Dave's other cars keep going

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by dlavery

To get a sense of what Victoria Crater is like, take a look at this image:



... keep watching here - this should be good!

Not too bad for a little rover that was only supposed to last 90 days and drive 600 meters.

-dave

Thanks, Dave.

As I stare at this image, a flood of deep-stashed memories comes back to the surface: as a wide-eyed pre-first-grader in the summer of 1965, watching the Gemini 4 launch on television, and later getting to stay up past bedtime to listen to the man on the news talk about the space-walk; riding home from a soccer game late on a summer night in 1969, staring at the moon through the rear window of my parents' station wagon and thinking about the Apollo 11 astronauts, up there; stunned disbelief in the winter of 1986 when, coming out of a quantum mechanics lecture, I heard someone say that Challenger had exploded 73 seconds after liftoff.

And for the last three FRC seasons, the continuing saga of rovers that just keep going and going and going. Long after we've forgotten that absurd pink bunny, Dave's other car is still on Mars.

It is a great privilege for all of us in FIRST to hear and read the Mars exploration story told by someone who has a direct role in its planning and execution. It is inspiration, pure and uncut, straight from the source.

[JaneYoung]

What I remember as well is the moon landing and Apollo 11 through the voice and amazed expressions of Walter Cronkite. He was speechless sometimes and other times he would say things like 'WoW'. It was great.

[dlavery]

For those that want a more detailed look at Victoria Crater and the region that will be explored, you can take a look at the linked version of this image (warning - big image: 2639 x 2550 pixels)

The rover is currently just to the south-east of the small crater labeled "Emma Dean" (north is up in this image). In this view you can clearly see some of the more rugged areas around the rim of the crater that may include large areas of exposed bedrock.

This high resolution MOC CPROTO image has a resolution of about 50cm/pixel, and was taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft.

-dave

[Richard Wallace]

Thanks again, Dave. This is an awesome image!

What is the apparent quasi-tessellation feature at the center of Victoria? It reminds me of a dry lake bed, as if the crater had once been filled with water.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Richard

Thanks again, Dave. This is an awesome image!

What is the apparent quasi-tessellation feature at the center of Victoria? It reminds me of a dry lake bed, as if the crater had once been filled with water.

Sand dunes, composed of sand and surface dust that has been blown into the crater and trapped there. Local wind patterns inside the crater are strong enough to move the material around to form the dunes, but are insufficient to blow the material out of the crater. We saw the same structures inside Endurance Crater earlier in the mission (you can see them at the bottom of the crater in this image.

-dave

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Dave, do you guys at NASA have any idea as to how long the rover will keep going since it was only supposed to go for 90 days to begin with? I admit, I don't follow much about NASA, just what I hear on the news.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Budda648

Dave, do you guys at NASA have any idea as to how long the rover will keep going since it was only supposed to go for 90 days to begin with? I admit, I don't follow much about NASA, just what I hear on the news.

At this point, we don't even try to guess any more. The device has lasted way beyond the original warranty period. Realistically, given the mechanical wear rates that we have seen it could continue on for a very, very long time. Conversely, a critical part could fail tomorrow that would mean the end of the mission. The rover is so far beyond the original expected design that we just don't have any real data upon which to base any lifetime estimates. So we are just taking it one day at a time.

-dave

[Beth Sweet]

Originally Posted by dlavery

At this point, we don't even try to guess any more. The device has lasted way beyond the original warranty period. Realistically, given the mechanical wear rates that we have seen it could continue on for a very, very long time. Conversely, a critical part could fail tomorrow that would mean the end of the mission. The rover is so far beyond the original expected design that we just don't have any real data upon which to base any lifetime estimates. So we are just taking it one day at a time.

-dave

Yay for doing things the old school way and designing/building them to last! I wish my computers lasted as long as your rovers Dave...

[JohnBoucher]

Dave,
How is NASA dealing with having a program that lasted so long beyond estimates? There are budget, personnel and logistical issues to deal with. How do you deal with, what is now, an open ended program?

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by JohnBoucher

... How is NASA dealing with having a program that lasted so long beyond estimates? There are budget, personnel and logistical issues to deal with. How do you deal with, what is now, an open ended program?

I have no idea how the budget/planning process works at NASA. Where I work, an up-front investment that lasted 10 times as long as planned and allowed us to continue making a product for which there was continuing demand -- well, we'd call that a good problem to have.

[JohnBoucher]

Originally Posted by Richard

I have no idea how the budget/planning process works at NASA. Where I work, an up-front investment that lasted 10 times as long as planned and allowed us to continue making a product for which there was continuing demand -- well, we'd call that a good problem to have.

My company also. Budgets are profit based. If the product still sells, then it sustains itself.

The "Profit" on this project is tremendous. What they get out of it is priceless, but this is a government budget we are talking about. It's not like they can print money

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Originally Posted by dlavery

At this point, we don't even try to guess any more. The device has lasted way beyond the original warranty period. Realistically, given the mechanical wear rates that we have seen it could continue on for a very, very long time. Conversely, a critical part could fail tomorrow that would mean the end of the mission. The rover is so far beyond the original expected design that we just don't have any real data upon which to base any lifetime estimates. So we are just taking it one day at a time.

-dave

So did NASA initially design the rover to take an enormous beating from Mars's natural atmosphere (for lack of not knowing a better word) but that hasn't happened? And are you collecting different kinds of data now that you didn't initially intend on collecting when the mission was originally launched?

[Schnabel]

Just wondering, will Mars ever get too far away that the rover won't be able to send anything back to Earth?

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Schnabel

Just wondering, will Mars ever get too far away that the rover won't be able to send anything back to Earth?

No. In fact, Mars is almost at its greatest possible distance from Earth right now, about 390 million kilometers as of today. We don't have any significant new problems communicating with the rover vs. what we were able to do when they landed. But we will briefly lose all communications with the rovers when Earth and Mars are in conjunction (on opposite sides of the Sun) during the period from October 18 to October 26. During this time, the rovers will be hibernating and just waiting for Earth to reappear on the other side of the Sun (when viewed from Mars) so they can re-establish communications and continue their exploration efforts. Note that this is the second time that the rovers will go through a communications blackout due to a solar conjunction. We went through this before back in September 2004. The rovers calmly waited through the blackout period with no problems, and readily re-established communications when the conjunction ended.

-dave

(for a cool Earth-Mars orbital simulation, see the UCAR Mars orbit web site)

.

[Schnabel]

Originally Posted by dlavery

(for a cool Earth-Mars orbital simulation, see the UCAR Mars orbit web site)

I checked that animation out and that is really cool! I wasn't paying attention to the year and all ready it was 2018 before I stoped!