on the next ones they need to make a little squeegie man to sit on top and clean off the solar panels.
Seriously, putting windshield wipers on them might not be a bad idea. Given that these cheap off the shelf vehicles seem near indestructible a little tweaking of the mechanism might allow for a fleet of neat permanent rovers on the planet.
I wasn't aware the rovers were still plugging away 6 months later, long after they were expected to lose power.
A few "dust-cleaning events" does it I guess.
Acquiunk wrote:Seriously, putting windshield wipers on them might not be a bad idea. Given that these cheap off the shelf vehicles seem near indestructible a little tweaking of the mechanism might allow for a fleet of neat permanent rovers on the planet.
Yes, I think the problem was that with a single rover it was too easy for the little green men to hide from it.
mars fact sheet
Code:Orbital parameters
Mars Earth Ratio (Mars/Earth)
Semimajor axis (106 km) 227.92 149.60 1.524
Sidereal orbit period (days) 686.980 365.256 1.881
Tropical orbit period (days) 686.973 365.242 1.881
Perihelion (106 km) 206.62 147.09 1.405
Aphelion (106 km) 249.23 152.10 1.639
Synodic period (days) 779.94 - -
Mean orbital velocity (km/s) 24.13 29.78 0.810
Max. orbital velocity (km/s) 26.50 30.29 0.875
Min. orbital velocity (km/s) 21.97 29.29 0.750
Orbit inclination (deg) 1.850 0.000 -
Orbit eccentricity 0.0935 0.0167 5.599
Sidereal rotation period (hrs) 24.6229 23.9345 1.029
Length of day (hrs) 24.6597 24.0000 1.027
Obliquity to orbit (deg) 25.19 23.45 1.074
The Beagle 2 probe, stranded on Mars since it crash-landed almost two years ago, has been found, scientists said yesterday.
Full report
Tuff break for the Beagle.
Maybe they can send one of the unstoppable rovers over to help it
If they can get pic's with sufficient resolution to assess the lander's condition, that might not be a bad idea
By the time they could get there it would be quicker to send another one from Earth.
Perhaps, but the info and experience gained from reactivating a damaged one would be more useful in the long run.
edgarblythe wrote:By the time they could get there it would be quicker to send another one from Earth.
Not if it has to go through budget appropriations. Millions of miles of empty space is nothing compared to wading through red tape.
Competition among alternative theories is good for finding true one.
Anyhow, the (water) ice cap is in a polar region.
There is, it turns out, a lunar ice cap (under all the dust), on at least the southern pole. If there is water on the polar regions of both the moon and Mars, I think it is obvious that Mars would have once had much more water as it is a much larger body.
News Item, Jan 2, '06
The warranty expired long ago on NASA's twin robots motoring around Mars. These two golf cart-sized vehicles were only expected to last three months.
In two years, they have traveled a total of seven miles. Not impressed? Try keeping your car running in a climate where the average temperature is 67 below zero and where dust devils can reach 100 mph.
"These rovers are living on borrowed time. We're so past warranty on them," says Steven Squyres of Cornell University, the Mars mission's principal researcher. "You try to push them hard every day because we're living day-to-day."
The rover Spirit landed on Mars on Jan. 3, 2004, and Opportunity followed on Jan. 24. Since then, they've set all sorts of records and succeeded in the mission's main assignment: finding geologic evidence that water once flowed on Mars.
Part of the reason for their long survival is pure luck. Their lives were extended several times by dust devils that blew away dust that covered their solar panels, restoring their ability to generate electricity.
