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[DrM]

The rover has drilled another rock on mars and nothing on the results yet. On the other hand, one of its wheels is getting really hammered up there:

Well, this is first huge rover with this kind of wheels, so they probably expected wheel wear after a year and a half.

 

[commedieu]

Rolling over sharp rocks:

http://www.universetoday.com/108808...over-to-seek-smoother-pathway-to-mount-sharp/

So billions of dollars, and no one imagined rocks would be sharp..

on mars...? These people.

Hopefully China/Russia will learn from our mistakes on their joint venture. Thats a bit silly to send it with a shelf life of only a year and a half.

 

[Kai Dracon]

So billions of dollars, and no one imagined rocks would be sharp..

on mars...? These people.

Hopefully China/Russia will learn from our mistakes on their joint venture. Thats a bit silly to send it with a shelf life of only a year and a half.

On the other hand these people made a jet powered drop ship crane work on the first live try.

There is a complex equation of weight limits for every component as well as other factors in the environment. For instance various padded and rubber compounds would evidently become brittle and crack due to the night time surface temperature on Mars.

 

[DrForester]

So billions of dollars, and no one imagined rocks would be sharp..

on mars...? These people.

Hopefully China/Russia will learn from our mistakes on their joint venture. Thats a bit silly to send it with a shelf life of only a year and a half.

I hope that's sarcasm.

China could barely get a rover on the moon to last a month. The USA has a rover that is still active on Mars after 10 years. Curiosity could possibly go for 10 years as well.

 

[fallout]

So billions of dollars, and no one imagined rocks would be sharp..

on mars...? These people.

I'm going to assume you're being serious, if only for the purposes of discussion.

They almost certainly imagined rocks would be sharp and probably tested a variety of wheel designs for months, if not years. Shit ... there's probably a few engineers saying "Damn it. I knew this was going to happen." What this really all comes down to is risk mitigation vs. cost/weight. You could build tires that wouldn't have this issue, but they would likely be heavier, which would mean having to reduce weight elsewhere. So, you look at how long the cheaper version might last under expected conditions and make a decision based on that.

This is also why the life expectancy of these rovers seem to be so much less than what they have typically achieved. Sometimes you luck out and things stay together, but assuming the expected worst-case conditions happen ... well, you might only reach your life expectancy.

There are likely a bunch of other components on the rover that we haven't heard about which are operating just fine. However, these could have gone downhill due to shitty conditions and we might be having a conversation that started with: "Who didn't think there would be dust storms on Mars?"

Or I'm entirely off the mark and some people really fucked up. Either way, they'll learn from it and carry on.

 

[Sectorseven]

Is this rover capable of a live feed? I know it wouldn't really serve much academic purpose, but it would be fun to watch Mars in "real" time, even if it were only for a few minutes.

 

[FyreWulff]

Is this rover capable of a live feed? I know it wouldn't really serve much academic purpose, but it would be fun to watch Mars in "real" time, even if it were only for a few minutes.

Not enough bandwidth available with current technology, unfortunately

 

[GaimeGuy]

So billions of dollars, and no one imagined rocks would be sharp..

on mars...? These people.

Hopefully China/Russia will learn from our mistakes on their joint venture. Thats a bit silly to send it with a shelf life of only a year and a half.

We dropped a 2000 pound robotic science lab onto another planet via skycrane. Previous rovers which relied on crash landings and airbags topped out around 380-390 lbs. Any heavier than that and the airbag landing just isn't feasible.

The landing sequence was amazing, and we nailed it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwinFP8_qIM&feature=fvwrel

The mission is still going along fine, not sure why you think the shelf life is done, especially after Spirit and Opportunity.

Spirit:
Mission duration Planned: 90 Martian solar days (~92 Earth days)
Operational: 2269 days from landing to last contact (2208 sols)
Mobile: 1944 Earth days landing to final embedding (1892 sols)
Total: 2695 days from landing to mission end (2623 sols)

Opportunity
Mission duration Planned: 90 sols (92.5 days)
Current: 3814 days since landing
Currently: 3712 sols
Mission still ongoign.

 

[Dan]

Some more updated info about the wheels, from a couple weeks ago.

On Sunday, KCBS’ Susan Kennedy spoke with Dr. Ashwin R. Vasavada, deputy project scientist on the Curiosity mission. Here is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Susan Kennedy, KCBS Radio: What has gone wrong?

Dr. Ashwin Vasavada: Y’know, we’ve had a spectacular first year on Mars but we have been a little slow because we’ve been noticing a little bit more punctures and tears in the aluminum wheels — that the rover has — than we expected. We’re driving over very rugged terrain and we expected some damage but we got a little alarmed at the rate at which the holes were appearing.

Kennedy: I guess you can’t exactly call AAA, can you?
Dr. Vasavada: [laughing] No, I really wish we had some spares and, maybe a tow truck. Actually the rover is fine. It’s perfectly capable of driving everywhere we want it to go right now. We were just kind’ve looking ahead and — if the rate of damage had kept on as what we were seeing — we would have been in trouble. Instead we were able to find safer routes, driving more in sandy terrain, avoiding the kind of sharper rocks that were causing the damage.

Kennedy: I understand you’re doing that by driving it in reverse?
Dr. Vasavada: Yeah. Sometimes the best thing to do is to drive the rover in reverse. It puts a little less pressure on some of the more damaged wheels, when you drive it that way. So we’ll do whatever it takes. The rover does exactly what we ask of it. So we can’t ask for more than that.

Here's another good article from June, which is worth reading in full, but I'll cite this one bit:

Curiosity is now in full drive mode again, Grotzinger said. He was unable to predict when the rover might reach Mount Sharp, but he did say that the nuclear generator powering the rover will probably wear out before the wheels do — and that neither would happen for quite a few years.

“This was a huge bonding experience for [the] mission,” Grotzinger said. “Success is always great, but there’s nothing like impending doom to bring people together. Now we can say, ‘We licked that one.’ ”

As with all these missions, there are hiccups and lessons learned.

 

[Insane Metal]

Tomorrow at 1pm PDT there will be a conference to discuss the mission status and what will be done from now on. Should be something interesting.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/sept...ampaign-of-curiosity-mars-rover/#.VBDWXvldXpV

 

[Insane Metal]

Holy shit!! So much new information! http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html#.VIdP1DHF_pU

Multiple deltas found. That's a lot to read and see. Come on space gaf!

 

[The Elite]

Holy shit!! So much new information! http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html#.VIdP1DHF_pU

Multiple deltas found. That's a lot to read and see. Come on space gaf!

I will need to find the time to go through this. Sounds interesting.

 

[Insane Metal]

It's sad to see that people lost interest in Curiosity. It keeps on finding interesting stuff. I mean... the plot thickens.

NASA Rover Finds Active, Ancient Organic Chemistry on Mars

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory’s drill.

http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/dece...cient-organic-chemistry-on-mars/#.VJDJeyvF_pX

 

[Graphics Horse]

They should work out where the likely source is and drive to it.

 

[AstroNut325]

It's sad to see that people lost interest in Curiosity. It keeps on finding interesting stuff. I mean... the plot thickens.



http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/dece...cient-organic-chemistry-on-mars/#.VJDJeyvF_pX

I don't think people lost interest. It's just not making headlines right now since the science is still not sure what the source of the methane is.

 

[owlbeak]

Awesome discovery today. Can't wait to find out what's causing the methane releases.

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

Glad to see this still active.

 

[Insane Metal]

I don't think people lost interest. It's just not making headlines right now since the science is still not sure what the source of the methane is.

Nah. There were news before, people don't care about it anymore. Most people, at least.

Awesome discovery today. Can't wait to find out what's causing the methane releases.

Imagine if there's underground life... bacteria...

Or, imagine if curiosity, in one of its run by's, looks at a rock and... finds a fossil. Damn.

I mean, it founds these crystals...

 

[Mengy]

It's sad to see that people lost interest in Curiosity. It keeps on finding interesting stuff. I mean... the plot thickens.

I sure haven't lost interest, I read about it all the time through Discovery.com even though I don't post about it here much. The methane behavior on Mars is puzzling and odd.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

It's sad to see that people lost interest in Curiosity. It keeps on finding interesting stuff. I mean... the plot thickens.



http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/dece...cient-organic-chemistry-on-mars/#.VJDJeyvF_pX

itshappeningisntit.gif

 

[bistromathics]

Nah. There were news before, people don't care about it anymore. Most people, at least.

Like all modern space-discoveries, it amounts to a graph going __/\__

Not the most inherently captivating stuff.

 

[Insane Metal]

itshappeningisntit.gif

I hope so!

Like all modern space-discoveries, it amounts to a graph going __/\__

Not the most inherently captivating stuff.

Unfortunately

 

[Insane Metal]

Curiosity apparently found 3 billion years old dried mud:

Absolutely fantastic!

Mud cracks would be evidence of a drying interval between wetter periods that supported lakes in the area. Curiosity has found evidence of ancient lakes in older, lower-lying rock layers and also in younger mudstone that is above Squid Cove.

 

[gutshot]

I can't wait until we can get some humans on Mars and are able to do some deep exploration and investigation. You know, really science the shit out of it.

 

[Insane Metal]

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasas-curiosity-rover-sharpens-paradox-of-ancient-mars

NASA's Curiosity Rover Sharpens Paradox of Ancient Mars

Mars scientists are wrestling with a problem. Ample evidence says ancient Mars was sometimes wet, with water flowing and pooling on the planet’s surface. Yet, the ancient sun was about one-third less warm and climate modelers struggle to produce scenarios that get the surface of Mars warm enough for keeping water unfrozen.

(...)

"Curiosity's traverse through streambeds, deltas, and hundreds of vertical feet of mud deposited in ancient lakes calls out for a vigorous hydrological system supplying the water and sediment to create the rocks we're finding," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Carbon dioxide, mixed with other gases like hydrogen, has been the leading candidate for the warming influence needed for such a system. This surprising result would seem to take it out of the running."

Apparently, Mars will never stop being mysterious.

 

[Insane Metal]

There's no way these rocks (are those rocks?) are not from underwater origin, right? Or at least some kind of fluid running down. Look at the patterns.

Edit: actually it looks a lot like rocks formed by flowing lava.