Are you going to cry when mars rover spirit dies?

[zinfamous]

ah, screw me again

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: Nik
It'll be nice when Obama cuts Nasa funding and spends it on immediately-impacting things.

It would be nice to get bums off the street, into some clean clothes, a warm place to stay, and a job. It would be nice to fund cancer & aids research. It would be nice to pay off some national debt, blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a space NUT and I love Nasa. I just think that right now isn't a great time to dump a load of money into it needs to be used elsewhere.

doesn't he want to Militarize NASA, thus substantially increasing it's budget?

I actually think this is a great idea, take the ridiculously inappropriate sums of money flooding into armaments, apply it to exploratory research, and still have a kick-ass army, great space exploration and research, and still fund all the necessary social issues.

:thumbsup:

 

[Arcadio]

I am crying right now.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Originally posted by: Arcadio
I am crying right now.

Me too....

I doubt we are crying for the same reasons though....

 

[JulesMaximus]

Originally posted by: Perknose

Are you going to cry when mars rover spirit dies?

If I have enough energy left.

Maybe you could persuade someone to blow the dust off of your panels.

 

[OpenThirdEye]

I'll pour a little of my 40 out on the curb for it...

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: Nik
It'll be nice when Obama cuts Nasa funding and spends it on immediately-impacting things.

It would be nice to get bums off the street, into some clean clothes, a warm place to stay, and a job. It would be nice to fund cancer & aids research. It would be nice to pay off some national debt, blah blah blah.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a space NUT and I love Nasa. I just think that right now isn't a great time to dump a load of money into it needs to be used elsewhere.

lulz

he is pledging possibly 2B more to NASA to close the gap between the shuttle and the post shuttle launch vehicle.
Actually I think this is a good thing.

 

[Ramma2]

I never imagined it was actually getting that much dust on the panels:

http://www.planetary.org/image...it_dust_comparison.jpg

And that was over a year ago. Shoulda packed some Pledge.

 

[Jeff7]

I wonder what's going to shut down the MSL rover when it finally gets there.
(Launch was delayed from 2009 to 2011. )

It will be powered by radioactive decay, and so it can not only move around the clock (the MERs can do some analysis work at night on battery power, when it's available), but it won't give a damn about dust, except what gets on the cameras.

The MSL is a beast compared to the MERs. Text. Hopefully that crazy Skycrane landing system works as planned. Something similar worked perfectly on Phoenix; it had better perform just as well again.

Originally posted by: Justin218
They were only designed to last for 90 days and it would have added a lot of complexity and weight. They had had some previous failures already on Mars and wanted to KISS

Oh, and about cutting funding for the time being... It's not like there is just a switch you can flip and turn NASA back on. We haven't gone to the moon since the 70s and now look, it's going to take like 15-20 years to get back there (if it ever even happens...) The 20 billion would just get wasted on BS earmarks anyway

And these rovers were hardly "simple" to begin with. After landing, there was deployment after deployment after deployment. After the landing petals opened up, the camera mast had to deploy, the high gain antenna needed to swivel out, the front wheel armatures and wheels had to unfold out, pyro bolts holding the rover down had to blow out properly, and the solar panels needed to unfold at two places. It's almost amazing that they've worked as well as they have, especially considering how far past their design life they have gone.

One of the worst failed deployments that comes to mind was Galileo's high-gain antenna. That probe got shuttled around the country by truck quite a few times, and spent some extra time in storage. Something must have gotten stuck. It was terribly hindered by having to use its low-gain antenna for the entire mission. Couple that with the severe radiation environment at Jupiter, and that poor spacecraft had a pretty rough time of it.

 

[JTsyo]

The engineer in me tells me that they should consider putting in panels that can turn upside down. When a storm comes you can weather it out and then turn the panel over afterwards. Though that adds extra motors and gears and more points of failure.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: JTsyo
The engineer in me tells me that they should consider putting in panels that can turn upside down. When a storm comes you can weather it out and then turn the panel over afterwards. Though that adds extra motors and gears and more points of failure.

And you're utterly screwed if the motors to flip the panels over die, or if some power fault drains the batteries. Opportunity has had to endure some very cold nights because of a stuck heater switch. If the rover were left to operate normally, this stuck heater switch would put an excessive load in the batteries; the alternative is to shut the rover off almost completely - "deep sleep" mode. The problem with this is that all of the heaters are entirely inactive, exposing it to some very low temperatures.

A better solution might be some sort of clear covering which can be flipped. If those motors fail, the worst case then is either dust on the clear covering or else on the panels directly, which is right where we're at now anyway.

The best thing they could do for the dust is to climb back to the one hill peak they were at before. Spirit got blasted with some strong winds there, which kept it very clean. The valley it's in now looks like a prime dust deposition spot. Evidence of that is "El Dorado," a small dune field in the shadow of one of the hills.
(Full res image, 16MB.)

 

[skace]

NASA needs to build a rover that repairs other rovers.........

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Ramma2
I never imagined it was actually getting that much dust on the panels:

http://www.planetary.org/image...it_dust_comparison.jpg

And that was over a year ago. Shoulda packed some Pledge.

WOW.

Amazing it's still functioning at all, given the amount of dust there. Great pic.

 

[brandonbull]

Originally posted by: Pocatello

Originally posted by: finite automaton

Originally posted by: Eli

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: Eli
links?

Didn't know he was dying.

Kind of an old update: Serious, but stable


A better update, courtesy of The Planetary Society.

Man, lol... I can't help but just have a huge smile reading that stuff. Awesome.

I hope some wind clears Spirits panels!

I can't even imagine what it would be like to be on the teams involved with and controlling them.. I bet those people really are going to cry when either of them eventually dies. :Q

Makes me wonder why they didn't create some sort of ... solar panel wiper blade

It's a learning process. NASA will make a better rover next time, if they have a chance.

Maybe some of those well feed and clothed bums can help.

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: JTsyo
The engineer in me tells me that they should consider putting in panels that can turn upside down. When a storm comes you can weather it out and then turn the panel over afterwards. Though that adds extra motors and gears and more points of failure.

good idea, though the dust can blow up as well as down... and such fine dust will stick to anything, even an upside down charge panel... I originally thought it should be able to fold itself into a sealed surface, but since the dust storms can last for weeks, that doesnt really help much. it will eventually die.

 

[imported_Imp]

I remember when they went up when I was in Grade 12 (5 years ago). I actually mentioned them in one of my chemistry lab reports. Aww... good-bye you mofos.

 

[AmigaMan]

I think if we ever have to cut back funding for these rovers that NASA turn it over to the community. Open source all of their software and setup an online community who will guide the research. Imagine driving a rover over the internet!

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Imp
I remember when they went up when I was in Grade 12 (5 years ago). I actually mentioned them in one of my chemistry lab reports. Aww... good-bye you mofos.

Hey, it's not goodbye.
Spirit is in a rough way right now, but Opportunity's still kicking.
Opportunity's plan is to make a damn long drive to a huge crater south of its current position.

Area map
After exploring the small crater it landed in, it hit up Endurance, then Victoria. Now it's on course for Endeavour, several miles away.

Opportunity's also smarter than when it first landed. After plowing right into Purgatory, a sand ripple several inches deep, and taking a few months to extract itself, it was programmed with slip detection. This slip detection went along with its optical odometry, another feature it didn't have when it launched. It also now has a "go-to" feature, where it can be given a far-off target, and it will then drive to that target and position itself correctly so that it can deploy its instrument arm to examine the target.


Spirit was the unfortunate pioneer in fault-tolerance. It landed on much rockier terrain, and had to deal with harder rocks. Its rock-abrasion tool can only brush rocks now, since its cutters became too dull on the hard volcanic rock it had to work on. I think it was also the first one to start driving backwards, in order to evenly distribute the lubricant in its wheel bearings; Opportunity also was instructed to drive backwards sometimes. (The rovers have hazcams in back too, so they can always see where they're going.) Spirit eventually lost all use of one of its wheels, so it became the leading expert in the workings of 5-wheel driving over rough terrain. It's still a lot more mobile than Phoenix ever was though.