NASA's Spirit rover stuck for good Spirit's days of wandering the Martian landscape are over, as NASA resigns itself to leaving the bogged-down rover in place to survive the Red Planet's winter. The space agency said Tuesday that it's ending efforts to extricate the robot from the loose soil where it's been trapped since April. Spirit will instead continue to …
rover in 90 foot backward aTtempt moved 1 & 1/2 inch, yet lifted itself 1/2 inch. remember base of rover got stuck on rock, the dug itself in. So moving up 1/2 "could greatly reduce friction stopping movement. unfortunately, wheels where not spun at top speed nor long enough. breaking stuck vechile from snow is full speed long winded event. maybe if spirit has done full speed backwards, first 150 feet to get upward lift, minute wait in extreme cold than 2,000 foot backward push with plenty of wiggles & giggles, it break wildly free. FREE SPIRIT/
Signed:PHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART on DRASHEK M.D.
"“It's driving days are likely over,” he told journalists during a teleconference.
NASA's new plan for the next few weeks is to jostle Spirit into place where it's solar arrays""
Translating: "It is driving days [...] into place where it is solar arrays [...]" (yes, the apostrophe denotes a contraction...)
When will this mauling of the English language stop? I'm (translation: "I am") willing to put up with this happening in comments, which may reasonably be assumed to be written by people who are not schooled in journalism and the proper use of language; in a main-page article, I find this sort of mangling of the language offensive. I hereby give notice that I am not exempt from the occasional typo, but the repeated misusage of contractions where they are not appropriate within the same article, in my humble opinion, cannot be an accident. I do recognize the holiness of the quote, as in the first part of the article I quoted. In the second part, which was not a quote within the context of the article, I find myself offended, especially since this sort of language disuse has rencently begun to proliferate at El Reg.
Sorry if I trod on anybody's toes with this one... I just think there is a wee bit of difference between expressions like "its" and "it is."
But the Lego MindStorm is running scared.
Seriously, this should be seen as a success. Spirit went up to do 90 days work and lasted for 6 years. The IT angle is that this is 6 years with the same hardware, no updates to graphics drivers or memory size. Not a bad design at all. NASA even changed the O/S a couple of times.
My hat goes up to NASA for this one.
Why spend 9 months trying to fix what was obviously unfixable after the first couple weeks? Isn't doing the same thing many times, expecting a different result each time, despite all evidence to the contrary, one of the signs of (clinical) insanity?
Y,y,y, I know ... ::sighs::
"Or even place the rock abrasion tool under a wheel for traction"
Maybe they could have found somewhere to stick the rock abrasion tool which would have motivated Spirit out of the sand trap? You know, like one of those pleasure pencils which you insert and then it goes bzzz....bzzzz.....
IGMC
Are you a poet or something? What I found really sad was that these two robots had names which were at least 2 centuries out of date as far as the USA was concerned - more in the case of Discovery, but dating from the first central bank in the case of Spirit (ca 1815?). To be relevant to the deterministically monopolar USA of today they should have been named things like Gog and Magog,or Shock and Awe, or Cap and Trade. Spirit and Discovery, RIP.
last night I found my roomba, Pleo, Mr Squggles and Numnum dancing round a pentagon they had contructed in my living room.
They appeared to have just sacrificed next doors cat and placed it in the centre...
I will not stand for dark magic. They have been severly repremanded.
though I hate cats.
"If Spirit wakes up in the spring, NASA intends to give the machine new life as a stationary science platform"
This is all good news of course, but *if* Spirit comes out of this winter alice we'll just have the same situation next year.
It is interesting when we talk about the superb performance of these rovers (and other robot missions) but I always wonder if we confuse original mission duration with durability design specifications. I asked the tour guide at NASA's JPL about the latter i.e. they should make longer missions as these tobotic craft always seem to outperform the metric, but he didn't give a straight answer i.e. that missions are designed to outperform and we think how wonderful they all are (unless they fail at the start of course).
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
