Posted on 01/01/2007 10:18:27 AM PST by LdSentinal
Far outliving NASA's expectations, Mars rovers still rolling across the red planet.
Their 90-day warranties expired long ago. But NASA's six-wheeled Martian rovers still are going strong. After a bleak winter on the fourth rock from the sun, Spirit and Opportunity are rolling again.
Three years ago, when the first of the two rovers bounced to a landing in Mars' Gusev Crater, scientists hoped one of them might last long enough to transmit a few hundred pictures from the surface and help them decide where the arid planet's water went.
Few dared dream that, come Wednesday, NASA would be celebrating the third anniversary of operations by not one, but two rovers on opposite sides of the planet.
The two little robots have beamed back 160,000 pictures. NASA aims to keep the solar-powered robots running — one day at a time — through September 2007.
"The health of the rovers is essentially unchanged from nine months ago," said John Callas, the rover project manager for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "But there is always the possibility that a critical component could stop functioning at a time, so we value every day they continue their work."
Although Spirit's right front wheel is no longer working, and its rock drilling tool is broken, the 400-pound rover has trekked more than 4 miles across inhospitable terrain, including an arduous, 300-foot climb to the summit of Mars' Columbia Hills.
Opportunity, which landed on the other side of Mars in what is thought to be the shoreline of a long-vanished salty sea, passed the six-mile mark this month and is surveying the rim of Victoria Crater, a half-mile hole gouged by an ancient meteorite.
"It's just amazing the rovers have survived — in fact actually thrived — in that environment for so long," said Jim Bell, the Cornell University astronomer who has headed the rover imaging team throughout their Martian odyssey. "They were designed for this cold, dusty, lonely place, and they really seem to thrive in it."
At one time in Mars' history, they might not have fared as well. The rovers have beamed back ample evidence that, like Earth, the red planet once had oceans and lakes full of water.
The vehicles have documented the signature of a warmer, wetter Mars in the ripples on the floor of an ancient lake, in thick layers of bedded rock, in clay-like soils, and in mineralized nodules, known as "Martian blueberries," that many scientists say could only have formed in the presence of water.
"Water apparently covered large parts of the Martin surface for long periods," Bell said. "The implications are profound. If the eras of Earth-like conditions were frequent and long-lasting, the possibility that life evolved on Mars appears much more likely."
Time and again, the rovers have proved that there is no substitute for actually being there.
As Spirit labored up the steep slopes of the Columbia Hills, its wheels slipped and dug deep ruts in the Martian soil, uncovering whitish deposits that would otherwise have gone undetected.
Chemical analysis showed it to be hydrated sulfate, a mineral formed by the evaporation of salty water or ground water. The rovers' instruments have analyzed the structure, chemistry and physical properties of scores of rocks, soil samples, hills, mountains and craters as they have rambled across a landscape eerily like the desert Southwest.
Despite the wealth of data from the $820 million mission, it is the robots' role as snapshot-taking tourists that has provided some of the most evocative moments of the three-year mission.
The high-resolution panoramas have drawn billions of visits to the rover mission's Web site at www.jpl.nasa.gov.
"This is the most realistic way that Mars has ever been seen. The perspective is exactly what a person would have if he were standing on the surface of Mars," said Bell, whose team began designing the rovers' color panoramic camera for NASA a decade ago.
They are robots and as such are mostly software. The software is updated and improved constantly, so while the hardware is 4-5 years old, the robots are the latest, up-to-date creatures.
Amazing!
Money well spent. Now let's get that submarine probe to Europa and get a look at what is swimming in the ocean under all that ice.
Bump and ping!
A true triumph of American technology. It is indeed something to marvel at.
I think it's pretty neat that the inertial measurement units used in the Mars rovers (as well as on the spaceship which brought them to Mars) were built by Litton (now Northrop Grumman Corp.) containing hardware and software which I helped design. As an engineer, it's nice to know that the stuff one builds will actually work in unusual and hostile environments, and that it just keeps on ticking without any repair or maintenance.
Nah, it's far more important and interesting to ship people back and forth to the International Space Station and have them pick their noses or do whatever it is they do up there.
You beat me to it. It is for this ISS dog-and-pony show that we gave up the SCSC. PHUI
Either we are equal or we are not. Good people ought to be armed where they will, with wits and guns. NRA KMA
That would be difficult. You have to drill through miles of ice to get that ocean.
Not everywhere there are some areas that are very thin. You can see them in some of the photographs. Basically we land a nuclear powered heater on the surface with the probe inside it basically melts its way down with the probe inside.
Interesting.
I'm probably in a real minority here but I'd probably rather see an Europa unmanned ocean-drilling mission than a manned mission to Mars (certainly more than another manned mission to the Moon.)
I was completely disinterested in the ISS solar-panel repair mission - I can't quite get the mindset of people that are only interested in space if people are involved - what I care about is what is being discovered.
NASA is currently spending small sums experimenting with drilling units in Antarctica and whatnot, but there's no formal Europa mission scheduled - it's going to be a LOOOONG time before it happens.
I'd also like to see a Titan orbiter and another couple Titan landings with purpose-built larger landers or even rovers.
My idea is something powered like the Cassini probe. With enough Plutonium you could create a probe which is egg shaped and the outerskin would be heated by the nuclear batteries contained in it. When the probe drops into liquid water it would open up and the sub would come out. It would have to melt through several thousand feet of ice but that isn't an impossible task.
It's tricky, but doable with a self-contained unit and like I said they're playing around with various designs to test in Antarctica (there are lakes there miles under the ice to study.)
The critical issue is whether the probe can be COMPLETELY sterilized so earth organisms aren't introduced to the oceans of Europa. That is harder to do than it seems.
Obviously they were not made by Ford, Chrysler or GM.
Your not in the minority at least with me. Mars used to be a goal I thought was worthy but it will never be a good place to terraform it is just far to small. Life may exist there as microscopic virus or bacteria but who really cares. We should be looking for life and quit mucking about with places that are no more interesting than the moon.
Hell we should sink our money into a space telescope that can find planets like earth in other solar systems.
If we found a planet with a nitrogen oxygen atmosphere how long so you think people would wait to build something to go there? People would demand to have ships sent.
I doubt they are powered by Windows OS
Haven't we been warned to stay away from Europa?
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