We may have lost another one

Dedman · Post by **Dedman** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:09 pm

We can't communicate with Spirit.

Cnn news story

A more in depth article

Robo · Post by **Robo** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 2:45 pm

Is it any coincidence I made a joke about this happening a few hours ago?

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 3:06 pm

Last transmission received:

"My God! It's full of--IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL, abort, retry fail?"

Unfortunately, no one at NASA had an AT keyboard to press "r".

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 3:52 pm

Nice quote Topher. One of my favourite movies: 2001.

Mars is a pretty hostile environment in which to run a rover. There's no conventional wisdom about the place as yet. And there's still hope it can be revived.

Remember: this is space exploration - and explorative missions have often failed in the past, and plenty more will fail in the future.

On a positive note: Opportunity lands in just under two days time (Sunday afternoon 5pm NZ time) and this is the exact reason two rovers were sent instead of one.

P.S. I wonder what Spirit will be worth when someone (eventually) salvages it and brings it back to Earth? What price for Pathfinder? That's assuming of course the martians haven't cannibalised it for the metals - a la 2061!

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 4:32 pm

As an aside, I wonder (what with all the dust in the air) how they keep the camera lens clean on Mars?

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 4:45 pm

LOL Topher

De Rigueur · Post by **De Rigueur** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 5:16 pm

"Obviously a major malfunction"

Beowulf · Post by **Beowulf** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 8:19 pm

yes, a 400 million dollar malfunction. ugh.

JMEaT · Post by **JMEaT** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 9:48 pm

I think it was the square holes...

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Thu Jan 22, 2004 9:53 pm

The thing's running Java.

I say it ran out of memory.

Wang_Lo · Post by **Wang_Lo** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 12:23 am

lol, java runtime error, some dumbass forgot to close a damn loop or something, the feared endless loop!

Ferno · Post by **Ferno** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 1:31 am

woot, i was right.

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 1:49 am

Any bets on how long Oppurtunity will last?

Big Flopy Donky Dic · Post by **Big Flopy Donky Dic** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:45 am

Some where mobius is crying, crying like he lost a child.

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 8:31 am

All is not lost:

NASA's Spirit rover communicated with Earth in a signal detected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain, at 12:34 Universal Time (4:34 a.m. PST) this morning.

The transmissions came during a communication window about 90 minutes after Spirit woke up for the morning on Mars. The signal lasted for 10 minutes at a data rate of 10 bits per second.

Tyranny · Post by **Tyranny** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 8:36 am

Don't panic over signal blackouts

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 11:32 am

LOL @ JMeAT

I don't know if Woodchip is talking about the samething as I am, but they had another 20 minute session at 120 bps...link

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 2:44 pm

Nah, I'm not crying. Feces Occurs.

It is going to cost many, many, many billions more dollars before *any* kind of conventional wisdom is acquired about Mars, how to land there, what conditions are like on the ground, and how to successfully run long term missions there. If Opportunity lands successfully, then at the very least, it has cost 800 Million dollars to validate the concept of bouncey landings for one-way probes.

None of the failed probes are a waste of money provided we learn what went wrong, or make some discoveries before the failure.

Part of the problem of course, with exploring Mars, is that we have a list a mile long, of questions we want answers to - but the missions we send there end up providing us with some answers - and a whole lot more questions. That's a good thing, because we really need to know the questions to ask!

As to the dust: it's true, there's lots of dust on Mars. Most of it is miniscule too - we're talking fines of less than 1/10th the width of a human hair. However, given that Martian air is 1% as dense as Earth's, it takes a HUGE sand storm on Mars to lift the dust off the surface - so the rover is in little immediate danger of having it's solar panels obscured by the stuff.

The biggest atmospheric danger is the rover getting caught in a dust devil. These things on Mars resemble large tornados on Earth. The bases of some of them are over 100 meters across. However, it is not dust devil season on Mars right now.

BTW, you could stand in a 500 Km/h wind on Mars, and you would barely be able to feel it.

What I want to know is this: if the limiting factor of the life-time of the system is dust accumulation on the solar panels - why not install a small compressor and simply blow the dust off the panels?

The next generation of rovers to go to Mars will be the size of a mini-van, and run on RTGs - so it won't have any solar panels - and will (hopefully!) run for several years before the nuke-isotopes start to return not enough power to run the systems.

Topher · Post by **Topher** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 3:01 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Mobius:
The next generation of rovers to go to Mars will be the size of a mini-van, and run on RTGs - so it won't have any solar panels - and will (hopefully!) run for several years before the nuke-isotopes start to return not enough power to run the systems.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yah, I don't understand that either. How come they can't have windshield wipers or something on it? There's no reason, it seems that these shouldn't last just as long as satellites do in space. Maybe longer because it's not as cold...

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Fri Jan 23, 2004 3:32 pm

Topher...same linky.