NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Concludes a 15-Year Mission (nytimes.com) 95
For more than 14 years, the Opportunity rover crawled up and down craters, snapped pictures of a strange landscape and revealed surprising glimpses into the distant past of Mars. On Wednesday, NASA announced that Opportunity, the longest-lived robot ever sent from Earth to the surface of another planet, is dead. The New York Times: "It is therefore that I am standing here with a deep sense of appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission is complete," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science. That ends a mission of unexpected endurance: it was designed to last only three months. Opportunity provided scientists a close-up view of Mars that they had never seen: finely layered rocks that preserved ripples of flowing water several billion years ago, a prerequisite for life.
The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity -- as well as its twin, Spirit, which survived until 2010 -- also brought Mars closer to people on Earth. Because the rovers continued so much longer than expected, NASA has now had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for more than 15 years. That streak seems likely to continue for many more years. A larger, more capable rover, Curiosity, arrived in 2012, and NASA is planning to launch another in 2020. Live telecast here.
The steady stream of photographs and data from Opportunity -- as well as its twin, Spirit, which survived until 2010 -- also brought Mars closer to people on Earth. Because the rovers continued so much longer than expected, NASA has now had a continuous robotic presence on Mars for more than 15 years. That streak seems likely to continue for many more years. A larger, more capable rover, Curiosity, arrived in 2012, and NASA is planning to launch another in 2020. Live telecast here.
RIP to an amazing piece of Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Great job by everybody involved - I'm sure if it wasn't for the big dust storm, it would still be working and sending back new discoveries.
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It's not dead!
It's pining for the fjords!
Late-Breaking News from the Council... (Score:4, Funny)
Early this evening, the Council of Elders announced a planetary day of mourning and magnanimity.
K'Nord, Speaker for the Council, spoke thusly:
"Citizens and Podmates, the Council is pleased to announce that after seven and a half full years -- the longest campaign in the history of the Martian Defense Force -- the diabolical mechanized adversary from the blue world has been defeated. Our defense forces, counted in the billions, have finally surrounded and denied the invader the light and warmth it needs to survive. The blueworlders have acknowledged defeat and ceased contact. Ths invasion, at least on this front, is now over.
Let us raise our glasses to mourn the lost gelsacs of at least half our press corps, some of whose entire careers have been dedicated to coverage of this conflict -- and in a spirit of magnanimity in victory, we -- the victors of the Conflict at Endeavour Crater -- must also raise our glasses in awe and respect of our longest-lived and most challenging foe."
Shortly thereafter, a wizened old retired Councilmember, his gelsacs having long ago been ceremonially ground into a fine tartare and shared amongst the Council [slashdot.org], wiped a perchlorate tear from his eye: "Well-done, blueworlders. Well-done."
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I'm glad to see even the Martians are decent enough to offer their respects.
And welcome back, Tackhead!
Really impressive (Score:2)
Re:NASA incompetence (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, this project was expected to last 3 months, not 14ish years, so I don't think much of anything was wasted.
Re: NASA incompetence (Score:1)
"Is it possible get a man to mars by the end of my term" - Donald J Trump.
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HAH! NON-GOVERMENT engineering has a hard time making a refrigerator that doesn't see anything harsher than than a kids drawing last for even 10 years without a service call.
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It's mostly non-government engineering. The various systems were contracted out to engineering companies around the world specialising in the different areas. For example the main drive motors were contracted out to a Swiss company (I got to play with those babies - very sexy).
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As a non-government engineer, please don't speak for me. These guys at NASA are everything that I strive to be and more.
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+1 funny. Possibly irrelevant off-topic anecdote, but I had some contact with the technology used in these rovers. I got to play with the kind of DC motors used for driving the wheels on Spirit and Opportunity (they were contracted out to a Swiss company) and they were very nice pieces of gear. Lots of torque, very little play. With a good controller, you could get a step response like a staircase, and trying to turn the shaft when it was holding a position, it felt like it was glued in place. They fel
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If everyone "fucked up" as much as NASA did on this mission we'd have solved all of the worlds problems by now.
xkcd (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory xkcd about its twin: Spirit [xkcd.com]. We learned a lot from these machines. I hope Matt Damon can one day use one of them to phone home.
Re:xkcd (Score:5, Interesting)
This new one makes me smile wistfully, rather than wanting to cry.
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xkcd already has a new comic in remembrance of Opportunity [xkcd.com]. This new one makes me smile wistfully, rather than wanting to cry.
Ah, I see you are a machine person. I too am a machine person.
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I hope Matt Damon can one day use one of them to phone home.
I'm really hoping we don't hear from Matt Damon for a long, long while...
It's not dead (Score:2)
Oblig (Score:4, Funny)
Pining for the fjords.
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Opportunity isn't dead, she just got tired of talking to JPL and is now pursuing other opportunities .... er, options.
I'm a little worried the Antags might've gotten her. Someone should check central Africa for a Guru encampment... and, if anything is found, bomb the hell out of it now before they cause any more trouble.
That's the future of humanity in space (Score:2)
Robots.
There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do, faster, safer and a lot cheaper. And in a sense, robots are humanity's children: we created them, and I consider them part of our species. When a robot explores Mars for 15 years, it's humanity that has maintained a presence on Mars and studied there for 15 years.
I've been much more fascinated by what's been going on with space probes of all kin
Probably not (Score:2)
Robots can lead the way but to really exploit space, you need humans: https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com] or https://www.wired.com/2012/04/... [wired.com] and here's a great paper on the subject: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pa... [arxiv.org]
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Safer and cheaper for sure, but in no way are they faster or better. Opportunity took 15 years to travel 28 miles, a human runner can do it in under 3 hours. The rate of science that can be done by a rover is also quite glacial compared to a human who can set up a laboratory and innovate new tools and make much more complex decisions in real time without a 20 minute speed of light lag.
With the current state of rockets, I'd rather spend the money on lots of robotic missions. But if for example the BFR works
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Safer and cheaper for sure, but in no way are they faster or better.
Of course faster and better. Look, it's simple: Opportunity took 15 years to explore 28 miles. Human beings are still working out a plan to leave the ground. Yeah, once you're there, it might take a few hours or days to do the same job, but you gotta get there first. And by the time human beings are finally ready to undertake the journey, robots will have become as versatile and clever as people on Mars - probably more so in fact, as robots
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It's looking like boots on the Martian regolith in a decade or so. Musk and Bezos both seem willing to get there by burning $100 bills as fuel if needed. New Glenn and Starship both seem likely to reduce launch costs to the point where it's a change in kind. Building a rotating habitat (it has to be large) for the journey there and back is the big missing piece at this point, with nothing yet in development (and no other way known to avoid the ill effects of long-term 0g).
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Safer and cheaper for sure, but in no way are they faster or better.
Of course faster and better. Look, it's simple: Opportunity took 15 years to explore 28 miles. Human beings are still working out a plan to leave the ground. Yeah, once you're there, it might take a few hours or days to do the same job, but you gotta get there first. And by the time human beings are finally ready to undertake the journey, robots will have become as versatile and clever as people on Mars - probably more so in fact, as robots aren't bound to Earth-specific bodily contraints.
If we don't send anything there at all, the work is already done. And for free!
Re: That's the future of humanity in space (Score:2)
And by the time human beings are finally ready to undertake the journey, robots will have become as versatile and clever as people on Mars
^^^ THIS is the part where you are completely and obviously wrong. Claiming that humanity will achieve human levels of intelligence and self-sufficiency *in mobile space robots* in 10-15 years? Seriously? Is there *any* hint of that in current AI development? We're happy today that a factory-sized computer distinguishes humans from gorillas...sometimes... Yeah, in fifteen years, it will totally be doing expert scientific decisions while being shoebox-sized. Right.
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Hold on there, Speedy Gonzalez. Elite marathon runners can complete a marathon in under 3 hours. There is no way an astronaut in full gear can do the same on Mars, even with its lower gravity.
Further, you are forgetting Opportunity wasn't moving for all 28 miles. It had to stop, get commands from Earth, perform commands, send back data, and figure out where to go next. Even a human would have to stop to perfor
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That's why you put the human on a quad bike or similar vehicle.
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And how long to get that runner on the surface of Mars with enough oxygen, food, and water and a good enough guarantee of a round trip to convince him to do it?
And how much do you suppose that might cost?
Re:That's the future of humanity in space (Score:5, Insightful)
which where rich in emotion but rather poor in science for the money.
An this would wrong. We got back a shit load of science for the investment in the apollo program. There is the technical knowledge. Advancements in rockets. We learned how to dock in space. How to land spaceships on another planet.
From the samples returned from the moon. We learned the age of the moon, and therefor the earth. We learned the origin earth and the moon system. We learned that the moon is moving away from the earth and about 1cm a year, which cause drag on the earth, which is the reason the day is getting longer. We learned that the moon might be a incredible source of energy.
And so on and on. In just raw science the program leading up to apollo and apollo itself might just be the best investment we ever made in the space program.
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The bot-vs-man debate can be long and involved such that I won't reinvent those details here. I'm of the opinion that bots give more science per dollar, and are of course less risky to humans.
There are indeed some things astronauts do better than remote bots, but the reverse is also true, and if you weigh it all, bots just come out on top when you "add the scores".
But "glory" also matters to most people, for good or bad, and human visitors provide that. I hope someday we'll have the resources to do both b
Bots win, suck it! (Score:1)
Their argument seems to be "Apollo astronauts discovered new things, therefore astronauts are better." However, bots have also discovered new things.
Most important lunar discoveries have been from analyzing the samples returned to the Earth, not things the astronauts actually did on the moon. Bots can return far more samples per dollar.
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I really don't see why we even have the debate. To me there is room and reasons for both maned and bot. We get more bang for buck with bots on narrow focused missions. But on a general mission we get a lot more data from human scientist that are actually there on the ground. That is because a human can make and adjust plans on the fly.
Lets do a example out of a story I once read. If opportunity had rolled up on a patch of land and found a set of tracks, how far could opportunity follow those tracks?
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So what if it took several weeks or months to investigate? Got time. The rocks etc. have been there for millions of years; they aren't going anywhere. A one-year bot exploration time for $20 mil is a better bargain than a two-week astronaut exploration for $100 mil. And bot eyes can see more "colors".
If y
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If you mean chasing down a walking alien, okay, you won.
That's why I keep coming back to /. Everyone is so gracious in defeat :)
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There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do, faster, safer and a lot cheaper.
You're drawing conclusions without having comparable data from both options to work with - seems a tad premature.
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There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do, faster, safer and a lot cheaper.
You're drawing conclusions without having comparable data from both options to work with - seems a tad premature.
I keep saying it - if there isn't any point in sending humans to space or Mars, there isn't any point in sending robots. Science is nice and all, but if saving money is the criteria as the robophiles seem to have as a major argument, not sending anything at all is the winning play.
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There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do.
Space exploration: science is secondary. Inspiration is primary. Robots may do the science fine, but they just don't inspire humans the way humans going out there do.
If the advances SpaceX and Blue Origin have planned for the next few years go as planned (or somewhere close), sending a crowd to people to Mars will cost a lot less than the next Avatar movie, and be far more valuable in inspiring a new generation of engineers.
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The science for the on-planet stuff is in no way worth the price. That's OK though. You clearly don't understand the percentage of people who went into STEM fields because of inspiration from space programs. We've been lacking that for some time now. I've already seen people saying that the Falcon Heavy launch a year ago inspired them. And manned programs simply connect better, humans watching humans.
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The science for the on-planet stuff is in no way worth the price. That's OK though. You clearly don't understand the percentage of people who went into STEM fields because of inspiration from space programs.
That would be me! In grade school during the Apollo Program, I was incredibly inspired. I set my path and stuck with it. I love the robotic science as a machine person, but the Gemini missions, and especially the Apollo 8 and 11 missions - I still get goosebumps and reinvigorated and inspired all over again when I get the opportunity to see what we've done and what we are doing.
Just this past weekend I visited Kennedy Space Center again. The Atlantis Exhibit left me speechless - again. Walking the buil
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Sorry, but science is (almost) never primary. Why did the US go to the moon? It wasn't because of science, it was because of politics and to beat the Soviets. The thing is that once you were there, the only thing you could do was good science. Deep space spaceflight, and manned spaceflight, is really about applied politics. It's just the reality of it.
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Deep space spaceflight, and manned spaceflight, is really about applied politics. It's just the reality of it.
Everything is about politics. And the politics work hella better if people are inspired.
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Actually, science is primary. The only people that need to be constantly "inspired" are Elon Musk Cult Space Nutters.
Then we can cancel everything but earth orbiting satellites. That science stuff just gives those pesky scientists socialist ideas anyway. The crazy bastards try to use Venus and Mars as examples of the greenhouse effect, and that just gets in the way of God's work, here on earth., world without end, Amen.
We can even cancel that socialist NOAA satellite stuff, and let the government get it's forecasts from The Weather Channel, like the rest of us do............. 8^/
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There's no denying that the rovers have done incredible work. But the simple fact of the matter is that a human geologist could have accomplished what they have done in 15 years in maybe a week. Put a geologist in a spacesuit, give them a camera, hammer, and a quad bike, and they'll return far more science far more quickly than any rover ever will.
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Put a geologist in a spacesuit, give them a camera, hammer, and a quad bike, and
...they'll still be on Earth.
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Robots.
There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do, faster, safer and a lot cheaper. And in a sense, robots are humanity's children: we created them, and I consider them part of our species. When a robot explores Mars for 15 years, it's humanity that has maintained a presence on Mars and studied there for 15 years.
I've been much more fascinated by what's been going on with space probes of all kinds for the past few decades than with the lunar stunts of the late sixties, which where rich in emotion but rather poor in science for the money.
Give me a space suit and a pick ax and I'll show you how much better a human is than a machine.
Give me ten minutes and I'll tell you what is in that sedimentary rock. And if I'm right- you'll also witness the first dance performed on Mars.
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Give me a space suit and a pick ax and I'll show you how much better a human is than a machine.
Give me ten minutes and I'll tell you what is in that sedimentary rock. And if I'm right- you'll also witness the first dance performed on Mars.
Harrison Schmidt was on board Apollo 17 for a reason. He was a geologist. I'm not for certain why the manned space haters club seems to think that machines are even close to a normal human's ability. A normal human can analyze and think in real time, and an educated and trained human expert can work autonomously investigating just the right things.
But let's face it - after your dance you'd have a hundred more questions and things to investigate. Much dancing will ensue!
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Robots.
There's no point in sending warm wet bodies to Mars: robots prove time and time again that they do a much better job than human beings could ever hope to do, faster, safer and a lot cheaper.
Ah, but here's the rub - if we are never going to extend beyond the earth, if it is forbidden territory, there is absolutely no reason to send probes either. Why would we care what is on Mars - Why would we care if there is life? We are here, and Mars is there - leave it there and save even more money by not bothering with it.
Me? I'me a real space slut. I support no limits on a budget - send multiple robots to all the planets every year. Awesome!
But if there is no manned presence, I support only eart
Question (Score:2)
If I manage to get up there, can I claim Opportunity as a derelict, bring it back and part it out?
Re: Question (Score:1)
Totally. You will need a hammer
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"If I manage to get up there, can I claim Opportunity as a derelict, bring it back and part it out?"
No. When you're there you can give the robot a bum-wash and clean its solar cells.
NASA will give you a dollar.
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"If I manage to get up there, can I claim Opportunity as a derelict, bring it back and part it out?"
No. When you're there you can give the robot a bum-wash and clean its solar cells.
NASA will give you a dollar.
You just made me think of Martians wandering around with spray bottles and squeegees, offering to clean solar cells. And the rovers turning their windshield-wipers on to discourage them. (Hey -- why didn't we just put windshield-wipers on the rovers' solar cells?)
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I'm not sure why this post made me think of this series of books by Alastair Reynolds, Poseidon's Children. One of the subplots is after decades of sending smarter an smarter robots to Mars. At one point the robots said "fuck it" and calmed Mars as their own.
The books are good reads but honestly after reading the books I was more interested in the story of the robots on Mars than the main plot.
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If I manage to get up there, can I claim Opportunity as a derelict, bring it back and part it out?
Good question indeed. In the movie The Martian (not that it's definitive of course) it was mentioned that Mars is under international maritime law. IANAL, but I'm going to guess that means you'd need to get salvage rights in order to claim the rover. Unless of course you need the hardware to survive, as Matt Damon's character did.
Those with knowledge of space law, please confirm.
The real story about the solar panels and dust. (Score:5, Funny)
NASA tried to use the last bit of energy in the Opportunity's batteries to gently knock the rover into a nearby rock to attempt to knock loose some of the dust on the solar panels that was limiting the solar charging. It worked a little bit, and they were going to try it again for more improvement, but they were unable to, because Opportunity knocks but once.
Obligatory xkcd (Score:1)
https://xkcd.com/2111/ [xkcd.com]
Article Placement (Score:2)
Dammit! (Score:2)
Someone's been chopping onions in here again...
Thus ends an era (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been a space exploration fan since I was a little kid. Don't quite remember the moon landing, since I was only a couple months old. The Spirit/Opportunity pair truly represent the pinnacle of what a dedicated group of creative, well funded scientists and engineers can accomplish.
The extreme resilience and flexibility of the platform, the brilliant schemes the team devised to cope with aging subsystems, and the sheer amount of scientific exploration accomplished on a system with such a small and conservative mission plan.
Definitely my personal favorite technical project of all time. There are milestones in every scientific genre, and this was truly a milestone. The team redefined with very definition of remote mechanical exploration and every rover mankind has sent since has built on the foundation of these two.
I don't mean in any way to diminish the accomplishments of stationary exploration landers like the Vikings, or to demean the early rovers like the Russina Lunokhod rovers (which were truly envelope pushing machines) but the Mars Exploration Rovers demonstrated functional autonomy and extreme robust mechanical miniaturization that really made them the first of their kind.
XKCD Opportunity's Half of the Planet (Score:3)
Small chance of a come-back (Score:1)
It's possible the dust storm coated it heavily, and a whirlwind will clean the rover one of these days and it will be functional. It's also possible the timer/clock got mis-set such that broadcasts are not arriving at the expected time.
The problem with both scenarios is that nobody may be listening when it does talk. There was mention of NASA occasionally listening in, but I haven't seen confirmation. I wonder if amature radio astronomers could detect its signal?
Well done little robot. (Score:2)
The primary mission length was 90 sols, 92 Earth days.
The engineers that built and drove this little guy are to be commended. That's an awesome achievement. Well done little robot.