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NASA / JPL / Univ. of Ariz.
An image captured by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on March 31 shows the glint of the Spirit rover's solar panels as a bright spot toward the left side of this image, alongside the rock formation known as Home Plate.
NASA is no longer sending commands to the Spirit rover on Mars, but the long-silent robot still has a few more chances to phone home. Not that anyone is expecting Spirit to call, more than a year after the six-wheeled robot went into a coma. But if Spirit does decide to make a resurrection, it better do it before June 8.
That's when NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is due to take a last listen for UHF signals from the rover, which is mired in sandy soil on an incline inside Gusev Crater, alongside a rock formation known as Home Plate. The final relay pass is due at 12:30 p.m. PT (3:30 p.m. ET) on June 8, said John Callas, project manager for the Mars rover missions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"After that point, there is no attempt at communicating with Spirit going forward," Callas told me today.
So when do you mark the time of death? Would it be June 8? Or May 25, when NASA sent its last command seeking contact? Or March 22, 2010, the last time that NASA heard from the ailing, energy-starved rover?
Callas and his colleagues have had a long time to prepare for Spirit's end and turn their full focus to the twin rover Opportunity, which is still very much alive and rolling.
"The transition to single-rover operations has already been done," Callas said. "That was done many months ago. The project is already where it should be."
He said mission operations at JPL now occupy the time of a little more than 40 full-time-equivalent employees, compared with several hundred back in the heyday of the rover missions, seven years ago. The cost for the Opportunity-only operation is about $12 million annually, compared with $800 million for the rovers' construction, launch and primary mission.
Mission team members reflect on the Spirit rover's journey.
At the risk of anthropomorphizing the machine yet again, I'll just mention that Spirit was generally considered the hard-working, nothing-comes-easy rover, while Opportunity was the "little princess" of the two. Spirit was the first to land on Mars, in early January of 2004, and it suffered glitches that the team could use to smooth the way for Opportunity later.
Many of Spirit's most memorable discoveries, having to do with geological evidence of ancient water on Mars, came after its scheduled 90-day primary mission was finished.
"It's all been said, and everyone knows this, that this is a remarkable mission that exceeded expectations, a three-month mission that lasted for six years," Callas said. "We have to remember how blessed we are to have had that. Our glass isn't half-empty, it's really nine-tenths full."
As the mission wore on, Spirit had to contend with a bum wheel and bouts of computer-memory amnesia, but its final round of troubles got started a little more than two years ago when it became stuck in loose dirt while driving around the Martian plateau known as Home Plate. For months, engineers at JPL worked on detailed plans to free up the rover, but they just couldn't move Spirit far enough to put its power-generating solar arrays into a good position to soak up sunlight during the Martian winter.
For a while, NASA used Spirit as a stationary observation post, but the rover's power eventually dwindled to the point that it shut down transmissions to Earth and went into hibernation.
It never woke up.
Ironically, it was Spirit's solar panels that most recently signaled the rover's location. This March, sunlight glinted off the panels at just the right angle to shine into the high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The flash told the mission team that Spirit's panels were not yet completely covered with the red dust of Mars.
I asked Callas whether it was worth monitoring the reflections of Spirit's solar panels to track the deposition of dust over the months and years to come, but he said that would be a "very difficult analysis to do." The reflectance of the panels could be anywhere between 30 and 80 percent.
"It's unclear how you can use that information," Callas said.
Kenneth Kremer / Marco DiLorenzo / NASA / JPL / Cornell
The Spirit rover's last panorama, sent back in February 2010, shows its surroundings in Mars' Columbia Hills. The hill with the light-colored top, visible near the top center image, was dubbed Von Braun and would have been Spirit's next destination.
So Spirit's days as a scientific instrument of any kind appear to be over. But scientists will continue to pore over the data that Spirit delivered for more than six years. "That will happen for decades," Callas said. And as an inspiration for future planetary science, Spirit has entered immortality, alongside the Mars Viking landers as well as the Mars Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover.
It's fitting, then, that the rover will get the scientific community's equivalent of an Irish wake in July, when the rover science team gathers at JPL for a previously scheduled meeting. "We intend to use that opportunity as an avenue for Spirit's send-off," Callas said.
Godspeed, Spirit! And may you be in heaven half an hour before the Great Galactic Ghoul knows you're dead.
More about Mars:
- NASA weighs landing sites for next rover
- Counting down to a mission to Mars
- Gallery: Greatest hits from Mars
- Inside the rover factory
You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Alan...
Normally I don't suggest rewriting specific sentences in anyone's work, but this sentence of yours caught me by surprise..
Now, I know you probably were trying to make a point of how a family in such a situation has a different feeling of letting go than a family who's just recently lost a loved one. But, here I'm wondering how many "long-comatose invalids" have twins whose family can immediately turn to them after the family "pulls the plug" on the comatose family member.
I know it's just a quibble but for some this can be a very sensitive subject. Just a thought.
Yes, that may get a little too sensitive, I'll remove the reference in the story itself but leave it here for discussion purposes. Was trying to do a little too much with that one sentence.
I can understand what you're saying Mob B, but I would really hope that a family in a situation like you describe doesn't make that kind of overly sensitive connection/conclusion. These rovers are just semi-autonomous machines, not people. While it's obvious that Alan didn't intend it to sound obtuse, maybe a rewording of that sentence would be a better approach.
I'm all for NASA and scientific research, but do we really need 40 people working on this project at this point??? The rovers have given us much information and probably meet the criteria for the longest single highly productive mission of any off world project. However, IMHO the money now could be better spent on other projects and leave say 2-3 scientists sending commands and looking through pictures and employ students to take up some of the slack.
Totally agree with you. Even better: leave just one guy to the project as a manager, layoff the others and hire students in China. Lots of savings there. :D
That is a pretty easy statement to say when you really dont have a clue what those 40 people actually do. Of course it all depends on what the 40 people do as it is very likely that they are all needed in order to do all the work needed in regards to the working rover. You do know they have to program the rovers and send that program to them. its not liek they have a remote control that works real time. the delay is 20 minutes I believe so they have to program the route and deal with issues or surprises.
I am pretty sure that takes more then a few people.
This might be a good opportunity for someone knowledgeable about space operations to provide some insight into how this works. I'm sure planning and executing the operations for a rover tens of millions of miles away requires a lot more than just pushing a few buttons. When I sat in on one of the rover meetings at JPL, I was impressed by how much down-and-dirty detail had to be dealt with.
Indeed, I'm not too familiar with the nuts and bolts of the situation, and I would agree that anytime you can get students involved it's generally a good thing, but I am fairly sure that all the people involved (is it 40 people at this time?) provide vital support to the mission and it's directives. I may be speaking above my pay grade here but I sincerely doubt 2 or 3 scientists and a handful of students could tackle the day to day of operating this mission.
Michael@Astronomy.FM... this sounds like a question for you.
Who, me? ;-)
There is a team that does NOTHING but deal with Rover health (90% of which is power management, but also mobility). Power generation in, power drains going out (heaters, communications, data processing, and budgeting power for experiments and cameras).
Another team drives the Rover, carefully examining images to determine the most efficient and safest path. Each wheel roll is carefully planned to avoid getting stuck, and maximizing speed to the objective. A keen eye is also scanning for targets of opportunity (pardon the pun).
There are alternating teams, and several people on each team, so that the Rover is utilized to the fullest extent, while protecting the Rover from harm. Teams are set up with redundant and monitoring positions, so that several eyes are checking each command to avoid doing something stoopid.
Another team coordinates communications with the Rover and the teams operating three orbiting satellites (Odyssey, MRO, and the ESA's Mars Express). THEN communications are coordinated with JPL's Deep Space Network (ground-based monster radio dishes that communicate with all the NASA missions beyond Earth orbit; lots missions, lots of competing radio traffic, so lots of coordination).
NOW we bring in the science teams, running several experiments on the Rover, from several institutions, and all bent on demanding so much that if all is implemented the Rover will overload and fry.
There is a natural tension between the engineering teams, whose objective is to at all costs protect the hardware, and the science teams, who want all the data, and they want it now.
Regarding the earlier comment on just running the show with two or three people - everyone on the team has a job to do, every job is important to the continuing health of the Rover and the success of the mission, and taking ANYONE out of the team increases the odds of a mission-ending failure. We paid the big bucks to get the hardware to Mars - it would be stupid to have to park the rover for days on end solely because we lacked sufficient staffing at JPL to keep the rover moving. Every hour of Rover operations takes several person-hours of planning and coordination. We either park Opportunity for most of the time while the two or three people take days to figure out each little move, or we have the people we need to ensure that when the Rover is ready to roll, all the details on this end are fully taken care of.
On Facebook, Doug Isbell made this insightful comment:
Given that Project Manager John Callas very carefully said 40 FTEs and not 40 people, my informed guess would be that this means parts of 50+ people who are also doing other related things like preparing for the operations of Mars Science Laboratory in late 2012. And of course Opportunity is still going and heading toward what should be a very scientifically rich target.
@ Michael
I've always been an advocate of heading to the northern latitudes during the Martian summer. It would be extremely interesting to study the darker "melt zone" that occurs each summer as the northern ice caps recede. I think we'd have the best shot at discovering current life on Mars in this region based on the freezing/thawing of water occuring in this area. You're having an annual introduction of certain amounts of liquid water to the subsurface. (Yes, I know most of the ice instantly vaporizes, rather than melting).
Couple that with the known seasonal fluctuations in Mars' atmospheric methane levels and I truly believe we have some sort of seasonal, bacteria-based cycle of life in the periphery of the North Pole. Has anyone seriously contemplated studying this with the rover, or is it simply out of reach?
It was proposed D.Man, for pretty much the same reasons that you lay out. My personal take is the polar landing plan was dropped from the list because:
a- As Spirit and Opportunity have shown us this mission has the potential to be around for many years, if we don't kill it in the first Martian winter, and....
b- When we have one large and very expensive ("Flagship") mission there is much more caution in its use. Curiosity (the new name for Mars Science Lab) is much more expensive than Spirit and Oppy, so NASA HQ wants to make sure that this bird lands and gets the initial science done. After she's been roving for a while the team will likely be allowed to be a bit more "adventurous".
one day, when the sunshine is favorable, the robot will wake up, call out, repeat ad infinitem, then go back to hibernating with no further instuctions....but one groundhog day, it might just wake up with a slight bit twist in ye ole programming.....the novel writers can take the story from there.......Personally, I think some mexican astrounauts will find it around 2021, drag it down to their new martian capitol, Los Huevos, (where they'll find the fossil eggs the nonexistant american team never had a chance to find), plug it in and make it a tourist attraction...BEST ROBOT EVER MADE, one of the last things made in the USA!, 22 pesos per tourist, BIG money maker for em. Ex nasa employees standing around as barkers with spanish translators telling the crowds how they built the thing. OR........(the page is still blank, we could see that the american team is a real team that really does land on mars and discovers what ever, and just makes a landmark for the spot where they discover whatever remanants of life they are statistically likely to uncover, it's up to us, china is not waiting, I don't blame them, Mexico may or may not realize their space ambitions, fact is no country can be just written off as impossible or incapable of putting boots on the red planets' soil, particularly not this country, unless of course we americans just don't want to do such a thing, nothing ever made us do something we did not want to do, and it's been damn hard convincing us to do the things that we wanted to do, as a further irony....in the years ahead it's us that must push things forward, without clear goals and ambitions in space, this country could well step backwards in the very race it has led for so long.).....yea, that's a big or.
Once again, Michael comes to the fore w/info needed, Thank you. Alan has been, and still is, guilty of the personification of the rover , but then I'd be tempted too. Ray, are you a novelist? you write like one. ;-D
A fine example of engineering and ingenuity, sadly it seems stories like this always take a back-burner.
Well said, blather. I would have hoped the success of this project would be more prominently featured by news organizations. Instead, it has been generally ignored.
Maybe they need to have the robots transform and come terrorize our planet for natural resources or something. I'm sure it'd get all sorts of exposure then. These amazing machines that have taught us so much and are truly invaluable just aren't kick ass enough. At least that's what I'm led to believe by Hollywood, and they never stretch the truth.
NPR has run some good stories the past few days.
Hey, on a sidenote, if anyone is interested in reading a fascinating science fiction book from the 1940s about landing on Mars, I suggest C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet. This book is an imagined journey by a great author before high-def satelites and rovers ever breached Mars' mystique.
It is the first in a trilogy and is followed by Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.
What about all the monkeys we sent out in space? Don't they get some sort of public ceremony for their brave efforts to go where no "man" has gone before? ... Also, why are we still using rockets to get out of the atmosphere? It's common knowledge that the ramjet technology can slingshot a shuttle into orbit and you all are wasting big money to put these big ancient technology rockets to put things in space. I should have became a physicist and led NASA into the new age of space exploration, because from what I see.. you all haven't changed your techniques for YEARS when there's obviously better ways to get into space. No wonder the NASA plug got pulled, cuz you guys sat on your fat @$$es all these years not developing new propulsion systems and taking advantage of the cutting edge technology... That, or you guys are too scared to go public with the good stuff. Either way.. the space program is FAR behind from what it should be, and I should of participated to shuv you old coops out of the way to get the job done right.
Judging by your writing style, you would've made it all the way to the top, Caveman.
To the top of what?
"Also, why are we still using rockets to get out of the atmosphere?"
Because only rockets work in a vacuum?
"It's common knowledge that the ramjet technology can slingshot a shuttle into orbit and you all are wasting big money to put these big ancient technology rockets to put things in space."
Staying in the atmosphere to get as near orbital velocity as possible while air-breathing is far more trouble than it's worth, in terms of the necessary materials that can handle the heat, the weight of the engines (scramjets [Supersonic Combustion Ramjets] are heavier than rockets of the same thrust), the additional weight due to the way they must be integrated into the structure (rockets don't have to worry about variable geometry air inlets, and allow simpler, lighter structures)
Even the designers of Skylon understand the difficulty of sustained flight at double-digit Mach numbers, and very deliberately stayed away from ramjets (supersonic combustion or otherwise). Alan Bond was quite clear about this. Their vehicle would use an advanced turbojet and switch to rockets around Mach 4, doing the remaining acceleration outside most of the atmosphere.
Don't let the carrot of 'free' oxidizer fool you, you pay a very steep engineering price to do it. (and liquid oxygen costs about as much per gallon as milk...there's not even a real cost savings involved there)
Besides, as I noted, however you get into Low Earth Orbit, there's still the rest of the Universe. You want to get to any other part of it, at least with any known physics? Bring your own reaction Mass, push it away as hard as possible, go the other way Whether it's chemical, nuclear-thermal, nuclear electric, that's a rocket. Newton's Third Law still rules.
I am surprised we haven't heard from the fellow that always says, "Someone always has to bring up religion when we talk aobut space."
Why does SOMEONE ALWAYS bring up religion when we talk about space?? There!! that make ya feel better??LOL
Oh, God...
(whichever one you prefer, if any at all...that was just a lament)