Spirit's New Adventures, The Mission Beyond 1000 Sols Options

[Guest_Geographer_*]

Thanks dvandorn. I've noticed the mission managers have changed throughout the years, I presume the engineers have as well. Might the engineers be needed for another mission (MSL)?

[dvandorn]

Surely, though, as low as the costs are to keep the rovers running now, it would be far cheaper to keep in contact with them after both have stopped moving (shudder). They'd become long term weather stations of sorts, and Spirit could keep monitoring dust devils if the cameras work and it has a decent view.

Unfortunately, the MERs are drastically under-equipped to serve as meteorological stations. They have no instrumentation for directly analyzing winds, pressures and temperatures. The only instruments that can capture weather data are the cameras, and while you can take cool images of dust devils and boring images of the Sun to measure tau, I'm not sure we'd see mission extensions solely for those purposes once an immobile rover's near field has been examined as carefully as possible.

-the other Doug

[djellison]

Mini-TES does good atmospheric science, and indeed so does the APXS w.r.t. Argon loading.

Doug

[dvandorn]

Thanks dvandorn. I've noticed the mission managers have changed throughout the years, I presume the engineers have as well. Might the engineers be needed for another mission (MSL)?

Yes, many of the engineers and scientists, as well as managers, who were with the MER project from the beginning have moved on to other projects. Some are working on Phoenix, some on MSL, and others are working on other mission proposals. Some (though a very few, I imagine) are working somewhere else entirely, not in the planetary probe business.

It's like any organization that operates for more than a short period -- you get turnover. Some people leave to pursue other interests, some are recruited into projects where their expertise is needed, and some (like the Entry, Descent Landing, or EDL, team) find their jobs at an end once a given mission phase is completed. For example, Rob Manning was one of the key engineers on the Pathfinder and MER EDL teams. Rob has been working on MSL's landing system for a couple of years now, and has been kind enough to keep all of us here at UMSF up to date on their progress... But once both MERs were safely landed on Mars, Rob and others on the EDL team were freed up to pursue other projects.

-the other Doug

[dvandorn]

Mini-TES does good atmospheric science, and indeed so does the APXS w.r.t. Argon loading.

True. But atmospheric science isn't the same as meteorology, or as it was described, a "weather station." It's a fine line, I know. But for telling us anything about the actual weather at a MER location, all of the rovers' instrumentation is, IMHO, less valuable than would have been a stick with a small windsock (or just pieces of yarn) attached to it.

There is a point at which you have to decide if the salaries, DSN time, and managerial overhead for which you have to pay as long as the MERs are kept alive are justified by the amount of new and unique data you can get. Yes, you can get some interesting data about the air column above the MERs from mini-TES, and you can get some rather averaged air composition data from the APXS. Is that worth expenditures of several million dollars per extension for an otherwise immobile and mined-out (i.e., local field as minutely examined as possible) MER?

As long as the near field can be changed (i.e., as long as a MER is mobile), it's a no-brainer. You'd continue to extend the mission, even if you were to completely lose an IDD or even mini-TES. But once you can no longer move, I'd be surprised if the mission would be extended once an "endgame" plan for maximizing return from your final location was completed.

-the other Doug

[AndyG]

...But once you can no longer move, I'd be surprised if the mission would be extended once an "endgame" plan for maximizing return from your final location was completed.

-the other Doug

Maximizing return could mean all sorts, though - very long term study of the last rover tracks to monitor erosion processes, the invaluable engineering data with regards to which-bits-fail-first. And an immobile rover would even be a benefit with regards to selling future Mars missions to the public. If Opportunity should end up stuck at the base of a Victoria cliff, unable to move, I'd want to see a timelapse film of "a day in Victoria", in full colour, necessarily shot over a few weeks or so. Just imagine how beautiful that could be.

Andy

[fredk]

...atmospheric science isn't the same as meteorology, or as it was described, a "weather station."

I wrote "weather station of sorts", and perhaps should have stressed "of sorts"! Of course the rovers can't do an in depth meteorological study. My point was simply that it's a question of cost. Surely it's far cheaper to run them without mobility, but the question is how cheap. Someone has to work out the numbers, then sit down and decide whether what the rovers can do stationary justifies that expense. Until then we're just counting angels.

[dvandorn]

Bringing up the question, how many MERs can dance on the head of a pin?

The real issue of extension costs, in my mind, is the cost of DSN time. If you can cut down your support staff here on Earth to minimum levels and just be taking repetitive images and passive data, you do cut your costs down some. But at several thousand dollars per hour of DSN time, the cost of just getting your data back to Earth runs into the millions of dollars a year, even with passive, nearly dead rovers.

There is a lot of focus on reducing the cost per pound to get spacecraft into LEO and beyond. I think there needs to be a similar effort to reduce the cost of communicating with your spacecraft once they leave LEO, or else you'll continue to see probes which have a lot of life left in them abandoned due to the costs of keeping in regular contact with them.

-the other Doug

[djellison]

Well - of course - all the MER downlink is via Odyssey, and thus they don't pay a direct DSN cost for that. (But they do, I think, pay Odyssey for it)

The uplink via DFE X-band to the HGA is from the DSN, but that's not a long period. Maybe, between the two of them, 1hr per day. There was some discovery mission documentation that outlined the maths to figure out how much DSN time costs...I'll have to dig it up again.

Doug

[Stu]

Been neglecting Spirit recently, what with Oppy's Victoria adventure, but here's an interesting rock I spotted today...

[Stu]

My first try with"Autostitch"... interesting little rock peered at by Spirit's microscope yesterday...

[nprev]

Been neglecting Spirit recently, what with Oppy's Victoria adventure, but here's an interesting rock I spotted today...

By God, it's the head of the Smiling Crocodile! He's lying on his right side...

[edstrick]

"By God, it's the head of the Smiling Crocodile! He's lying on his right side..."

Does anybody hear a clock ticking?

[djellison]

How much does it cost per day to keep each rover running?

Now we'e heard that 20-25M figure at that press con - we can say that running the rovers costs approx $55 - 70k per day - or $27-35k per rover per day. As my colleague Josh has just pointed out - about the same, per rover, as David Beckham gets paid

Doug

[climber]

Now we'e heard that 20-25M figure at that press con - we can say that running the rovers costs approx $55 - 70k per day - or $27-35k per rover per day. As my colleague Josh has just pointed out - about the same, per rover, as David Beckham gets paid
Doug

Yep, but I guess he doesn't need Nasa's ok when he wants to better study Victoria