12:00 PM
Astronomy Pirate
 |
| NASA Model of the Spirit Rover on Mars. |
The rover is likely frozen and dust covered, unable to generate enough power from its solar cells to reawaken. It was hoped that the Martian summer would thaw it out, but it doesn't seem to be the case. It is a sad loss for NASA, the plucky rover has been a scientific workhorse on the Martian surface.
Spirit was originally designed to work for just three months, but ended up roving for over 6 years! That's 25 times what was expected, imagine living 1500 years! It has accomplished so much in its short time, including studying interesting rocks, climbing hills, examining soil, peaking into craters, and traveling 7.7 kilometers since landing.
Spirit's "twin", Opportunity, is still functioning on the opposite side of Mars, working just as hard for just as long as Spirit has. They will be joined by a new rover soon, in a few months, the golfcart-sized "Curiosity" Mars Science Laboratory will be launching. This rover will be able to cover a wider range of the Martian surface and has better instruments than any previous mission.
Spirit will be missed. However, we got more then our money's worth out of the little fellow. It's work will aid in the future study and exploration of Mars. Perhaps, one day, a human will find Spirit among the deserts of Mars, since we hope to be going there soon. We might find out exactly what happened to the rover to cause it to shut down. But until then, we have to be thankful for all the hard work of the rover and scientists involved in the mission.
 |
| Spirit on Mars as interpreted by xkcd. |
Posted in 
.
39 comments:
Great blog, I am really into astronomy. following
interesting information dude :O likee
Glad to hear they plan on continuing investigation of Mars. It's my hope to see a man and working base there by the time I die. Here's hoping!
Amazing how they only expected it to last 90 days, and the other one is still going strong. I can't wait for the new heavy duty rover to launch.
Poor guy, i remember that the winds cleaned its solar panels allowing it to function longer, that last pic looks a bit like Wall-E
Likely frozen? Or likely taken apart by curious aliens? Like you said, at least we got our money's worth.
(27 years later - a message is sent: They're coming for us!)
Pity about the Spirit rover.
A sad day that we're giving up hope, I suppose. But good news about Curiosity. Progress continues!
3 months becomes 6 years? Not bad at all little Spirit. good job.
That is a decent life span for the little rover.
red planet 2 will come out soon? so we can see that at work :)
lol the kast picture does look like wall*e
isnt that last image pretty famous?
followed
Theres a whole not of money wasted nasa...
Little engine that could and did. I had no idea it lasted this long. What is Curiosity's mission?
These things don't actually have an off button right? So there's still the teeny tiny possibility that some wind storm might blow away the dust on the panels, reawakening the rover, and transforming it into... zombie spirit!
:D
All good things must come to an end... :)
Hopefully we will have a manned mission to Mars. Now that will be exciting!
Cool blog. Following and supporting. :)
ignoranceistruth.blogspot.com
@ Venom, Curiosity has several mission objectives, including doing an inventory on organic carbon compounds, inventory of the chemical building blocks of life as we know it, identify possible effects of metabolism or biosignatures, investigate the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials, study the formation of rocks and soils, assess time-scales in Martian atmospheric evolution, determine the current state of water and carbon dioxide cycles, and characterizing radiation sources at the Martian surface.
@ Jay, there isn't an off button per say, but without commands from NASA, the probe won't function. Think of it as kind of an RC car. If the car is on, but the controller isn't then the car won't do anything.
@Astronomy Pirate: Ok then, what if somebody out there had a powerful enough transmitter, could he send out commands to the rover, or is the rover only programmed to receive instructions from NASA? And if so, could this "firewall" be bypassed somehow?
I think it would be possible, its just a matter of figuring out NASA's communication technique. I am sure there is a specific frequency that each probe works on. After that, there might be a specific 'handshake,' a coded signal that lets the probe know that the data is coming from NASA. After that, you would have to figure out how to tell the rover to do things. NASA has entire teams that spend years to build the programing from the ground up, decoding that for a personal use would take immense time and effort. A better idea would be to set up an organization to take over for NASA, having NASA allow your group to attempt to signal the probe. But there's no guarantee you would ever get any response. NASA already gave it about 14 months and no dice.
yeah what a waste of money. if they can design one for 6 years. why bother with a 3 month design?
@Major.Mack, I'm not sure you quit understood that? Nothing was designed for 6 years, the initial expectation was only 3 months, but it payed off in the long run.
I'm really digging this part of the internet you've got going on, friend.
Interesting little bit here. Hmm, have you heard about explosion of one of the first stars formed d; Quite interesting as well.
Yeah las3r, that was a Gamma Ray Burst from some 13.14 billion light years away. The estimates are not totally done on an exact distance, but it is exciting. But, this sort of thing seems to be a monthly occurrence at this point. I'm hesitant about dedicating a blog post to it with everything else going on and the fact that I really try to limit myself to one update per day.
Gotta give the thing props for a job well done.
Damn i wish it had lasted longer, alot of money went into that badboy ;D
Damn, APirate... These numbers you pull out make me feel so tiny, yet important in this mechanism we call universe
aah i wanna see it send back some alien photos :P too far ? ..
Spirit, future antique for a space salvage operation.
wow only 7.7km, I thought he could travel a bit faster !
may it rest in pieces, lol.
I'd hate to life for so long! that would be such a burden!
Maybe one day there will be rovers with nano auto repair (?)
Why does this make me sad?
I'll pour out a little liquor for it.
I can't help but feel a little bit sad that it's died, such a shame but it had a good life!
so how much did that cost?
(Blogger won't let me comment in the normal way, this is a work around, sorry. )
I do like the whole sending rovers into space to explore Mars and all that fun stuff. But when are we going to send a actual HUMAN into space to explore mars? So sad there is no race to mars like there was the moon.
That's pretty strange Atley, then again, I haven't been able to see my followers list for days... Blogger...
As far as Mars, the hope is to get there in the next 2 decades, but we'll see.
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated, please no advertising or profanity. This also helps me see who is dropping by.