Mars Rover Down? Spirit Stays Silent 91
astroengine writes "One year after NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit stopped communicating with Earth, mission managers have announced that they will give the stranded rover one more month to send a signal before they scale back the search. But things aren't looking good. In the words of JPL-based Mars rover driver Scott Maxwell, 'Spirit was so close to us, just a year ago. Snap your fingers, and she's a hundred million miles distant and we can't even prove she's alive.'"
Oblig (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
Don't anthropomorphize space vehicles... (Score:3)
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Better Johnny 5 than Killbots
But it's close...
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Wow. I actually misted up. Somewhere between the years of excitement and pride I have felt watching Spirit do her thing and that comic it became very clear what needs to be done:
NASA needs to retire the name Spirit and give it a very special meaning. I'm thinking "When anything on mission goes better than expected, when any situation comes out better than anyone could have ever hoped for - "That's the Spirit""
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NASA needs to retire the name Spirit and give it a very special meaning. I'm thinking "When anything on mission goes better than expected, when any situation comes out better than anyone could have ever hoped for - "That's the Spirit""
I agree, the rover program was very impressive. However I find the Voyager probes [wikipedia.org] to be the high bar for longevity. Of course I was much younger when they were launched and there seemed to be a lot more national pride in the space program.
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That was back when we put money into the programs, rather than having politicians look at NASA as "ooh look we can cut them and posture around."
Retardicans and Dumbicrats alike are responsible for the shoddy state of today's program - which was a bargain when we put appropriate money into it and did more good than any of their millions of pet projects.
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Obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/695/ [xkcd.com]
Obligatory Ikea response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNlJIKzlCnU [youtube.com]
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Obligatory xkcd reference: http://xkcd.com/695/ [xkcd.com]
Obligatory Ikea response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNlJIKzlCnU [youtube.com]
Obligatory VGCats parody of obligatory Ikea response: http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=53 [vgcats.com]
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That's a great one, I hadn't seen it yet! If I had karma I would give you a point just for that laugh.
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Why wait a month or year? (Score:1)
Why this waiting for a month or year on earth calendars?
I know spirit has a direct link to earth. Not relaying thru an orbiter on Mars or whatever. So received SNR on BOTH sides is gonna vary by a wee bit as our planets orbit, from pretty darn close to very far away.
So, if the closest approach to mars is around jan 2010, march 2012, etc, why not try to communicate then, at highest signal levels, rather than fooling around now or next month? In fact it would seem that "right now" is pretty close to orbita
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OK so they're optimizing for peak solar electrical power and peak outside air temp, which unfortunately coincides with (nearly) peak RF path loss. Makes sense if the problem is assumed to be temp related.
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It's pretty simple. We are now moving into the Martian summer for the southern hemisphere. Spirit went quiet because of the Martian winter at her location, when it got colder and less sunlight per unit area was falling, thus, not enough energy to keep warm and keep operating. They transmitted/received off and on ever since losing communication, but the best chance was waiting until about this time because she should be warming up, getting more sun, and hopefully waking up as peak solar output at the site
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As I recall, they put Spirit into hibernation for the Martian winter. I suppose they left it off all this time to charge the batteries as much as they could. I assume the issue isn't signal strength- it's a lack of power in the rover to pick up the signal and respond to it.
Also, Wikipedia disagrees with you about the communications.
The rovers also use the low-gain antennas to communicate with spacecraft orbiting Mars, the Mars Odyssey and (before its failure) the Mars Global Surveyor. The orbiters relay data from and to Earth; most data to Earth is relayed through Odyssey. The orbiters are closer to the rovers than the antennas on Earth, and have a view of Earth for much longer than the rovers.
Source [wikipedia.org]
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As I recall, they put Spirit into hibernation for the Martian winter.
Not quite. Spirit put itself into hibernation at the start of the martian winter with the lower light levels and dust buildup on her solar panels. She's yet to come out of this hibernation (and may never)
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Ugh, wikipedia has at least two articles...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_rover#Design_and_construction [wikipedia.org]
"Communications depends on an omnidirectional low-gain antenna communicating at a low data rate and a steerable high-gain antenna, both in direct contact with Earth. A low gain antenna is also used to relay data to spacecraft orbiting Mars."
You know what would improve wikipedia, a third article on the same vehicle. How bout a MER-A article with a third separate writeup.
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One word: money. There's a price to keeping the hardware + people ready & waiting. They probably don't have the money to wait much longer.
Re:Why wait a month or year? (Score:5, Informative)
The most probable explaination is that Spirit died last Martian winter. The hope was that it was still alive but in deep hibernation mode and would eventually get enough power surplus to charge its batteries and reconnect with Earth. Now we're at peak power generation but Mars is still heating up a bit - just like in the northern hemisphere the summer solistice is in june but july/august are the warmest months. Normally it should have reconnected long before that, but if say the solar panels were partially damaged it could take this long for it to gather enough power. It's been a slim hope and it's getting even slimmer, pretty soon it's time to write off that possibility completely.
Good run (Score:2)
They did only design the Mars Rovers with a six month operational life. That they lasted as long as they have was extremely lucky.
Re:Good run (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not luck, that's great engineering and great piloting on the part of NASA.
Re:Good run (Score:4, Funny)
It's also a testament to the power of the Ubuntu operating system that ran all of Spirit's vital functions. I've spoken to a few insiders at NASA and they are all extremely positive about using Ubuntu in future missions, in fact the only complaint they had was that the Compiz compositor used up too much power (and was one of the first things to be disabeld should Spirit's batteries go low on power).
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LOL, Whoosh!
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Except the time when Wolowitz drove it into a ditch.
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They did only design the Mars Rovers with a six month operational life. That they lasted as long as they have was extremely lucky.
Or it could be they just had a good PR campaign...6 month designed operational life, I though I heard it was only 3? What does that even mean from a design standpoint? You can guess, but nobody knows for sure except them and the marketing dept. I say good job there, cause unfortunately in today's world NASA needs good PR.
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Or it could be they just had a good PR campaign...6 month designed operational life, I though I heard it was only 3? What does that even mean from a design standpoint? You can guess, but nobody knows for sure except them and the marketing dept. I say good job there, cause unfortunately in today's world NASA needs good PR.
Bullshit. Everyone paying attention knows.
The original 90 mission time frame was always about exactly one thing: The estimated amount of time before dust buildup on the solar panels would prevent them from receiving enough sunlight to power the rover.
What does that mean from a design standpoint? It means they had to decide whether to try to make some solar-panel-cleaning mechanism and pay the cost in money, weight, and chance of failure, or to just let the rovers die. They went with die.
Everything else
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It was just the solar array they had concerns about. Everything else was supposed to last the ages they have, but engineers were just unsure about the apparatus providing power. They turned out to be terribly wrong in their expectations and the panels performed admirably for years.
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I think that the rovers have been exceeding the expectations with a good margin. A few design flaws may have been discovered - like the stuck wheel - but they did provide a lot more data than the mission plans expected.
The experience gained from this mission can be used for upcoming missions. Even if those missions aren't going to Mars they will benefit from this.
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To be clear, it was a not a 3 month operational life. It was a 3-month primary mission.
Primary mission means that the team is in charge of ensuring the success of that to a very high probability. Everyone expects extended missions at this point, and include fuel in the budget (for orbiters, doesn't apply to rovers) for a very long extended missions. However, more risk is allowed in extended mission, allowing reduced costs. I'm currently working the next Mars orbiter, and while our primary mission goes f
A pity it had to be Spirit , not Opportunity (Score:2)
Since from a visual point of view spirit was in a far more interesting area with hills and varied lanscape. Opportunity is in the middle of a vast desert with just the odd crater to break things up.
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"That's still a thousand times more interesting than any surface feature on Earth."
Speak for yourself.
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Re:A pity it had to be Spirit , not Opportunity (Score:5, Informative)
We pity malfunctioning Spirit, pity it's not Opportunity. NO.
Goddamnit, Spirit was a row of failures from day one, an epic struggle but a struggle nevertheless.
Meanwhile, Opportunity analyzed some nearby craters, climbed a hill, found one HUGE crater and began moving there.
It will reach it around 2015.
Yep, NASA made plans of some decade long trip for it, a couple years ago. Not "will it respond in next month?" style hope, but "Will it last 10 years more?" hope. Totally awesome and incredible.
Damn you, nothing Spirit was close to compares to the crater Opportunity tries to reach.
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Spirit is doing just fine! (Score:1, Interesting)
Spirit is doing just fine on Sol 792. Just four days ago one of the rover drivers blogged this:
"The good news is, we have data from Spirit at last! And a lot of it, too -- a whopping 110 Mbits!" [blogspot.com]
Here are some pictures Spirit has taken recently. [nasa.gov]
Is this sloppy Slashdot reporting, or an early April's Fool joke?
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Spoiler: the rover blog is 5 years delayed :-)
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Did you miss the title of the blog? "five years delayed." The blog posts are 2011, -5, meaning they're from 2006.
Actual report pertaining to first link from Sol 792: http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/status_spiritAll_2006.html#sol790 [nasa.gov]
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What the fuck? Seriously. Why have a blog if it's 5 years delayed?
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Finite speed of light?
Of course, I don't think NASA is blogging from Alpha Centauri or Barnard's Star. But it might explain a lot of things.
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What the fuck? Seriously. Why have a blog if it's 5 years delayed?
It's being written by committee.
Search party offer (Score:2, Funny)
We pursue that which retreats from us (Score:2)
clearly spirit has just watched the tao of steve one too many times.
lasted 15x its nominal 90-day design life (Score:2, Insightful)
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From what I read, It looks like it happened very suddenly and there are signs Q was involved.
Admittedly I haven't read past the summary.
Re:Um, someone disagrees... (Score:4, Informative)
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Focus on the positive... (Score:2)
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Well, they probably wouldn't do well on rocks without atmospheres. They're not really designed for the extreme temp changes you'd get without an atmosphere or the extreme cold you'd get in the outer Solar System.
That said, we probably should try and launch a few more of them. Except to Europa, of course. Attempt no landings there.
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Tattooine? Slap a water-cooling kit like you'd find in a PC on it, or some refrigerator coils.
Do not send it to Tattione. It will be sabotaged by an R2 unit.
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It could get replacement parts in Anchorhead.
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Well, they'd never reach 99% of the solid surfaces in the Solar system intact - they'd crash because there was either no atmosphere or insufficient atmosphere for their parachutes to function. If you did modify them to not require parachutes, they'd still fail within seconds of landing as they froze or boiled to death in temperatures well outside those they're designed to handle. So in order for yo
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1. Again, modify the "base model" slightly for various environments. Add insulation, cooling, shock absorbers, bigger treads, etc. as needed. Very minor customizations that are roughly the equivalent of getting your Scion xB with a sunroof or not.
2. Develop a simple delivery vehicle that includes three pieces: the rover itself, a reverse-thrust delivery pod (which provides a heat shield for atmospheric planets, and reverse-thrusters to slow it to a soft landing on non-atmospheric ones), and a module that se
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No. Very *major* customizations, the equivalent of which there isn't in ordering a car from the dealer.
Time span (Score:2)
Don't forget (Score:2)
To visit http://marsandme.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com] for a wonderful perspective from Scott on the regular dealings of being a Mars rover driver.
Meet the remarkable woman who "drives" the rover (Score:2)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/profile-vandi-verma.html [pbs.org]
Pretty much a geek dreamboat; too bad she's married (and it wasn't even arranged).
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Pretty much a geek dreamboat
Alien-looking fingers and a chin that would make Superman jealous. Yeah, I guess in a very technical sense you're completely right ...
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She doesn't look like Pamela Anderson, so that makes it OK to slag her, right?
Sucks to be you!
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She doesn't look like Pamela Anderson, so that makes it OK to slag her, right?
She look-a-like-a-man!
Sucks to be you!
Because I refuse to play the "is-it-a-tranny?" game? No, I'm pretty happy here. But thanks for your concern!
Might seem an obvious now (Score:2)
SHE?! (Score:2)
I repeat, SHE?
Methinks NASA engineers have too much time on their hands.