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Supercool, the Mars Rover is still on the move.

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Hacp said:
Nasa generally over-designs. If they were efficient, the rover would have been 10 times cheaper and only lasted a year.
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You are the dumbest fuck ever to dirty these boards. You are wrong about everything, you disgusting little worm.

I don't know what got you so roiled up but you need to dial it back - WAY back.
admin allisolm
 
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ichy said:
MSL is nuclear powered so it should theoretically be able to last even longer. There's no danger of dust covering up solar panels.
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Its powered by plutonium, which IIRC can only power it for 14 years maximum. But its only planned on being used for something like 2 years. Lets hope that it can achieve the same staying power of the other rovers.

Also, lets hope the skycrane works and that it can successfully detach itself at ground level. Hopefully in my lifetime we can get a settlement on Mars, and I can see my name inscribed on its golden platter. But that seems unlikely.
 
Dominato3r said:
Nasa even admitted that they got extremely lucky by having dust devil clean away the solar panels.

Still a great piece of engineering though.
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Technically it wasn't the dust devils that did the cleaning. It was just good positioning relative to the local terrain that did the job. Spirit got screwed over once it got over the Columbia Hills. There was a wind dead zone back there where there were thick deposits of fine dust, and Spirit got well-coated while it was back there. And its wheels were in various states of functionality, until it ended up digging itself into a small embankment such that it couldn't get back out with only the working wheels it had. It was a stationary observation post then, until its waning power was no longer able to protect its electronics from the extreme temperature cycles, and it stopped sending back data. 🙁

Opportunity got a really good blast around a section of Victoria Crater, where the wind cleaning got it almost all the way back to the power levels it had when it landed.




MayorOfAmerica said:
Im excited for the Curiosity rover, due to touch down in August. It contains three life experiments to test for present or past life on mars. It's also fairly large (mini cooper sized) and requires a small miracle to land safely with a retro-rocket attachment. If they are able to safely land that feat alone will be worthy of praise as well.
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And it has a pulse laser that can vaporize a tiny bit of the surface of rocks. :awe:

That landing system thing though...one crazy system there. I sure hope it works.



ussfletcher said:
Its powered by plutonium, which IIRC can only power it for 14 years maximum. But its only planned on being used for something like 2 years. Lets hope that it can achieve the same staying power of the other rovers.

Also, lets hope the skycrane works and that it can successfully detach itself at ground level. Hopefully in my lifetime we can get a settlement on Mars, and I can see my name inscribed on its golden platter. But that seems unlikely.
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Is that maximum time assuming that they're stretching it out until it can just act as a stationary platform? Or is that with mobility still intact?
As far as I understand, the RTEG doesn't have enough output power to let the rover wander around continuously, but instead it has to charge batteries for a bit (buffering...), and then run off of those. I guess the ultimate limit could be like Spirit's, where there's not even enough power to keep the electronics warm, and they they have to suffer exposure to the extreme temperature swings.
 
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Jeff7 said:
Opportunity got a really good blast around a section of Victoria Crater, where the wind cleaning got it almost all the way back to the power levels it had when it landed.
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If only NASA could invent some sort of panel cleaning apparatus, to mimic what the wind did for it, kind of like a shield against being dirty... I shall call this imaginary apparatus "windshield wipers".
 
SagaLore said:
If only NASA could invent some sort of panel cleaning apparatus, to mimic what the wind did for it, kind of like a shield against being dirty... I shall call this imaginary apparatus "windshield wipers".
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Then put a Gorilla Glass cover over the solar cells (higher launch weight). Rubbing dry, rusty silica dust over high-efficiency solar cells is probably going to cause problems. 😉
 
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