4,000 days of Curiosity: Rover still 'strong' despite worn joints, vision issues NASA's Curiosity Rover has notched up 4,000 days on Mars as the trundlebot continues its fourth extended mission despite showing signs of wear and tear. The nuclear-powered rover touched down in Gale Crater in 2012 and has since been studying the Red Planet to determine if ancient Mars could have supported microbial life. It …
The normal wind speed is low, but it can exceed 30m/s in a storm. The atmospheric density is pretty low, so a fast wind would not impose much of a push on the rover, but it can still move light stuff, like dust and grit, around and leave it in places that engineers would prefer stayed clean.
"I thought the dust storms were like a gentle breeze and there is no rain or mud. So why is it worn out?"
What we think of as dust on Earth isn't as hard and has been ground down so all of the sharp edges are worn off. The lunar regolith is more like very tiny pieces of shattered glass with the Mars regolith in between by more towards the sharper end. If there were an active hydrosphere, the action of rain and wind would wear down the sharp edges. In the absence of water and in the presence of meteor impacts, you wind up with a layer that would be great to sprinkle on some glue covered paper. When that gets into mechanical joints, it gouges the contacting surfaces, bearings, etc. Somewhere online there is some closeup photos of the damage to the Apollo astronaut's spacesuits where the lunar regolith got in. The same thing is happening to the rovers on Mars.
Thanks,so like the moon which has similar sharp dust we wont be living on either the moon or mars. Im sure this rubbish it trotted out by the sort of people
that want us to be easy with them destroying our world to make a few bucks and give the impression we have options.
Any minute now some startrek fan will say the word terraform and warp drive.
Centurion: You know the penalty laid down by Roman law for harboring a known [offender]?
Matthias: No.
Centurion: Crucifixion!
Matthias: Oh.
Centurion: Nasty, eh?
Matthias: Could be worse.
Centurion: What you mean "Could be worse"?
Matthias: Well, you could be stabbed.
Centurion: Stabbed? Takes a second. Crucifixion lasts hours. It's a slow, horrible [end].
Matthias: Well, at least it gets you out in the open air.
Centurion: You're weird!
or
My legs are old and bent, my ears are grizzled,. My nose is knackered.
From a bit earlier:
bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam
Ohh,...
bam bam bam bam bam
...shit!
bam
BRIAN: Uhh.
MATTHIAS: Coming!
bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam
bam bam bam bam bam bam
MATTHIAS: My eyes are dim. I cannot see.
CENTURION: Are you Matthias?
MATTHIAS: Yes.
CENTURION: We have reason to believe you may be hiding one Brian of Nazareth, a member of the terrorist organisation, the 'People's Front of Judea'.
MATTHIAS: Me? No. I'm just a poor old man. I have no time for law-breakers. My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.
they expected it to last maybe 6-months,
I was pleased and relieved to see that, this time, TheRegister hadn't made the foolish mistake of asserting that the initial mission life was the expected lifetime, and that NASA has expected it to fail at the end of the initial mission.
"mistake of asserting that the initial mission life was the expected lifetime"
Those mission lifetimes are usually the minimum at which they'll classify it as successful. It's very important for the teams to hit those goals if they ever expect to get something else approved. Many of these missions are brought to NASA by teams headed up by a Principal Investigator. The PI for the MER rovers was Steve Squyres. His book, "Roving Mars", is a great read and a superb insight into doing space missions. Spirit and Opportunity didn't just knock it out of the stadium, they cleared the car park as well, but that they were both launched at all went right down the the last minutes.
"At almost 11 years, it has lasted longer than most vehicles on this planet, and certainly longer than any vehicle on this planet that has never received any maintenance."
Yeah, well, only 20 miles on the odometer and a top speed that takes good concentration to detect will lead to a long life provided the electrical wasn't supplied by Lucas.
My car is a bit over 10 yeras old. I've had it since new
We were the third owners of the Morris Minor (build in 1966) but have easily had it the longest. Bought it 1991/2 (ish - can't remember. My wife could probably tell you the exact date).
We tend to have cars for ~10 years or so - until the cost of keeping it on the road gets bigger than the value. Since my wife is now elegible for her work pension she could nominally retire now (but we'll probably both hang on until state pension age - my work pension doesn't kick in until then anyway) we need to think about replacing our current C-HR in 4-5 years.
"For the wheels, engineers admitted that they misjudged the conditions encountered on the Martian surface"
The way this reads sounds like they did something wrong, instead of building an incredible rover which already far exceeded its design parameters and lifespan, and yet retrospectively determining that if they'd had access to even more actual data, they could have done it even better.
Rethink your phrasing, Mr. Speed.
Premature wear of the MSL wheels
Abstract: The anomalous wheel wear suggests that loads and terrains representative of actual operational conditions were not adequately simulated during life testing
NASA built an amazingly resilient rover because they can overengineer what they do, but it doesn't mean the author's phrasing is wrong, going by NASA's own assessment.
I disagree.
"...not adequately simulated" means there were insufficient data to provide a complete representation of actual operational conditions. Not a question of fault, simply an indication they could have done better with more.
"...misjudged" means they had sufficient data, but interpreted it wrongly.
Considering how often that link has been posted whenever one of the many, many great milestones has been reached by a Mars rover, I think posting the link is redundant these days and just what you put in the subject line is sufficient for most El Reg readers to immediately visualise that XKCD without further prompting :-)
But it's nice that you took the time to be considerate to newbies and edge cases :-)
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