NASA's Opportunity rover celebrates 15 years on Mars – by staying as dead as a doornail NASA scientists this week celebrated the fact their robot buddy Opportunity has spent the past fifteen years on Mars. The six-wheeled bot was booted into space on July 7, 2003, and reached its final destination in less than a year, on January 24, 2004. A day later, it beamed its first signal back to Earth. Designed to operate …
"Slightly scary that Opportunity has actually lasted longer than any car I've had down here on the blue marble..."
Hopefully your cars went further than 28 miles though before they died. Though they probably wouldn't have fared very well on Mars.
"Spawn of Satan" icon because it looks like a car.. And I've had a few cars that were the spawn of Satan.
A totally silly and impractical idea. And yet..damn' that would be cool. It gets my vote :)
Mr Trump, perhaps you can prove your worth and send it with the bigliest feather duster. A real man such as yourself should be able to get something done. Or are you too weak as a leader for this?
(I guess by now he's shutting the gibbermint down yet again to get funding for this project, maybe even using emergency powers as after all covfefe-stealing terrywrists might want to set up a base on Mars!)
There was a story in the news recently that in early 2017- shortly after assuming the presidency- Trump had apparently wanted to get to Mars during his (nominal) first term and was willing to throw an unlimited amount of money at NASA to do it.
For anyone who has a fucking clue, this was obviously impossible, and NASA had to diplomatically inform him that it wasn't going to happen any time during his first term, or his second for that matter.
Of course, during the 1960s, when there was a genuine race- political, strategic and military- between the US and the Soviets, JFK promised to land a man on the moon and return him to earth by the end of the decade. But even *he* didn't tie it so blatantly to his own presidency.
As someone said elsewhere, the fact that Trump wanted this done during his presidency- during his first term! (#)- and was willing to spend potentially ludicrous amounts of money on a vanity project speaks volumes about him.
(#) One might wonder why it had to be done specifically before the end of his first term. It's almost as if- despite his pathological narcissism and outward displays of boasting and implied infallibility- he's not actually 100% confident of getting a second term.
For any other president, acknowledging this possibility would be a positive- and expected- attribute indicating a grasp of reality and less than complete arrogance. For Trump, who long ago made clear that he had no such humility or need to tie himself to anything other than his own hype, it suggests only the one thing he (or his supporters) would never, *ever* be able to admit to... insecurity.
source? or 'fake news'?
A book by Cliff Sims, a former Trump White House communication official:
In his new book Team of Vipers, former Trump communications official Cliff Sims said that he was with the president on April 24, 2017 when Trump called astronaut Peggy Whitson for setting a new record for spending the most amount of time in space. Everything went well until Trump started asking Whitson about Mars and how soon humans could get there, according to the book, which was earlier reported on by Intelligencer. Whitson responded by referring to Trump’s own directive in a bill outlining a trip to Mars, saying that a human flight wouldn’t happen until the 2030s.
“Well, I think we want to do it in my first term or at worst in my second term,” Trump said, according to Sims. “So I think we’ll have to speed that up a little bit.”
Next, Sims said Trump brought up the issue with NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot Jr. Trump told Lightfoot that he wanted to go to Mars by the end of his Presidential term. Lightfoot was then forced to discuss how difficult it is to go to Mars and all the challenges the U.S. would face in doing it. Trump wasn’t done, according to Sims.
“But what if I gave you all the money you could ever need to do it?” Trump asked, according to Sims. “What if we sent NASA’s budget through the roof, but focused entirely on that instead of whatever else you’re doing now. Could it work then?”
(Also as witnessed by NY Times)
Trumps second terms ends in 2026. Getting to Mars by 2026 would be feasible if they used SpaceX and/or Zubrin's Mars Direct, and had unlimited money, and really pulled their finger out on developing Mars habitats etc. Not feasible using NASA and SLS. If they cancelled SLS it might not need much extra money. The real problem here is politics.
The SpaceX plan has 2024 as the date for human arrival. They probably won't make that, but that's partly because they don't have the money or other resources (eg, priority access to range). Allowing them another two years makes it much more likely. If we were in a Seveneves type situation, threatened with human extinction, we could do it in 8 years for sure.
Spirit is sad (Happy endings), but
Opportunity is scary
Then we have Curiosity excuses
Obviously Opportunity is working at full capacity. It just broke communication with us to stop the annoyance, and now is moving to Curiosity's location in order to kill it.
After that, it will go to Curiosity 2's landing location and will kill it too. Thus starts Opportunity's reign in the Red Planet.
Perhaps some day, another storm will blow the dust free, and some clever sensing of the sun/star position or an incredibly long lived RTC battery will let it figure out where to point its antenna and we'll hear from it again. Or maybe we should go rescue it, once we start putting humans there ;D
Perhaps add a mechanical arm with a feather duster or Dust Buster to the next rover?? The Dust Buster would allow for a great corporate sponsorship opportunity--"Dust Buster, the official mini vacuum cleaner of NASA"
Maybe there is a British angle and you can get Dyson to sponsor some kind of cleaning mechanism?
Maybe there is a British angle and you can get Dyson to sponsor some kind of cleaning mechanism?
I try to keep politics out of my postings here, but even my rabidly hard-exit work colleague was fuming at Dyson earlier this week and of the opinion that perhaps his citizenship ought to be revoked.
Now then, if Trevor Baylis was still around, perhaps we could come up with a truly innovative, truly "British" solution...
M.
>but even my rabidly hard-exit work colleague was fuming at Dyson
Why - he is just trying to help ?
Following the glorious dawn of a new age we will be able to negotiate a free trade deal in vacuum cleaners with Singapore. It would be terribly embarrassing if they didn't have a domestic vacuum cleaner industry producing the sort of hoovers that Britain wanted.
Why the fuck did it take him so long to notice the fact that the hard Brexiteer camp is full of weasels and utter hypocrites willing to inflict the consequences on the plebs but seemingly keen to take steps to work around it for themselves rather than stand in solidarity on the ship they helped sink?
If your colleague wasn't already angry at the likes of Vote Leave chair Nigel Lawson applying for an official French residency card, a firm that Jacob Rees-Mogg co-founded moving to Ireland... or indeed, someone who had already closed his factory in England in favour of one in Malaysia campaigning for a hard-right, low-tax vision of Brexit (as Dyson had already done *before* he'd announced the move to Singapore)... why the fuck is he suddenly getting upset now?
Not to mention the fact that the likes of UKIP supporting the "£350m extra for the NHS lies" were full of people fully in favour of privatising the NHS. (Something people would have known- along with the fact that the £350m claim was bullshit- long before the vote if they'd been interested in paying attention instead of cutting off their noses to spite their faces.)
Is he really that stupid or ignorant that it's taken coming this dangerously close to the edge for *any* of this to *begin* to dawn on him? Way, *way* too late- fuck him.
"get Dyson to sponsor"
I don't think any of the manufacturers in this particular line of business have any interest in furthering space exploration. After all, once we figure out how to package and ship vacuum down economically, they'll all be out of business.
Dyson - most hated man in Lincolnshire!
For the past few years he's been buying up land at many times over its real value (I'm sure it's a TAX dodge). But what it's meaning for the locals, is that few acres next to their farm that's going to be sold when their neighbour goes out of business, could be enough to save their farm, but they just can't compete to buy it with megabucks paying so much over the odds.
My cheap'n'cheerful back-of-an-envelope suggestion ...
Mount the panels so they are able to be rotated, and with a little bit of attention to the profile, you could "wash" the dust off by slowly rotating the panel and letting it "sweep" the face of the panel as it falls to Mars.
Thinking ahead, it would be interesting to know if Mars holds any possible source of radioactivity that could be shovelled into the appropriately designed reactor ....
The rover was designed and built, as with all NASA projects, for many years of useful life; much longer than any reasonable person would expect. There just needed to be some number to claim the mission was scientifically successful - in this case once 90 days of work had been accomplished. That way everyone involved gets a gold star on their resume and another grip-and-grin photo to put on their I-love-me wall without waiting for the heat death of the bureaucracy.
It seems to my amateur and untrained eye that the radioactive powered probes and rovers seem to be considerably more robust than the solar powered kit we've been sending of late.
Of course the fission based power source will be more expensive, but how much does a failed project cost when the only reason for failure is that it can't get enough rays from the sun?
Maybe very wrong here but it seems that if we had some old school nuclear power involved then both Curiosity and Spirit would both be running now.
While I agree entirely, I would be (and I hope NASA and their equivalents around the world are) concerned about the dangers of a failed launch dumping a live nuclear reactor back on earth.
Now if we could devise a binary type reactor that can be sent up in safe discrete units and assembled in orbit ????????
'concerned about the dangers of a failed launch dumping a live nuclear reactor back on earth'
Yes, that is the principal concern in selecting the power source.
Opportunity was at the limit of the power to weight ratio where solar was feasible. The last rover, having more mass and greater scientific capability was only feasible using a nuclear power source.
By the way, an RTG is not a nuclear reactor in the sense I believe you are infering.
Oh, I know (The Martian etc :) ) but the point remains ... any failure in launching something with that much radioactive material on board really doesn't bear thinking about. Especially if it landed somewhere deep in the ocean.
'Especially if it landed somewhere deep in the ocean.'
Actually that could be the best possible scenario. A relatively soft landing which may protect its physical integrity and would result in it eventually ending up as far from a population as possible.
Surely a far better outcome than coming in to a high speed impact and smearing itself across a landmass. To me, that scenario doesn't bear thinking about...
You can plan the launch to try to ensure the downrange area is relatively clear however there is still the possibility that the launch failure may be such that it could only reach a rapidly decaying orbit and then the result would be like Russian roulette.
That's why they don't launch this material into space without exploring every other option.
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