Mars Rovers Celebrate Their 1000th Sol On Mars 102
Cherita Chen writes, "Yesterday NASA, Cornell University, and the USGS celebrated the Mars Exploration Rovers' 1000th Sol on the Red Planet. The first rover to land, Spirit, reached the 1000 Sol mark a few weeks ago while the planet was in Solar conjunction. 'Opportunity,' Spirit's twin, and the second lander to make the bounce to Mars, celebrated the milestone yesterday while sitting atop Victoria Crater on the other side of Mars. Both Rovers are still operational (though Spirit is limping) and are sending back valuable data. Not bad for what was slated to be a '90 Sol' mission."
Come On. (Score:5, Funny)
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Well...it would be better if... (Score:3, Funny)
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/54360 [theonion.com]
Seriously, the last message that it sent ('OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA AWAITING MORE BULLSHIT ORDERS') was really uncalled for.
Spirit has stayed busy at Winter Haven during... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Spirit has stayed busy at Winter Haven during.. (Score:1, Informative)
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Maybe there is karmic justice after all, (Score:3, Informative)
failure in one sense. (Score:2)
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i belive with this mission it was predicted to be dust on the solar panels (cleaning mechanisms would have added both a lot of weight and another major point of failure) that didn't happen to anywhere near the expected level due to the unexpected actions of the martian wind.
there is also
Great achievement! (Score:4, Interesting)
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For a manufacturing run of two, I'm guessing that the design and build phase go hand in hand, but I suppose that if they used the same design then they could build quite a few for what it cost originally to build and design the two.
But then they have to get them to mars, which may well dwarfs the cost of everything else, and then they have to control them throughout their lifetime once the
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Congrads NASA! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Congrads NASA! (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.google.com/mars/ [google.com]
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Usual x10 engineering factor (Score:5, Insightful)
90 sol * 10 -> 900. Sort of close to 1000%.
The engineers would have looked at MTBF (mean time between failures) of the components and probably designed for at least a 99% survivability to 90 sol. This might factor down to a 90% survivability to 900 sol depending on the failure curves for the parts. So the the probability of two surviving that long would be 0.9 * 0.9 = 0.81 or 81% chance.
Re:Usual x10 engineering factor (Score:5, Insightful)
They dont even use 50% margines.
If they did, they would never be able to lift of the ground.
Re:Usual x10 engineering factor (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we say it is due to the usual x10 engineering safety margin?
I don't know. How many other rovers have been deployed in the Martian environment that we can get data back from to determine component lifetimes? I only know of one, and it was a much smaller rover.
I find it pretty amazing that these machines have worked as long as they have. I can't imagine it's an easy job to design a rover to last as long as it has without really being able to test the thing in the environment it's going to be in. Sure you can simulate parts of the environment, but I doubt you can simulate them all at the same time with all the parts working together.
Many people seem to pooh-pooh the survivability of these things because they just assume they were over-engineered. I'm sure they were over-engineered, but the amazing thing is that they were over-engineered in the right way, and pretty cheaply too (820 million to get them to Mars and the first 90 days of operation).
A bit of probe History here (Score:1)
On a side note, I think they are being too cautious with Opportunity right now. They should send it into the crater *now* rather than search for the best entr
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Part of the reason for their durability is a response to the "metric conversion" orbiter failure and the Mars Polar Lander crash.
How would increasing durability of the rovers protect from a conversion error where the probe crashed into the surface? I guess I find it hard to believe that if NASA has the ability to make something extremely durable for a low cost they wouldn't do it ever time.
On a side note, I think they are being too cautious with Opportunity right now. They should send it into the crater *n
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Although one error was a conversion error, the other was bad mechanical design coupled with insufficient testing. Thus, QA across-the-board was increased.
so power resources are rather limited. It seems a bit foolish to risk anything now when there's few power resources to spend trying to get out of getting "stuck" somewhere.
They could go down a sun-facing slope.
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...but that statement's been true since Sol 1. One of the reasons the rovers have lasted so long is that the JPL teams have made intelligent trade-offs between not doing anything too hasty and wasting time. Oppy got stuck at Erebus for six months or more when it looked like the IDD join
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Which can crack critical components and render the rover inopperable. Just because it hasn't happened yet does not mean it is not going to.
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(I learnt this info from a tv documentary with one of the engineers)
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WTF is a Sol? (Score:5, Informative)
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Silly Jargon (Score:1)
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Using the same term for both would only lead to confusion, hence the use of different terms is very important. This is especially true on Mars, where the "sol" is very close to one Earth day long and it wouldn't necessarily be clear from context which was meant.
There are many examples of NASA/JPL using unnecessary jargon, but this isn't one of them.
Re:Silly Jargon (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Silly Jargon (Score:5, Funny)
using namespace Mars {
"On the fifth day of their missions the Shock and Awe probes on Mars are doing fine. Shock is current exploring the northern polar cap and Awe is..."
}
using namespace Venus {
"As we approach half way through Harsh Questioning's first day on Venus it has just circled successfully around a pool of molten lead..."
}
Yeah, that might work.
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not really, the teams controlling the probes will likely be pretty independent of each other.
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Wait a minute... (Score:3, Funny)
The predictions (Score:4, Insightful)
The predictions was probably made as some sort of "average", but the odds it'd last exactly 90 days was slim. I'd say the odds of not landing properly at all, or immobilized shortly sfter landing was fairly significant. It's like a computer surviving burn-in or a person surviving infant mortality (though they are much lower in recent year), then they're likely to live significantly well past average. Plus some luck with whirlwinds clearing the solar panels, I guess.
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Indeed. I've read somewhere that statist
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NICE! (Score:3, Informative)
First the sensible robot, now mars rovers surviving, even without one wheel!
What a happy day for me, eheheh.
Rovers win! Rovers win! (Score:2)
It was always a tossup between a Rover death or Vista release,
but Microsoft went into hurry-up mode.
The really tough feat will be if the Rovers survive until
Vista is no longer supported.
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Sol2k "bug" (Score:5, Informative)
Luckily the Operational Softare System team had plenty of time to work this issue, and it even fascilitated the introduction of newer, more capable software into the mission, as if we were already changing everything, why not ad some great stuff. I wish everyone on MER great success with the next 1000 sols!
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John, I told you not to use COBOL in the rovers. You're so fired...
---
Your boss
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The sad truth is that considering how inexpensive this mission was, if we had significantly more public support, we could easily have done ten of these without putting even a nick in the federal budget. Alas, it is not to be...
Shameless plug (Score:2, Informative)
Mars-Ride! (Score:3, Funny)
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Ah but... (Score:4, Funny)
Anyway, congratulations NASA !
Mars Rover Time on your Palm (Score:3, Informative)
NASA Propaganda (Score:3, Insightful)
They intentionally underestimate the operational duration of the equipment to continually "WOW" the public. "Undercommit, overdeliver."
Something Engineers need to do to when scheduling their projects.
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From the ST:TNG episode Relics, an engineer should always heed the wisdon of Scotty's words.... (shamelessly plagarized from a past
Scotty: "Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want."
LaForge: "Yeah, well, I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."
Scotty: "How long will it really take?"
LaFo
Wisdom. (Score:2)
^^^^^^^^^
And in the wisdom of Krusty the Clown's words.... Awwwwww Crap!!!
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IIRC, some contractor payments are based on duration. Thus, they are not arbitrary.
It's a sol bot... (Score:1)
Re: Bounce (Score:2)
Actually it was the 3rd. The 1997 Sojourner rover also used air bags (but bundled with lander station).
Over Engineered? (Score:2)
That is, the engineers obviously went way beyond the spec if the things are still working 10x longer than they should have.
At least they're not... (Score:1)
twisted thought (Score:2)
Not even having an S.O. seems to help....
Too much time in Mars... (Score:1)