How do you extract a vehicle from a sand trap when the operation has to happen remotely from a distance of 174 million miles? That’s the question that NASA scientists are attempting to answer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, where engineers are working on a plan for how to get the Mars rover Spirit moving again. The rover has been stuck, up to its hubcaps in sand, since April 23rd when it drove backwards into an area now called “Troy.”
To test strategies for how to get the rover unstuck, scientists built a sandbox that resembles that patch of Martian terrain, and then drove a rover replica into it. Spirit project manager John Callas explains that the scientists carefully mixed sand, pottery clay, and a light material called diatomaceous earth to imitate the dirt on Mars. While the ingredients do not match the Martian soil’s chemistry, the mixture has a similar strength. “It is representative of the trouble Spirit is in … in very, very fluffy soil with very little load bearing strength,” Dr Callas said. “It’s like talcum powder, but not as fine grained. It clings to the wheels and they lose traction.” Adding to their problems, the rover is tilted on a 12-degree slope [The Age].
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For two years, the Mars rover Opportunity explored the Victoria crater and dutifully sent back reports on the sedimentary rock layers on display in the crater walls and the scattering of pebbles on the sunken floor. Now, the results of that comprehensive survey have been compiled and compared to data gleaned from Opportunity’s exploration of two smaller craters several miles away. The study shows that shifting sand dunes on ancient Mars once concealed a network of underground water spread across an area the size of Oklahoma…. “Given that we’ve seen the same stuff at places that are miles apart, it is a reasonable conjecture that those processes operated over most of this region” [National Geographic News], says lead researcher Steve Squyres.
The rover had previously explored the Eagle and Endurance craters, about 3.7 miles (6 kilometers) away from Victoria. Mission scientists chose Victoria as the next crater to explore because “it was the biggest crater we could possibly find,” said Steve Squyres…. The science team hoped that Victoria’s depth — of about 400 feet (125 meters) — might shed more light on the geology of the Meridiani Planum region [LiveScience]. Like a child in a fairy tale following a trail of pebbles, Opportunity also studied the small, round rocks made of the mineral hematite as it trundled towards the Victoria crater in 2006.
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The Mars rover Spirit has driven almost 5 miles across the Martian surface, has climbed a hill as tall as the Statue of Liberty, and has generally kept on trucking for the five years since it landed on the planet, even though its mission was originally scheduled to last only 90 days. But its roving days could be over, unless its controllers at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory can extricate it from a sticky situation: Spirit is stuck in the Martian sand.
The rover was navigating around a low plateau en route to two volcanic features, Von Braun and Goddard, when it started rolling across the soft sand, and began to sink in. NASA controllers have tried a variety of maneuvers over the past few days in an attempt to extricate Spirit, but the rovers’ wheels have only sunk deeper, and are now partially buried in the sand. “This is quite serious,” said JPL’s John Callas, the project manager for Spirit and its twin, Opportunity. “Spirit is in a very difficult situation. We are proceeding methodically and cautiously. It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again” [Los Angeles Times].
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At the ripe old age of five the Mars rover Spirit is starting to show signs of its age, and NASA scientists are beginning to wonder how much longer it can continue to roll across the Red Planet. Over the past few weeks the rover once ignored its morning wake-up call and has unexpectedly rebooted its computer several times. Spirit has also occasionally failed to record its activities in its memory drive, the robotic equivalent of “senior moments.”
John Callas, project manager for the Mars rovers, says scientists don’t yet have an explanation for these glitches, but adds that the incidents suggest that Spirit is getting erratic. Or maybe just old…. “I don’t think anyone can tell you how these rovers will eventually end on Mars,” Callas said. “Will they gradually degrade until their mechanical functionality goes or will they have a catastrophic end, where something inside the rover breaks?” [Washington Post]
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NASA has proposed sending both an orbiter and a robotic explorer to Mars in the next decade to follow up on the recent report that Mars “hotspots” emit plumes of methane gas, which could be produced by either geothermal reactions or by deeply buried bacteria that breathe out methane as a waste product. That exciting phenomenon, which is still being debated by Mars experts, was observed by researchers using ground-based telescopes to measure seasonal fluctuations of gases on the planet. Researchers say closer observations would have a much better chance of determining whether the methane does signal the ultimate prize: extraterrestrial life.
NASA officials sketched out their proposal at a meeting of Mars scientists, but stressed that plans could change. The current idea is to launch the Mars Science Orbiter in 2016 followed by a exobiology lander or rover mission launched during a particularly juicy launch window in 2018 (the best since the Spirit and Opportunity rovers)…. The plan would also follow a natural progression: MSO would map the methane; the lander or rover would go after it with a suite of astrobiological instruments [Nature blog].
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Defying its predecessors, SandBot is the first robot able to traverse sand. Robots normally face the same difficulties as humans when trying to walk across sand, often getting stuck or digging themselves into a rut, and even SandBot had trouble in its first trials. Like a car spinning its tires only to sink deeper, SandBot’s legs moved so quickly that the entire robot simply sank [Discovery News]. However, a few tweaks to its speed and the motion of limbs soon had it cruising like a veritable dune buggy.
The SandBot model is inspired by the movements of desert animals such as lizards and cockroaches. Instead of moving through sand at a steady rate, the new robot is designed with six limbs, three of which move slowly while in contact with the sand, while the others rotate quickly through the air to position themselves for the next step (see the video). In a year of trials, SandBot eventually traversed a track of “sand” made out of poppy seeds at a speed of about 30 centimeters per second, or at least 15 times faster than the Mars rovers [ScienceNOW Daily News].
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The next-generation Mars rover may be a rough-and-tumble robot that can roll down steep slopes, clamber over rocks, and can even be lowered down cliff faces into deep craters. The prototype, called Axel, takes its name from its simple design–a single axle with two wide, toothed wheels. A video shows that the rover is undeterred by sandy soil, uneven terrain, and other impediments that it can expect to encounter on Mars.
Axel is considerably more nimble than the rovers that are currently trekking across the Martian landscape, Spirit and Opportunity. When faced with the unknown slipperiness of a crater’s sloped sides, these part-autonomous robots require huge input and planning on behalf of their Earth-bound controllers–the scene has to be imaged, and the driving route planned with minute precision lest the ‘bots six small wheels become irrevocably jammed in the rocks [Fast Company].
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Just weeks after NASA celebrated the Spirit rover‘s fifth anniversary on Mars, the robotic explorer suffered a mysterious glitch that caused it to freeze in place for a day. The rover couldn’t tell NASA what had gone wrong or even what it did for that stretch of time, and it even lost track of the sun. “We don’t have a good explanation yet for the way Spirit has been acting for the past few days,” said JPL team leader Sharon Laubach. “Our next steps will be diagnostic activities” [BBC News].
The glitch came last Sunday, which marked Spirit’s 1,800th Martian day, or sol, on the planet. NASA sent the rover its driving directions for the day and Spirit acknowledged receiving them, but then it failed to move. More strangely, the Spirit had no memory of what it had done for that part of Sol 1800. The rover did not record actions, as it otherwise always does, to the part of its computer memory that retains information even when power is turned off, the so-called nonvolatile memory. “It’s almost as if the rover had a bout of amnesia,” said John Callas, the project manager for the rovers [The New York Times]. When NASA directed the rover on Monday to photograph the sun to establish its orientation, Spirit did so but reported that the sun was not in its “expected location.”
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Five years ago on Saturday, the Mars rover Spirit touched down on Mars in a bundle of airbags, beginning a saga of robotic exploration that has delighted NASA scientists and the public alike. The second rover, Opportunity, arrived on the other side of the planet a few weeks later, on January 21. Combined, the rovers have made more than 13 miles of tracks on Mars’ dusty surface and sent a quarter-million images back to Earth. Their instruments have uncovered evidence that Mars was once a far wetter and warmer place than the frigid, dusty world it is now [AP].
The rovers were designed to last at least 90 days on the Red Planet, but NASA had hopes that the robots would exceed their warranty and keep on trucking. However, few expected Spirit and Opportunity to last half a decade in the punishing conditions of Mars. As for what comes next, nobody really knows, says rover project manager John Callas: “We realise that a major rover component on either vehicle could fail at any time and end a mission with no advance notice, but on the other hand, we could accomplish the equivalent duration of four more prime missions on each rover in the year ahead” [BBC News].
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The next robotic explorer in NASA’s ambitious Mars program will have to wait an extra two years before taking off towards the red planet, NASA officials announced yesterday. The Mars Science Laboratory was scheduled to lift off in the fall of 2009, but with unsolved issues with some of the spacecraft’s electrical motors … NASA officials no longer thought they could meet that schedule without rushing the testing program.“We’ve determined that trying for ‘09 would require us to assume too much risk, more than I think is appropriate for a flagship mission like Mars Science Laboratory,” Michael D. Griffin, NASA’s administrator, said [The New York Times].
Because Earth and Mars only draw near to each other every 26 months, the next possible launch window will come in 2011. The new delay is just the latest bit of bad news regarding the Science Lab, which has busted deadlines and budgets since the project was approved in 2006. The rover was initially expected to cost $1.6 billion, but the new delay will push costs up to about $2.3 billion, NASA officials said.
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Just after NASA made the sad announcement that the Mars Phoenix Lander had run out of power and ceased communicating, word comes of power problems with the Mars rover Spirit, which has been blithely rolling over the Martian terrain for almost five years.
NASA revealed yesterday that dust storms last week left Spirit’s solar panels coated with dust and caused power levels to drop to an all-time low, and that the rover then shut down operations and went dormant. Spirit’s scientists are now hoping for a message signaling that the rover survived the storm and has recovered power.
Spirit may emerge unscathed. “We are cautiously optimistic that we can get through this dust storm without a catastrophe,” says rover project scientist Bruce Banerdt…. That’s because spring is dawning in the southern hemisphere, where Spirit is located, and the extra sunlight means the rover needs less energy to run its heaters. Had the storm occurred six months ago, during the local winter solstice, the craft would have less chance of survival, says Banerdt [New Scientist].
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In a setback to Europe’s space program, the European Space Agency‘s flagship mission to Mars will be delayed three years while the space agency tries to cobble together funding for the ambitious rover, the ExoMars. The mission had already been postponed once and was most recently scheduled to launch in 2013, but cost overruns are forcing the space agency to push back to a launch date in 2016.
Approved by space ministers in 2005, the rover was supposed to be a fairly small venture costing no more than 650m euros. But as the project developed, it was decided the endeavour should be upgraded, to provide a bigger, more capable vehicle; and one that could carry a much broader range of science instruments [BBC News]. The ExoMars is slated to include a drill that can bore down two meters into the icy soil, and is expected to search for evidence of Martian life, past or present. However, the rover‘s scientific ambition pushed costs up to the current estimate of 1.2 billion euros, and Italy, the mission’s lead financier, has refused to meet those costs. Thus far, no other nation has stepped forward to pick up the tab.
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NASA is keeping the faith and pushing forward with its most ambitious Mars rover mission to date, despite serious cost overruns and technical problems. NASA officials announced on Friday that they expect the Mars Science Laboratory to launch as planned in 2009, rebutting speculation that NASA would postpone the craft’s launch until 2011, or even cancel the mission. “It’s easy to say, ‘let’s just cancel it and move on’ but we’ve poured over a billion-and-half dollars into this,” [NASA official Ed] Weiler said. “The science is critical. It’s a flagship mission in the Mars program and as long as we think we have a good technical chance to make it we are going to do what we have to do” [SPACE.com].
The SUV-sized rover was originally expected to cost $1.6 billion, but it’s already $300 million over budget and the latest cost overruns may push the final price to over $2 billion. To meet costs, NASA may be forced to scale back or postpone other Mars missions, and could even take funds from other planetary missions. A group of scientists that advises NASA on planetary missions called this week for an outside investigation into the Mars Science Lab’s financial troubles. The scientists noted that the pricey project was a “poor model for future missions” [AP].
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NASA‘s next robotic Mars explorer may be meticulously designed to trundle over the Martian landscape, but it’s having trouble getting off the planet Earth. Huge cost overruns and technical difficulties may cause the $2 billion dollar [sic] Mars Science Laboratory to be delayed or canceled outright, members of a NASA advisory committee were warned on Oct. 2. “Our problem is enormous,” said Jim Green, director of the space agency’s Planetary Science Division, as project costs soar up to 40 percent above budget [McClatchy Newspapers].
The Mars Science Laboratory is currently scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009, which would get it to Mars the following year. Scientists have high hopes for the big rover, which is intended to study the geology and look for evidence of past microbial life in Mars’ distant past, when liquid water flowed on the planet. But the Science Lab is four times heavier than the current rovers trundling across the planet’s surface. It features a plethora of advanced tools and instruments designed to analyze rocks, soil, and atmosphere. [T]hat complexity has led to technical troubles and higher costs [Science, subscription required].
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The Mars rover Opportunity is wheeling off on what could be its final mission, and is starting a two-year journey that it may not even complete. The small robot climbed out of the Victoria crater a few weeks ago, and NASA‘s science team has now decided to direct Opportunity towards an even larger crater, known as Endeavor.
The 7-mile stretch between Victoria and Endeavor craters matches the total distance the rover already has covered in the 4 1/2 years since landing on the planet. “We may not get there but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway,” said [researcher] Steve Squyres…. “This crater (Endeavor) is staggeringly large compared to anything we’ve seen before” [Reuters].
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