000 Aibos [wikipedia.org] with high
Re: (Score:2)
The estimates were off by 400%~800%!!! Or more!!!
Just because they erred on the side of a good result doesn't mean the estimates are better.
It's like my gramps taught me: "It's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."
Re:the flipside of reliability (Score:4, Informative)
5) Your an idiot. Your 'an idiot' wrote your post.
I'd like to make a helpful suggestion. When you are chiding someone for being wrong (and, he was), it's incumbent upon you to be right. That means grammar, too.
"Your" is possessive. "You're" is a contraction of "you are."
Re: (Score:2)
"I think that without being able to examine the vehicles, we cannot tell what or where the failure points will be."
I agree, some of the other comments explain that this is a "point and shoot" mission, without a chance to inspect the design for further engineering feedback. Someone else posted about a think called "Deacon's Masterpiece" in response to my over/under design statement, which is where I was headed. But like you said, without examining it, other engineering methods need to be employed.
In hindsi
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This does appear to be a concerted astro-turfing campaign.
Not because it goes against the grain here at /. , but because these fucking morons are posting it in every single fucking story.
Most individuals would have given up by now, perhaps figured their point got across, but this troll just keeps on posting on and on, in every single fucking thread, every single one. Just like those fucking annoying people who post advertisements in the middle of threads.
If it has been two or three threads I could buy the
Re: (Score:2)
And that is exactly what the troll wants.
Just don't feed the trolls, and they will die in painful death.
(To be honest I am feeding him now as well, so I promise that is my first and last post on this topic)
Re: (Score:2)
My friend, please seek a mental health institution immediately. You are spouting the same drivel about prophesy as you have here [slashdot.org] I can only surmise that you are in need of immediate assistance.
Please Seek Help.