[X] My Assistant

[mars loon]

Survival Tips from Spirit and Opportunity

for exploring Mars as long as robotically possible

One Martian Year Slideshow

This is a new slide show on the JPL website 12/12/05

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

Success Tips Summary

1. Learn something new every day

2. Adapt

3. Appreciate you family

4. Respect Mother Nature

5. Exceed Expectations


good rules to live by

check the website for the whole slide show

[RNeuhaus]

I think that the Mars Mission Plan is very well designated with the gradual infrastructure support to improve the survival of Spirit and Opportunity missions. The support from Odyssey and Mars Global Survey plays a very important factor to relay the communications, take the pronostic weather and take pictures of high resolution around the landing places.

On the other hand, the engineers and scientists have learned to adapt the martian time with the help of distributed communication (Web, videophone, etc.) so that they can have a balanced life between their family and friends without missing its rol with MER.

The high spirit of MER team to adapt, overcome any obstacle and also of good direction of leadership with serenity, well coordinated, and orderly to face up to many critical situations such as the Spirit 's first day communication troubles (I was afraid of this), Oppy's stuck on the Purgatory Sand and lately with the troubled azimuth joint as the most critical.

I appreciate the versatility of the operating system of MER since they can be reseted whenever it encounters a critical or crash software and also of its flexible programming language to adapt according to the nature such as to incorporate the sleepage control, improved speed for a flat land of Meridiani. I realice that there is very high importance to have a very powerful microprocessor (very cheap for the overall robot) and lots of storage to improve the intelligence, mobility and multitasking of robot approaching as a good geologist in the other words. They lacked a good hearing, support arms to hammer, excavate and drill the land and also the wind sensing to permit the rover drivers be much better prepared to navigate and also to scientists to take more useful science for a shorter time.

They learned much about the nature of law of Mars. How to climb, to down, to surface among dunes.

These are very valuable experiences for the next robotic mission starting with a much improved support orbiters : MRO and MO for MSL and ExoMars.

Rodolfo