Thanks NASA!
I have decided that the real reason NASA keeps sending these robots to Mars is supply me with a bunch of great desktop wallpaper images.
Thanks NASA!
The Mars Ingenuity helicopter is to take a breather to recharge its batteries after its latest successful flight a little over a month ago. Power is a problem for the experimental flying machine as dust in the Martian atmosphere means less sunlight is reaching the vehicle's solar panels to charge its batteries. Ingenuity has …
Isn't everyone in a good mood today.
I didn't realise the US government was "propping up religions". Or that data showed "all religions are failing". Numerically atheists are a minority, you may be speaking morally but in that case "it's obvious" is a statement that hardly ever holds true.
If you must be an angry atheist who can't help forcing their hobby-horse into unrelated discussions, at least be a moderately informed angry atheist so you don't give atheists a bad name. Better yet maybe we should just avoid politics and religion in the comments here. Neither ever leads to anyone feeling happier and calmer so why bother.
No it's not. There is no belief required to think something non-existent doesn't exist. America isn't made of cheese and populated by golden unicorns farting out rainbows. That is a false statement, it requires no belief. Same with atheism, the lack of a god is the default position, not a belief.
Ah, poor Zanzibar, your life must be so empty with no sense of wonder or curiosity. Of course you will say it is not empty, because, lacking any sense of wonder or curiosity, you can not know what you lack.
But you suspect, do you not? And it burns at you, and you hate the people who are not damaged like you, the people who do have curiosity, the people who do have wonder and seek understanding of new things. So you spend your time searching out posts about exploration and curiosity and wonder and trying to spread a little of your grey depressing emptiness: trying to make everything a little worse. And you succeed: you do make everything a little worse, a little greyer, a little more empty. Well done.
I see you have turned up on threads about JWST images now as well, posting your idiocies. Ah well.
This is because unlike earth dust it has not been subject to water so it has sharper edges than Earth dust which tends to be rounded.
If that wasn't bad enough the dust particles are small, very small, averaging about 5 microns, for comparison Johnson's Baby Powder averages at over 25 microns.
Dust that small will ingress everywhere. Small particles means a large surface area in which to collect a static charge which makes the dust electrostatically rather sticky.
Try to think. Adding another panel would double the mass of the panels, and double the effect of the panels on the airflow over the blades thus making the blades less efficient meaning it needed more power to fly, some combination of bigger batteries (more mass) or shorter flights.
The thing was meant to fly three times. It has now flown twenty-nine times: almost ten times as many flights as it was built for. And it is not dead yet.
Really I should have said "bigger panel" instead of "extra panel".
Any gubbins to remove dust would add mass and as the idea is to increases panel efficiency the logical place to save that mass would be to make the panel (and the cleaning gubbins) smaller.
Having said that I've come up with something that "might" work - Have a loop of clear plastic film going over and under the panel and some electrostatic device to put a repelling charge on the plastic film. When the dust has built up the loop rotates taking the dust with it so there's a clean cover over the panel and at the other end the electrostatic thing cleans the film ready for the next time.
Problems: Longevity (at sub zero temperatures) and resistance to scratching of the plastic film.
Weigh of film, rollers, motors and electrostatic gubbins.
Difficulty of mounting the panel because clearance is required for the film.
Dust collecting under the panel.
Dust getting between the film and panel and scratching everything.
All in all it's probably more trouble than it's worth and the same probably applies to any scheme to keep panels clean in an alien environment.
This is why we need a manned expedition to Mars, we need somebody up there with a broom to keep the solar panels clean.
"Dust has bedeviled many a NASA probe over the years. The Opportunity rover was eventually done in by a dust storm after a 15-year stint trundling around the surface and the agency's InSight lander is set to go out in a blaze of data-gathering glory in the next month or so as its power levels drop"
The problem there is that NASA persists with using flat solar panels that collect dust instead of using angled solar panels. Experience on this planet shows that tilting the solar panel leads to less dust and less power output degradation. Now that really is not rocket science.
Do they deliberately say "oh this is only designed to last a couple of weeks" knowing full well it should have a much longer life? Is this so they never have things fail earlier than designed, or is it a scientific thing that "designed to last 2 weeks" means "designed to have a 99.99% chance it'll last two weeks?"
These things are built to fit a mission window that has primary objectives which are unusually a short window. But the individual systems are all robustly over-engineered, for exactly the reason you mention. It's to buy more 9's.
And when all of the parts function to specification, you end up with something that can last a lot longer than anticipated. At this point, things like the rovers have proven they can go years past their design life and that is part of the extended mission planning process. For the copter, they REALLY didn't expect it to last this long.
I expect that this type of unit will be a big part of future missions, and probably work in tandem with the larger rovers. That might include a landing/docking point to help shelter it during inclement martian weather, and potentially charge the thing to help them survive the off season. In return they may be able to use it to help dislodge debris from the parent rover, help with path selection, etc.
Let's not forget that these things already have to survive a pretty violent launch to start with. I suspect the engineering required fto cope with that goes a long way towards delivering longetivity as a beneficial side effect at the other end of the journey.
If you play a game of chance with a cost of delivery that cannot be offset by Amazon Prime and a final destination that is a tad beyond the average on-site service contract, overengineering is not a luxury. That things then work far longer than expected is a massive bonus, but I think it's also a beneficial side effect of having to design it so it survives the very launch, journey and delivery stages to start with.
"Is this so they never have things fail earlier than designed, or is it a scientific thing that "designed to last 2 weeks" means "designed to have a 99.99% chance it'll last two weeks?""
The book "Roving Mars" by Steve Squyres is a great look into space science and the intricacies of working with NASA.
To get funding from NASA for a mission or to be included in a mission requires that you have a set of acceptable minimum goals for your investigation. You need to set a bar for yourself that high enough to get approved and low enough that you can pull it off. You never want something to happen that your fault and causes you to not meet those minimums. It usually means not being able to get on any more missions in the future.
It's a real bonus when they run the wheels off of these projects after hitting the milestones that were stated in the mission goals. With so much at stake on these missions, they aren't giving anybody a place if they can't submit something with useful and achievable goals.
The problem is the solar panels are above the blades. If it was below then the air wash from the blades in flight would keep the dust off.
The only problem might be shade from the props when not in use, but that could be minimised by setting the resting position of the blades such that they are one above the other and at 90 degrees to the panel.
If they were in the prop wash they would be canceling lift, which they can not afford to lose much of in the thin martian atmosphere. That said I expect that future mars flyers will be more robust and have more endurance features. This is very much an over performing Mk I proof of concept.
That said, the longer they keep this one running, the better the next one will be.