6 ms·

>Over seven years into its (originally) 90-day mission, the Mars rover Opportunity arrived at the rim of Endeavour Crater. This is absolutely amazing engineeri

>Over seven years into its (originally) 90-day mission, the Mars rover Opportunity arrived at the rim of Endeavour Crater. This is absolutely amazing engineering. I would love to see NASA double down on robotic exploration (and mining) of the solar system for the next decade or two. Really advance the state of art of robotics, make discoveries that would be extremely difficult and costly for people to do, and get many more missions per/dollar than a manned program could.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
They're certainly trying. The Mars Curiosity rover will be capable of amazing feats. Unfortunately, the JWST has been chewing up a lot of the space science budget at NASA lately, and will continue to do so for a few years.
- chucknelson 15y ago
  Also good. Let's just hope some sort of space science budget continues to exist. Hopefully one day it will start to grow.
pvarangot 15y ago
>This is absolutely amazing engineering. It was also luck. The rovers had their power requirements and solar panels designed so that 90 days of mission could pass before getting occluded by martian dust. Once on Mars NASA discovered that occasional whirlwinds, which existence was unknown during mission planing, cleaned the panels back to usable current output levels.
- aggie 15y ago
  Serious question: why not have wiper blades? I'm having a hard time accepting we can land a rover on another planet, but we can't find a way to clean some dust off of it.
  - ColinDabritz 15y ago
    A good question, that apparently a lot of folks have had: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/11/why-dont-the-mars-rovers-have.html http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/11/... They did consider various options, but nothing met the requirements. "In short, there were possible methods, but nothing simple and light and certain. And the rover developers didn't have the time, the mass, or the leeway to experiment. Attractive though the idea was, this mission couldn't afford to try it."
  - ljlolel 15y ago
    NASA released some e-Books the other day. They go in depth into technical topics of space exploration. Perhaps one of the books describes the challenges of wiper blades. http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/ http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    Fans would be a smarter solution. Wiper blades plus dust and dirt = a mess, not necessarily clean solar panels. Engineering something that would be reliable on Mars would be rather difficult, and would add mass and complexity to the rovers, which would take away from the mass needed for other instruments and time needed for testing everything else. Also, dust buildup on the solar panels was only one factor limiting the expected lifetime of the rovers, so instead they chose to balance the engineering of the vehicle and concentrate on hitting the base mission lifetime expectancy.
    - msftguy 15y ago
      Reasonably sized fans wouldn't work in Martian atmosphere..
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
bane 15y ago
Something to think about, possibly good or bad. If these rovers hadn't had such longevity, would have had other rovers on Mars in the meantime? If so, would they have been more capable? Or have these rovers represented such tremendously cost effective experiments that we're getting what we would have gotten with other rovers, but saved on launch and opportunity costs (awaiting transit to Mars, possible mission failures, etc.)?
- mturmon 15y ago
  No, there would not have been other rovers on Mars in the meantime. There were no rovers in development between MER (Spirit and Opportunity) and MSL (which is now en route to Mars). There's a lot riding on MSL landing safely, because there's nothing solid after MSL right now. There used to be a 2018 rover, but it was recently cancelled.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

They're certainly trying. The Mars Curiosity rover will be capable of amazing feats. Unfortunately, the JWST has been chewing up a lot of the space science budget at NASA lately, and will continue to do so for a few years.

chucknelson 15y ago
Also good. Let's just hope some sort of space science budget continues to exist. Hopefully one day it will start to grow.

pvarangot 15y ago

>This is absolutely amazing engineering. It was also luck. The rovers had their power requirements and solar panels designed so that 90 days of mission could pass before getting occluded by martian dust. Once on Mars NASA discovered that occasional whirlwinds, which existence was unknown during mission planing, cleaned the panels back to usable current output levels.

aggie 15y ago
Serious question: why not have wiper blades? I'm having a hard time accepting we can land a rover on another planet, but we can't find a way to clean some dust off of it.
- ColinDabritz 15y ago
  A good question, that apparently a lot of folks have had: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/11/why-dont-the-mars-rovers-have.html http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/11/... They did consider various options, but nothing met the requirements. "In short, there were possible methods, but nothing simple and light and certain. And the rover developers didn't have the time, the mass, or the leeway to experiment. Attractive though the idea was, this mission couldn't afford to try it."
- ljlolel 15y ago
  NASA released some e-Books the other day. They go in depth into technical topics of space exploration. Perhaps one of the books describes the challenges of wiper blades. http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/ http://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Fans would be a smarter solution. Wiper blades plus dust and dirt = a mess, not necessarily clean solar panels. Engineering something that would be reliable on Mars would be rather difficult, and would add mass and complexity to the rovers, which would take away from the mass needed for other instruments and time needed for testing everything else. Also, dust buildup on the solar panels was only one factor limiting the expected lifetime of the rovers, so instead they chose to balance the engineering of the vehicle and concentrate on hitting the base mission lifetime expectancy.
  - msftguy 15y ago
    Reasonably sized fans wouldn't work in Martian atmosphere..
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

bane 15y ago

Something to think about, possibly good or bad. If these rovers hadn't had such longevity, would have had other rovers on Mars in the meantime? If so, would they have been more capable? Or have these rovers represented such tremendously cost effective experiments that we're getting what we would have gotten with other rovers, but saved on launch and opportunity costs (awaiting transit to Mars, possible mission failures, etc.)?

mturmon 15y ago
No, there would not have been other rovers on Mars in the meantime. There were no rovers in development between MER (Spirit and Opportunity) and MSL (which is now en route to Mars). There's a lot riding on MSL landing safely, because there's nothing solid after MSL right now. There used to be a 2018 rover, but it was recently cancelled.