So we like landed on Mars, and stuff

[Moe]

After travelling 350 million miles since its launch last year, the latest, biggest and by far heaviest of NASA's Mars rovers called Curiosity safely touched down on Mars yesterday. It's loaded with instruments (including a really cool one called ChemCam that uses a laser to blow up bits of rock and then analyze the spectrum. That's right, we brought a laser cannon) and will operate for at least two years, snapping pictures and video along the way.

Particularly interesting about this mission was the unusual landing technique using a "sky crane maneuver", in which the rover was lowered on a tether that was attached to a flying crane hovering on rockets. There's a cool short CGI clip of the whole EDL (entry, descent and landing) sequence here.

Anyways, for $2.5 billion we now have this SUV-sized robot rolling around on Mars, which is pretty fucking amazing. Judging by the comments on various news sites, people's reactions seem to range from "we were going to send something to mars?" to "hey NASA good job not fucking it up for once" and of course the inevitable "this is such a waste of money".

Discuss.

[Fenra]

I don't understand how bits of electronics, metal, and wheels costs 2.5 Billion, maybe it's just me, but who's Billing NASA for that much money? Just my .02 cents on it, I feel the spacecraft industry needs a serious look at cost of design and maybe slightly cheaper design methods.

[Retroboy]

At the risk of carrying over from the other thread, it's a miracle that it got there politically as well as physically.

I'm quite jazzed that they pulled this off, and am hoping that this reinvigorates the public passion for tolerating investment in scientific discovery, and inspires actual progress on (dare I say it) a manned visit.

It'll be interesting to see what increments of science this rover will bring compared to Spirit and Opportunity. Mars is big but those two little gadgets were quite thorough for the area they covered. I think the money complaints will go away if Curiosity finds a couple new and exciting things.

Makes me think how much a duplicate version that's sent to a different landing location - or even a different celestial body (Europa?) would cost. With all the engineering and programming done, I'd bet the pricetag for a second mission would come in much lower.

[Moe]

Well you know, there was also that little rocket thingie that carried the bits of wheels and electronics into space, the cruise stage that guided it safely for 350 million miles, the EDL system that set it down within a 3-by-9 mile ellipse after said trip, all under computer guidance with no human input, the R&D phase, salaries for engineers and technicians and stuff, and the thing has to work autonomously for several years in a very harsh environment that's 14 light minutes from the closest AAA service center. That tends to up the price tag just ever so slightly.

[Belgarion]

I like the idea of a rocket lander instead of a parachute crash land. So much more chance of surviving and all worked well so far

[Black]

Well you know, there was also that little rocket thingie that carried the bits of wheels and electronics into space, the cruise stage that guided it safely for 350 million miles, the EDL system that set it down within a 3-by-9 mile ellipse after said trip, all under computer guidance with no human input, the R&D phase, salaries for engineers and technicians and stuff, and the thing has to work autonomously for several years in a very harsh environment that's 14 light minutes from the closest AAA service center. That tends to up the price tag just ever so slightly.

Don't forget that it all has to run (drivetrain and computers) on 165 watts of power now and 100 watts of power in 14 years, and the electronics have to withstand 15 g's of force in transit, not to even mention the cost of radiation hardening.

Space exploration is expensive.

[Inquisitor Lok]

So First off, heres a photo taken from one of the satellites orbiting Mars of the Descent module with the parachute opened.


For me its quite exciting to watch have been watching the landing online last night as its the industry I'm hoping to work in once i finish school, along with the fact that the engineering student inside of me wanted it to succeed due to its complexity. Im rather looking forward to seeing what is going to come from this rover now that its landed. (apparently they are projecting that the first colour images will be coming within a few days if i heard correctly and the rover beginning actual movements around Mars within a few weeks)

I don't understand how bits of electronics, metal, and wheels costs 2.5 Billion, maybe it's just me, but who's Billing NASA for that much money? Just my .02 cents on it, I feel the spacecraft industry needs a serious look at cost of design and maybe slightly cheaper design methods.

I could be wrong, but i believe the costs that are typically thrown around for space missions also include the costs to launch the object into space. And that can be quite expensive. In addition to that, they likely also factor in the research and design costs in creating the actual rover itself.

Edit: I was beaten to the punch on the costs :P

I like the idea of a rocket lander instead of a parachute crash land. So much more chance of surviving and all worked well so far

But it also is much more complex and leaves much more room for failure since there are more moving parts and factors which would affect an actual successful landing.

[Stripe7]

There is also the cost for developing the technology, i.e. the pay of the thousands of people involved in the project. The multiple tests of each component that goes into rover. Radiation tests, shock tests, vibration testing etc.. The part may cost $1 to make, but the cost of testing that part may raise the cost to $100 each or more. It takes people and equipment ( some that may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars ) to test the parts.

[Fenra]

Ahhh, I stand corrected then. I was just trying to figure out how the design process costs so much from a labor point of view. That said, I'm pretty psyched we are actually getting into space again, it just seemed like Space Exploration seemingly halted at the moon and the ISS, which made me kinda disappointed in many ways. Glad to see we haven't given up on that.

[Busby]

Fun fact. You can land 16+ Curiosities on Mars for the price of the F-35 development program.
Fun fact 2: You can fund a US election for the price of 2 Curiosities.

[Moe]

Re: complexity: The sky crane maneuver was necessary this time around because Curiosity is much heavier than the previous rovers. The parachute/airbag maneuver used there would not have worked for Curiosity.

(apparently they are projecting that the first colour images will be coming within a few days if i heard correctly and the rover beginning actual movements around Mars within a few weeks)

The first panoramic image is due to be shot at day 4. It'll take a while to transmit, since bandwidth is limited, and they'll use that image to plan the first movements. Also, software needs to be installed, and various instruments tested before Curiosity gets going. But yeah, they'll have HD color images and even video at some point, which should be really awesome.

[Starblade]

Fun fact. You can land 16+ Curiosities on Mars for the price of the F-35 development program.

Just for giggles what could we have gotten out out the F-22 program?

[Misiok]

Not one noticed that our space ship that carried Curiosity looked like honest to goodness UFO, and now you mention it has laser beams?


Yep, ladies and gentlemen, we just conquered Mars, and we have one of our first combat robots on the surface.

[Inquisitor Lok]

Just for giggles what could we have gotten out out the F-22 program?

According to Wikipedia, the F-22 Program cost 66.7Billion, so using the 2.5B Tag for the Curiosity Program you could get ~26.68 of them... So 26 Rovers....

@Moe, they're also doing 3D images apparently! (Not that i could view them though D: ) http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...ts-mars-rover/

[Busby]

Just for giggles what could we have gotten out out the F-22 program?

My maths and google-fu suggest around 26 Curiosities for the price of the F-22 development program.

[Kushan_Pilot]

Now I feel conflicted. I was up late hitting F5 for news of the landing, and was suitably excited when it came through. Now it's being compared to a fighter (F-22) the kid in me likes a lot. I've heard it said, it (the raptor program) has to be done for the technology to evolve. Ditto the rovers. I suspect we'd have more to gain by investing in programs like the latter, though.

If anyone is feeling sufficiently sciency and spacey, there's (in my opinion) an awesome series of videos on YouTube called "The Sagan Series." Of these, the 6th I think is my favorite, but they're all worth it.

[Belgarion]

since bandwidth is limited,

Why is bandwidth limited since it should be a focused beam or am I being too simplistic

[Black]

It's like you guys don't realize that Mars is 154 million miles away.

[Guilliman]

Large bandwidth requires a strong signal. That's kinda of hard to keep strong over millions of miles, wireless!

I missed the landing cous I was asleep. Pretty annoyed I didn't set my alarm... *grumpy*


That said, be awestruck once I start my Enterprise project in a decade. Going to need 20T Euro to build a fully operating starship!

[Belgarion]

Im sorry Im mixing up bandwidth with a huge spectrum to transmit

[Moe]

I can't find the source, but one of the news articles mentioned that they expect to get about 35 Megabytes/day from Curiosity. I know that the uplinks to two pieces of communication hardware orbiting mars are 256kbit/s and 2 mbit/s, respectively. I would assume that the interplanetary transmission bandwidth is markedly less though.

[Guilliman]

There's also the issue of not having global coverage I assume logically. Sending 20MB of data spread over several days for just a picture because Mars turns around isn't very efficient.

[CommissarRezail]

Question, if i put up a string of com sats form here to mars that rotates around the sun with out falling in and out, could that produce a better signal then just an out right shouting at the rover from afar and the rover attempts to shout back?

The com sats would bounce the signal from one to another until it reach its destination.

[Akranadas]

Just for giggles what could we have gotten out out the F-22 program?

I think it ended up costing American Tax Payers $7 each to send Curiosity to Mars, I hear your country spends more on pizza annually ($27 billion) than the entire Nasa Budget

http://www.universetoday.com/31470/8...-nasas-budget/

[PetarB]

It makes me smile when people get upset about the limitations of reality.
Mars is a LONG way away. You have signal power degradation, alignment and other issues that make this quite different from your local bluetooth or WiFi connection!
Anyway, this is an AMAZING mission, for a number of reasons, not least the unique deployment mechanic which hasn't had a precedent. Sure other vehicles have landed using thrust to counter local gravity conditions, but to hover, and lower down the payload? Amazing... so many, many things could have gone wrong.
When I was at university, studying aerospace engineering, the top graduate in our cohort got invited to work at NASA. Sadly, I was never going to be that graduate...

[Moe]

The crane part was necessary because landing on rockets would have meant kicking up a massive dust cloud that could have damaged the rover. The tether / crane maneuver kept the thrusters far enough away from the surface to prevent that.

[Paladin]

I bet the OICW program could have funded a big chunk of a Curiosity. And that was just a program to develop a rifle. One which failed utterly.

Embarassingly, the Australian army of all organizations, actually succeeded with their development program for a rifle with the same design goals. For a tiny fraction of the cost.

[SpitfireMK461]

I want to say that the skycrane was largely an engineering exercise, to practice something more complicated. I say this because NASA's last lander, Phoenix, used rockets to set itself down. Perhaps its instruments were better insulated from the outside, I'm not sure. Perhaps they found from Phoenix that dust kick-up was more than they wanted. Either way, it seems to me that skycrane was not a matter of necessity, but preference.

That aside, amazing outcome. The whole mission appears to have gone down perfectly, from launch to landing. I hope this grows more interest in giving NASA some real funding (probably not). I'm mostly glad it didn't fail, otherwise NASA would, in technical terms, get shat on and likely lose larger chunks of funding in future budgets.

[Retroboy]

Question, if i put up a string of com sats form here to mars that rotates around the sun with out falling in and out, could that produce a better signal then just an out right shouting at the rover from afar and the rover attempts to shout back?

The issue is that Mars and Earth don't rotate around the sun at the same speed and in the same "line" (radian), so unless it comes with a frickin' honkin' dish, the satellite will likely eventually drift far enough from Mars to lose signal.

Best and most economical thing you can do is to have two satellites orbiting Mars on opposite sides of the planet. One is almost always picking up Curiosity's signal - it wouldn't necessarily track a satellite if it was in a crater and the satellite was on the horizon, for example - and at minimum one satellite has direct line of sight to Earth and can beam back stored data.
=====================================
It's funny and kind of sad that a standard, commercial 32Gig USB flash drive that weighs less than an ounce if you strip down the non-essentials can be had for $10 in Canada, and yet this multi-billion dollar probe caps its data transfer at 35Mb/day. That's three years of data transfer right there. It's almost too bad that they couldn't "ship" it back.

[Inquisitor Lok]

A short video from the bottom of the Rover showing its descent.


Also NASA is holding small briefs on their site at 10am PST (1pm EST) everyday for the next while outlining what was found and the plans for the day. (I believe this is the stream used: http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL )

Edit:

I say this because NASA's last lander, Phoenix, used rockets to set itself down. Perhaps its instruments were better insulated from the outside, I'm not sure. Perhaps they found from Phoenix that dust kick-up was more than they wanted.

Didnt the phoenix lander not have to move around either? So large amounts of dust getting into certain areas wouldn't have been necessarily as large an issue there, where as Curiosity has to move around and conduct science for (i think it was) two years (as opposed to Phoenix's 90days) so having it cut short due to something like dust restricting its motion would be quite severe.

The issue is that Mars and Earth don't rotate around the sun at the same speed and in the same "line" (radian), so unless it comes with a frickin' honkin' dish, the satellite will likely eventually drift far enough from Mars to lose signal.

Best and most economical thing you can do is to have two satellites orbiting Mars on opposite sides of the planet. One is almost always picking up Curiosity's signal - it wouldn't necessarily track a satellite if it was in a crater and the satellite was on the horizon, for example - and at minimum one satellite has direct line of sight to Earth and can beam back stored data.

However, if they had satellites orbiting on opposite sides of the planet so that the rover could be in constant use, it would also mean that the rover has to be used during the time it is on the dark side of Mars. The problem this causes is that its significantly colder on that dark side which means it requires more power to operate. The rover currently has a 100kW mini nuclear reactor which doesnt provide enough power to even use the rover when its on the sunny side as it requires 130kW if i heard correctly during their conference (they have a secondary battery which provides the rest and which can be charged) So if they wanted to use it on the other side, it would require them to heat their systems up even more than they currently are, which requires more power (someone asked why they werent using it all the time and instead shutting it down when it was out of earths range due to the fact that it doesnt run on solar power like the previous rovers and that was their answer)

[CommissarRezail]

Why does the rover need to be used on the dark side? Just shut it down and give it a break, no? no rule mean you have to run your toys down constantly.

Another thing would it improve signal quality to run a video with out it looking like stop motion all the time. Even for a short while with a string of com sats.

[Inquisitor Lok]

Because why else would you place a satellite on the other side of Mars for constant connection if you aren't going to have the rover on to transmit data or to do science?

[Akranadas]

Why does the rover need to be used on the dark side? Just shut it down and give it a break, no? no rule mean you have to run your toys down constantly.

It's Radioisotope thermoelectric generator can't turn off that easily (it possible that it might not even turn on again). They have limited time to get in as many tests and explore as much as possible.

[CommissarRezail]

That's one nice generator.

[Nurizeko]

APOTD had a picture from the rover's landing spot and it suddenly made me imagine sending a (albeit expensive and fancy) rover to somewhere like the great pyramids or Ankor Wat or something.


Yeah it'd still be an engineering achievement but...I'd be thinking "why don't I just go there myself?".

Granted going to Mars is a lot different but sooner or later people need to go, space exploration should be leading the way for human exploitation, otherwise it's sorta wasted effort (science is after all, mostly about advancing the species as well as knowledge for knowledge's sake).


But anyhow YAY SCIENCE!

Here's hoping curiosity backs up its engineering success with some discovery success. If it finds signs of life on Mars I'll be quite pleased, I mean logic dictates we're not alone but even finding primitive Bacteria or something on Mars will be a huge boost.

[Elukka]

The answer is that they don't have the budget for that and even if they did political interference has indefinitely grounded NASA's manned program. I wouldn't hold my breath for SLS ever flying.
Unmanned missions are the one thing where NASA isn't yet stagnant or dying, where new and exciting stuff still happens. They have to do what they're able to and currently that doesn't include manned missions to anywhere. But hey, if things ever change, they now know how to soft-land things on Mars under rocket power which would pretty much be needed for any manned mission.

[Akranadas]

The issue with a manned mission to Mars is that NASA wants to bring those people back home.

[Stripe7]

Hmm, 2 year mission with a RTG. The Voyager mission's used RTG's as well. Those are still transmitting.

[Retroboy]

However, if they had satellites orbiting on opposite sides of the planet so that the rover could be in constant use, it would also mean that the rover has to be used during the time it is on the dark side of Mars.

If Moe's assumption is correct, the bottleneck in the information feed to Earth is the transit from Mars orbit to Earth, and the Curiosity-to-Mars-satellite transfer has a fairly decent connection. By having two satellites at opposite sides of the planet, and assuming that Curiosity could reach both with its signal, you can almost double the speed with which data is transferred to Earth.

(If you really wanted to get creative, put up a huge mylar satellite mirror to reflect solar power to Curiosity (heck, and the previous solar-powered rovers too). Wouldn't help much with the temperature but would sure keep those batteries topped up. )
=====================
On the economies of number-of-Curiosities that could be performed using other budgets: from this initial and successful program, there are tremendous intellectual property and purchasing power gains in process, engineering, manufacturing, contractual agreements with manufacturers, governance, software, and science (yay!) that would be preserved and reusable for other even vaguely similar projects. Although the straight math says you could do 26 Curiosities for the cost of the F22 program, the "real math" would likely lead to a much better capability. The only caveat is that there probably aren't 26+ teams out there that are capable of performing all that work at once so your spend would have to be more gradual and sequenced.

[LoCo]

The issue with a manned mission to Mars is that NASA wants to bring those people back home.

Which is just silly.

I'm sure they could find hundreds of qualified people who would be willing to take a one-way trip and spend the rest of their days building shit and getting refueled and resupplied on Mars while they set up a base that could, with more and more people being sent, build up to the point where they could launch return trips.

Likely the whole lot could be done in 5-10 years easily.

But... you know... lets not send people who would love to go and get their names in the history books.

[Belgarion]

The one wayers would be original Martians. Sign me up at least I would get away from the mundane of paying bills etc

[Misiok]

And with one thing failing would lead to their deaths, and then that would stop all future manned trips because nowadays society is incredibly squeamish.

[Elukka]

I'm all for one way missions later down the road but I think it would be sensible to get some experience with dealing with the Martian environment first. Learn to walk walk before you try to run and all.
Just doing a flag-and-footprints mission and leaving it at that would of course be fairly pointless if there's no followup.

[GeoffS]

Which is just silly.

On the face of it, yes, it is silly. Realistically however, the only way that funding for a manned mission would be given by the politicians would be to get someone to Mars and back again. No politician would want to be known as one who sent people on a "suicide" mission, and that is how much of the media would describe it even if the crew freely volunteered. The US public only accepted the Apollo program because JFK promised to bring the heroes home... "I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth."

While I understand and somewhat agree with your sentiment, I just can't see it happening. Joe Public is not going to support sending people to Mars for something like 5 years without the possibility of rescuing them if something goes wrong.

[Homdax]

interplanetary transmission bandwidth

Finally we got one of those! Internet is conquering space!

[Guilliman]

China will get to Mars with their then superior world economy while Europe, USA and Russia suffer economic hardships, they'll just claim the resources as their own without anyone being able to afford to do anything about it!

I hope so anyway. Space Race 2.0

[Jonny]

Joe Public is not going to support sending people to Mars for something like 5 years without the possibility of rescuing them if something goes wrong.

That's really a mindset we need to get rid of. If people freely volunteer to put themselves at risk for a greater purpose we should laud them for it and encourage them, not piss and moan about danger. Discovery and advancement benefit from brave people who will risk themselves, they suffer from armchair whingers who take it upon themselves to police society into a nanny state.

[mololu]

When I heard about this, the little geek in me did a hop for joy. Hope space exploration doesn't end anytime soon. Simply way too cool. As for space exploration being dangerous and getting people killed, collective humanity is very narrow-minded in that they think advances doesn't include financial and human risks. But we might get stuck on that little hook for a while.

[Moe]

That's one nice generator.

It's a nuclear battery. It generates heat from nuclear decay, which is then converted to electrical power. They don't have gas stations up there, and weight is a precious resource. This was pretty much the only way to power the rover.

[Starblade]

If people freely volunteer to put themselves at risk for a greater purpose we should laud them for it and encourage them, not piss and moan about danger.

It is generally a bad idea to throw your several million dollar and couple decade investment (per person) crew inside a several billion dollar vehicle into a scenario where they most likely will not survive or will never be seen again, especially if you ever want to do it a second time and expect to get funding for it. Human beings are not disposable machines and you should not treat them the same way as a rover or satellite. Having safety standards and being cautious and careful are not bad things especially in an environment where if something fucks up, everybody will die. It doesn't matter if they volunteer to do it, they still represent a massive time and money cost. Throwing that away blindly because maybe they won't die after all is insane. Yes, there is danger and risk. You should mitigate that, not ignore it and go hogwild.