Rover Atop Martian Mountain Pushed To New Limits for Critical Science Data

[IGBT]

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We're doing things now that we never would have dreamed of before. The rover planning sequences and drives are far more complex," he says. "We built these things to explore, not to baby. Nearly two years after landing, we are getting better and better science. This has become the most rewarding and fun phase of the entire mission."


As Science Operations Working Group (SOWG) chairman--the "tactical lead" for the Spirit science team during the period--Squyres led coordination of the final mountaintop campaign and some of the most ambitious operations undertaken with either rover.

My visit, by luck, fell within what Squyres describes as "10 days of high drama on Mars." It more broadly involved rigorous Cornell/JPL planning of seven sols (Martian days) of primary and backup summit operations for Spirit.

This included JPL rover drivers maneuvering the 400-lb. vehicle under a difficult-to-reach bedrock outcrop named "Hillary"--after Sir Edmund Hillary, the first to reach the summit of Mt. Everest in 1953 with his Sherpa partner, Tenzing Norgay.

 

[Jeff7]

90 day mission originally, and they're now due for a 2-year anniversary. (Earth years anyway). Over 600 sols per rover on the surface, and several times more driving distance than expected. Granted, each rover does have a few quirks - Opportunity has a resetting issue, where it sometimes just reboots itself unexplainably. And its right front steering actuator is not working, so that wheel can't turn. But the drivers have compensated for this, and the rover is still able to turn predictably.
It also got stuck in a big ripple of sand. They had to instruct it to do, if memory serves me, over 200 meters of driving, to get it to travel just about 1 meter through thick powdery sand. Now, it's been programmed with the ability to detect slippage, and can also drive to avoid large sandpiles.

Spirit is in excellent shape - the only problem with it that I know of is that it's Rock Abrasion Tool isn't able to drill anymore. They were designed for 3 drillings, and I think they've done more than 15 per rover. Spirit had harder rock to grind through, so the diamond bits on the RAT have been worn down almost completely. It does still have a steel wire brush on the end though, which can brush away dust for a look at the underlying rock.

Quite excellent little machines there.

 

[EightySix Four]

It is something they would do good to inform the public of. The space programs are not looked upon very kindly, and it does not help we never hear anything they do properly. These are some amazing rovers, and they have done far more than they were ever designed to, I applaud them.

 

[CycloWizard]

What is the 'science' that they're getting? I'm really not that familiar with their instrumentation.

It is very nice to see NASA making full use of the programmable capabilities of the rovers. :thumbsup:

 

[Future Shock]

The Rovers were designed after NASA decided that "better, faster, cheaper" space hardware design was a failure, and went back to real design work and building capable machines a la Apollo, Viking, Voyager, etc. There probably IS a use for commoditized space hardware, such as earth-orbiting satellites, but we seem to just get so much better science done when we take the time and money to overdesign these probes.

Hopefully the good press from this mission will help NASA secure adequate funding to properly design and build future probes for non-manned missions.

Future Shock

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
What is the 'science' that they're getting? I'm really not that familiar with their instrumentation.

It is very nice to see NASA making full use of the programmable capabilities of the rovers. :thumbsup:

These are geology robots. They feature tools for brushing and grinding rocks, and taking closeup pictures. They also have a few spectrometers to determine the composition of the various rocks encountered.

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: CycloWizard
What is the 'science' that they're getting? I'm really not that familiar with their instrumentation.

It is very nice to see NASA making full use of the programmable capabilities of the rovers. :thumbsup:

Essentially, their main science mission is to analyse rock composition and structure. Their main aim was to discover minerals that require the presence of water for their creation (e.g. haematite).

Instrumentation

Basically,
Main panoramic camera: 2 stereo cameras, each 1024x1024 pixels, each with 8 filters with a total of 12 unique filters between the 2 cameras.

Mossbauer spectrometer: Used to detect and measure iron content of rocks

Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer: Measures elemental composition of rocks

Thermal emission spectrometer: Provides remote measument of rock composition and theromophysical properties

Microscopic imager: 1024x1024 panchromatic imager with 30 µm/pixel resolution for structural examination of rocks

Rock abrasion tool: Stainless steel wire brush for removing dust or surface layers from rocks

 

[Jeff7]

New milestones:

Spirit has been on Mars for one full Martian Year now. It has driven nearly 3.5 miles.

Opportunity has now exceeded 4 miles, and its solar panels are back to 720 watt-hours, courtesy of a nice wind cleaning. It had dipped down kind of low because of a nearby dust storm, but luckily that has cleared up.