Exomars etsting at Mt Teide |
Exomars etsting at Mt Teide |
May 13 2006, 10:46 AM
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#1
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
I went to Mt Teide twice as a teenager - it's an astonishing, barren, beautiful place - the plateau on the top of Tenerife from which the final tip of the volcano spikes upwards.....
Anyway - I spotted this vid at the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4767403.stm Doug |
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May 13 2006, 11:22 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 470 Joined: 24-March 04 From: Finland Member No.: 63 |
Teide is a beautiful place. Some areas there really do look like Mars, one so much so that I actually took a "rover point of view" photo when I visited the place in 2003 for some amateur astronomy. As far as I could see from the low quality video clip, the rover testing was being done at that same place.
-------------------- Antti Kuosmanen
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May 13 2006, 11:35 AM
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#3
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
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May 13 2006, 01:18 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
-------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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May 16 2006, 12:26 AM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 295 Joined: 2-March 04 From: Central California Member No.: 45 |
I know it's a dog eat dog world out there, but did the MER team give the ESA team any pointers? They have had a couple years experience with driving a rover on another world.
Do you think the ESA team read Squyres book? -------------------- Eric P / MizarKey
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May 16 2006, 07:23 AM
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#6
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
I imagine they've read the book - but seing as the most primitive drawings of the MER design were metaphorically ripped out of my hands by Cal-Tech Lawyers, I very much doubt there could or would be much feed-forward of informationa cross the pond.
Doug |
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Guest_Analyst_* |
May 16 2006, 07:44 AM
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#7
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Guests |
Very sad they have to invent the wheel again (not only the rover wheel itself). Is this because of a general closeness of NASA, JPL etc., because of ITAR or both? It is definitely not the best use of recources.
Analyst |
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May 16 2006, 08:15 AM
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#8
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14432 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Well - you could look at it 1000 ways, but I have no doubt whatsoever that ITAR would restrict any detailed transfer of information in some way...but there's also another factor
ESA "Hi, we're building a rover, we want some help in the design stage" JPL "Sure, give us a really big fat chunk of money and we'll show you how to do it" ESA "Oh- you want money. Umm. Arrr...that's European Tax Payers money and they'd rather we spent that in Europe on European engineers and technology" Or... EU Public "Why did they give all that money to pay for American stuff...why can't we build it ourselves here?" Now of course, you could then argue "hmm - we spent all that money and it didn't work, why didn't we get the JPL guys to help build this thing" retrospectively... Part legal, part political. I would love the EU just to go to JPL and order one 'off the shelf' for a sensible figure - but to be honest - building the rover isn't the problem.. EDL is. Doug |
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May 16 2006, 08:43 AM
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#9
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2921 Joined: 14-February 06 From: Very close to the Pyrénées Mountains (France) Member No.: 682 |
They (we) gona need MRO anyway for site selection, don't we? We are so new in Mars rovers concepts that starting nearly from scratch could lead to other viable solutions. Russians always come up with different and simpler solutions. But you're right Doug, EDL is THE issue.
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May 18 2006, 03:46 PM
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#10
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Member Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 14-April 06 From: Berlin Member No.: 744 |
Coming back to the design of the rover itself: when I sent this news about testing Pasteur (ExoMars rover) to a Polish friend of mine, he asked me if Pasteur is going to go faster or slower than the MERs and are they really going to power it only with solar energy instead of putting a few RTGs into it. I do realize speed is not essential in such missions but that kind of corresponds to overall range and travere times and the RTGs would be important for the total duration of the mission and number of sols covered... I would be terrribly thankful if someone got the answers...
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May 18 2006, 03:55 PM
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#11
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
One of the attractions at the ILA2006 Space Pavilion is the full-scale ExoMars
rover mock-up based on an artist's impression of Europe’s next mission to Mars and the first robotic mission with the European Space Exploration Programme Aurora. Full story: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Aurora/SEMBR89ATME_0.html -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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May 18 2006, 04:15 PM
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#12
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
RTGs would be important for the total duration of the mission and number of sols covered... I would be terrribly thankful if someone got the answers... Karolp: I don't think there's any ESA member state with RTG technology - SFAIK, only the Soviet Union and the US developed such things. I don't know if the Russian Federation has kept the technology going - and the US seems to have to scrabble around for the radioactives! Seems strange, considering how many nukes there are on Earth, that one of the few not-very-military uses should be so hard to come by... Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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May 18 2006, 04:22 PM
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#13
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
One of the attractions at the ILA2006 Space Pavilion is the full-scale ExoMars rover mock-up based on an artist's impression of Europe’s next mission to Mars Interesting - there appears to be quite a lot of solar panel surface area. At a guess from looking at the mockup it looks like there should be enough real estate there for 3-4m^2 of cells. And the whole panel deck can tilt. It's no RTG but it should be well able to push out >1kw-hour/sol throughout an entire martian year in near equatorial regions or enable a 2kw/sol ~200 Sol mission at fairly high latitudes (up to around 60 deg). Does anyone have any more specific info on the planned power requirements for ExoMars? |
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May 18 2006, 04:50 PM
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#14
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
And the whole panel deck can tilt. Helvick: I don't think the panels tilt in the design we're seeing. It's a cute rover design, though! Do you think a bolt of lightning would do it any good? Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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May 18 2006, 06:04 PM
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#15
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Member Group: Members Posts: 688 Joined: 20-April 05 From: Sweden Member No.: 273 |
Karolp: I don't think there's any ESA member state with RTG technology - SFAIK, only the Soviet Union and the US developed such things. I don't know if the Russian Federation has kept the technology going - and the US seems to have to scrabble around for the radiactives! Seems strange, considering how many nukes there are on Earth, that one of the few not-very-military uses should be so hard to come by... Bob Shaw Pu 238 is produced by a completely different process (from Np 237) than weapon grade Pu 239 (from U 238) The only link with military nucleonics is that most of the Np 237 probably originally comes as waste from military Pu 239-producing reactors. I wouldn't recommend the normal run of russian RTG's, they were Sr 90-powered and since Sr 90 produces a lot of gamma radiation, in contrast to Pu 238, they required quite heavy shielding - on the order of 500 kg. But then they were mostly used for powering remote lighthouses and the like. tty |
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