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NASA Just Launched Its New Perseverance Rover to Mars
- x43b 6y agoI'm excited for Ingenuity, the Mars Helicopter Scout!
- dogma1138 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:List_of_active_Martian_Air_Force_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:List_of_active_Martian_A... I couldn't resist.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoNeeds rows with active and passive weapons systems plus technical specs for communications hardware.
- 0xffff2 6y agoWhy "air force" for a civilian research aircraft?
- martythemaniak 6y agoIt's awesome, but I'd also call it a reality check if you believe that the future of space exploration is unmanned. Curiosity landed landed 8 years ago and has covered the equivalent of a day's hike (23km) for a human. It's got to stop and drill, take photos, etc, but it still probably represents only several days worth of tasks for a human. Perseverance has better instruments, but is the same platform and weight because there's no rockets capable of putting anything larger on Mars. It's also not going to be doing anything faster than Curiosity did. The rate of improvement of these robots is really slow. I'm really hoping the next generation of reusable/refillable rockets changes things.
- Robotbeat 6y agoOf course, Perserverance has an in situ resource utilization demo for making oxygen (and carbon monoxide fuel) from the atmosphere, enabling refuelable Mars rockets. Super cool.
- dogma1138 6y agoWhile true, it's not a good argument, humans would require much more equipment, the rover is limited by the amount of weight we can put on Mars, if you use the same weight allowance that even modest manned missions to mars would require on rovers you'll get a very different coverage. Humans are important because they can think and be in the loop where it matters most, but it's not that they'll be able to cover that much more ground. We don't have the technology to allow for a human to trek 23km on mars yet, even when we will I don't see NASA or anyone approving such a mission so now you need a vehicle capable of transporting humans, providing emergency shelter and life support, the longest single manned trip we've taken on a celestial body was about 7km on lunar roving vehicles. Yes those covered usually around 30KM in a single mission but not in a single trip, all trips were well within visual range and well within recovery distance if need be.
- dmurray 6y agoThe longest manned lunar rover trip was more like 15km (7.5km out and back on Apollo 17) and the limiting factor there was that the astronauts had to be ready to walk back if it broke down. If the mission called for the astronauts to walk 23km in a single trip on Mars, designing the technology for that would not be a huge leap. I agree the extra weight required for life support and a return journey would be far greater than what the unmanned rovers need.
- valuearb 6y agoStarship is designed to land 100 tons of equipment, supplies and people on Mars, and to be built fairly cheaply (close to $100M each). If it can meet those performance parameters the first expeditions will include dozens to hundreds of people and thousands of tons of equipment and supplies. And those folks will produce hundreds of times the scientific value.
- t7s 6y agoIf budget was not an issue is there a reason that we don't launch multiple rovers during the mars window? Would one rover team be able to manage multiple rovers?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- OnACoffeeBreak 6y agoGood question. I imagine that communication infrastructure would have to be taken into consideration, but I don't know much of the details. The rover has the following capabilities for comms, but I don't know what the limits are in Mars orbit for relays: - UHF up to 2 Mbps - X-band High Gain 160/500 bits per second - X-band Low Gain about 10 bits per second https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communications/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/communicatio...
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoHow do we communicate with the rovers when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun?
- ckozlowski 6y agoSounds like it doesn't last all that long. They have a keep-alive program running during, and then get back to work once the connection is restored: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-what-happens-when-the-sun-blocks-our-signal/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/learn/video/mars-in-a-minute-wh...
- jbay808 6y agoRelay the lasers at a Lagrange point somewhere?
- basementcat 6y agoThere are allocations from the International Telecommunication Union for deep space communications in the S, X, K and Ka bands. This bandwidth (and parameters like transmit power of the relay spacecraft) effectively bounds how many bits per second you can get back from Mars. You can do better with optical communications and maybe some clever MIMO-like tricks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_space_bands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_space_bands
- Robotbeat 6y agoReally excited about this one. It’s a sample cacher, so is the beginning of the sample return effort. It also has an in situ resource utilization demonstration involving capturing CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and splitting it into oxygen (and carbon monoxide fuel) using a solid oxide electrolysis cell. That kind of tech is critical for human missions. And, of course, the helicopter!
- sandworm101 6y ago>> And, of course, the helicopter! It is cool, but is being falsely reported as the "first extraterrestrial aircraft", which it certainly is not. The Russian Vega mission had aircraft (balloons are aircraft) flying on Venus back in the 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon
- madarco 6y agoThat's cool! Why NASA didn't opt for a balloon too for this mission?
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoBecause they wanted to test a helicopter
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoAnd because anything that can float on the light martian atmosphere can be blown away by the light martian wind.
- zbrozek 6y agoMars's atmosphere is very low density, so the balloon would have to be unreasonably enormous to fly anything useful. Venus, on the other hand, has an extraordinarily dense atmosphere. So dense that folks have hypothesized floating entire cities.
- htk 6y agoAnd not a single picture of the Rover can be seen in the article. For the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseverance_(rover)
- Steltek 6y agoAside from the drone, it's a Curiosity rover with upgraded tires (and diff instrument package). I think that is actually an incredibly exciting statement, not boring: Nasa has such high confidence in the refinement of Mars rovers that they're only making small changes now.
- iamthemalto 6y agoFrom what the guide at JPL said when I went on a tour there and got to see the Perseverance rover in the cleanroom, was that they simply had enough spare parts from building the Curiosity that it was easy/worth building this second one.
- billfruit 6y agoDoes anyone know why the Chinese probe which seems a lighter payload needs a heavy lift Long March 5 rocket, while Perseverance only requires a medium lift rocket? Is it because of some different approaches in the orbit taken to Mars? Also how does the UAE probe's approach/trajectory to Mars.
- peach 6y agoMaybe they're sending something else alongside?
- pauldino 6y agoI believe the Chinese mission actually does have more mass overall - although the rover is a lot smaller, they're also sending a large orbiter and a landing platform to deliver the rover to the surface.
- shadowgovt 6y agoThat's cool. If NASA and CNSA can work the details out, they can share comms; it's always good to have more redundant comms solutions in orbit.
- pauldino 6y agoUnfortunately (or fortunately depending on who you ask) NASA is very restricted in what it can do with China, so probably not. But NASA does utilize ESA's Trace Gas Orbiter in addition to their own Mars orbiters for relay operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_exclusion_policy_of_NA...
- billfruit 6y agoI heard CNSA is also planning to use an ESA orbiter as backup comms relay, besides using the ESA ground tracking stations as well.
- sinxccc 6y ago
- yannikyeo 6y agoIn terms of computing, anyone knows what’s the spec and what’s the software stack like? Assembly machine codes?
- duhast 6y agoHW: 2 x RAD750 SW: I will speculate that very similar to Curiosity - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-is-the-mars-curiosity-rovers-software-built-in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1596...
- OnACoffeeBreak 6y agoSame as the Curiosity rover back in 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750 https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/
- sidcool 6y agoThe rovers are very advanced. And they are coming back!! That's a major plus.