China's Mars rover appears to have stopped roving:
China's Zhurong rover landed on Mars to great local fanfare in May 2021 before it set about exploring the dusty surface.
But recent images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have shown that Zhurong has not moved for at least the last five months. And China has so far said nothing on the matter.
[...] We do know that the vehicle had been put in a state of hibernation four months earlier so that it could sleep through the harsh winter conditions in Mars' Utopia Planitia region. After that, it was expected that the rover would continue with its explorations toward the end of 2022, when the improved conditions would have allowed for the efficient powering of the rover's onboard battery.
But rather than offer an update on the condition of its rover, the Chinese space authorities have thus far failed to offer any meaningful news about Zhurong, and whether it's expected to start working again.
Speaking to the South China Morning Post on condition of anonymity, a source said last month it seemed that "most likely the sandstorms have seriously weakened Zhurong's capacity to use its solar panels to generate power."
[...] Mars is famous for its harsh sandstorms, indeed, it's this very same issue that finally prevented power generation on NASA's InSight lander, forcing the mission to end in December.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday February 27, @02:19AM (1 child)
They should have subcontracted construction to Japan or South Korea.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday February 27, @12:38PM
Maybe, maybe not. To date, in terms of rovers on another planet, it is China: 1, Rest of Eurasia: 0
Given this is China's first attempt, and it was successful, I would say they have done pretty well... indeed, I think this shows the world that China's tech is right up there.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Snotnose on Monday February 27, @02:23AM
Rovin', Rovin', Rovin'
Keep movin' movin' movin'
Though dust accumulatin'
Keep those panels chargin'
Rover!
Don't try to understand 'em
Just hope for wind to clean 'em
Soon the sun will be high and wide
China's calculatin'
Their panels will be chargin'
To call home at the end of the day
Clean 'em up, charge 'em some
Clean 'em some, charge 'em up
Start 'em up, turn them wheels
Rover!
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mykl on Monday February 27, @03:14AM (20 children)
F1 Racing Helmets have about 5-9 tearoff strips across the visor. When a driver's helmet is covered with dirt or oil, they simply strip off the top layer and their vision is back to normal.
Could future rovers perhaps implement a similar mechanism across the solar cells? Store a minimum amount of charge in a battery, and use that to activate a 'peel' mechanism to tear off a strip of thin covering at the end of winter (or after a sandstorm). Instant return to maximum efficiency! This would, of course, result in debris being discarded and left on the Martian landscape unless the rover was designed to store the used strip somewhere.
The extra mechanical functions increase the chances of something going wrong, but if this is only used when the solar panels become unusable it's a bit of a 'nothing to lose' situation.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday February 27, @03:43AM (19 children)
For years in NASCAR and other racing they've used a plastic (mylar / Saran wrap?) film on spools on the external cameras. A little motor runs the spools enough to pull fresh clear plastic in front of the lens, so maybe something like that. You might even be able to brush / blow the dust off the film and re-use it. Or maybe some other kind of spinning brush mechanism that just flings the dust off. Maybe a tiny Roomba? :)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Monday February 27, @06:53AM (3 children)
I was thinking ultrasonic cleaners that vibrates the dust off.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday February 27, @07:56AM (2 children)
Hmmm. Is that a thing? Or did you just invent that?
I have a good friend who is a photographer and also works in ultrasonics and transducers. I'll have to ask him the next time I talk to him.
It seems like a good idea. You might need a puff of air to get the dust away from the surface once the ultrasonics loosens it.
My only concern is electrostatic attraction. I seem to have "microfiber" dust on this here computer quite a lot.
Which gives me another idea: I never had one, but I remember these electrostatic discharge (ionizer) things ("Zerostat gun") that you'd use with a vinyl record. You'd push a little button that would make a snap which would create a high voltage burst which would electrostatically charge both the vinyl record _and_ the dust. Now that both have a charge of the same polarity, the vinyl would repel the dust. Opposites attract, same charge repels. Should work for PV panels, as long as there's a little bit of atmosphere.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pTamok on Monday February 27, @09:46AM (1 child)
It's a hardy perennial question.
Mars dust is not like earth dust. It's more like cigarette smoke than sand grains, and the atmospheric pressure is so low that you can't just blow it off. Brushing doesn't work, because it clings to surfaces with electrostatic forces - think of packing polystyrene sticking to your fingers. Plenty of very well qualified engineers have looked at ways of keeping the solar panels on Mars landers and rovers working, and they have not come up with a process that is light-enough and effective enough to justify installation...yet.
Your everyday experience of dealing with dust on Earth doesn't translate to Mars, unfortunately.
Currently, the best solution is to 'overbuild' the panel area, so that you get enough power when the panels are covered with the expected amount of dust. Local weather removing some is a an unexpected bonus [space.com] - so much so that one of the methods tried was to trickle soil down (using the robot arm) near a solar panel and while the wind was blowing so the blown (large grain) soil would take the finer dust with it. It worked to an extent.
https://www.cnet.com/home/energy-and-utilities/nasa-mars-lander-dumps-dirt-on-itself-to-battle-dusty-solar-panels/ [cnet.com]
https://www.universetoday.com/151410/clever-trick-used-to-clean-off-insights-solar-panels-and-boost-its-power/ [universetoday.com]
https://mars.nasa.gov/news/8959/nasas-insight-mars-lander-gets-a-power-boost/?site=insight [nasa.gov]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday February 27, @05:28PM
Interesting, thanks for all of that.
> It's more like cigarette smoke than sand grains,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? :) (kidding...)
That's an interesting analogy. As I wrote before, I'm well familiar with electrostatic attraction. When I was a kid I built a high voltage based electrostatic air cleaner. (really I just needed an incentive to built a high-voltage generator- who doesn't like messing with big sparks? :)
So you don't think the electrostatic ion emitter would work?
So back to the motor-driven thin plastic wrap rolls? Or you're saying overbuild is good enough?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 27, @01:59PM (14 children)
All of the above, plus: self healing surfaces that fill in scratches and micropits - panels "on a swivel" which show one face to the sun during fair weather, then flip over and protect that side showing a more durable but less efficient side to the sun during storms - a "panel washer" function on the protected side - a supply depot at the landing site where the rover can go and exchange solar panes for a new ones, etc. etc.
Not a single one of these ideas reduce complexity or points of potential failure, and the existing simple solutions are working long enough that we could be sending followup missions with revised designs before the current mission expires. I would suggest that our limiting factor is really the size of the Earthbound team(s) designing, building, and operating the missions. Headcount, which implies budget. The more complex the design, the more people you need to design, build and operate it.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Monday February 27, @03:05PM (13 children)
None is size limited at all. My take is that your design team (which is typically the most expensive part of the mission) could consist of as little as one person, but ten would be probably better. Your fab team could consistent of ten to a hundred, and make large numbers of these probes at one time. And then your operations team would be back down to ten - even with all those probes. Instead, we're spending vast sums of money reinventing the wheel every decade or so in technology development rather than doing actual science.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 27, @04:58PM (4 children)
>My take is that your design team (which is typically the most expensive part of the mission) could consist of as little as one person
My take is that you have zero experience with the actual modern practice of design of complex systems for high reliability. Back in the 1980s they determined that most field failures could have been prevented with better design practices: formal (and documented) verification and validation of all system requirements, which implies complete documented testable system and component level requirements. In the 1990s global "design control" regulations rolled out for many industries that formerly had those "one person, but ten is better" design teams you refer to. NASA, as well as aerospace companies like Airbus and Boeing were ahead of that curve. In 2003-6 I worked for a company that ultimately spent 8 years with a team of 20 R&D engineers plus another 10 transfer to manufacturing engineers plus 20 more support personnel in documentation control, HR, Admin, etc. (not counting the 400 marketing, sales and clinical support personnel that made the whole operation possible) just to re-design an existing implantable pulse generator which consisted of a PCB the size of your thumb with 14 SMD components on it mounted with a battery in a can with two wires coming out. Compared to the "big dogs" in the field, that team of 50 was small, a "big dog" would throw more like 100 engineers into R&D of a similar project and probably say they would have it out in 2 years but really take 3-4 (still better than 8...)
Pardon me while I get to my next R&D meeting...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @05:26PM (3 children)
My take is that you are already doing it wrong. Doing complex systems in space is part of the reason they're high priced in the first place.
SpaceX has since determined a superior way to do that. Break stuff cheaply and see what fails. For example, the "formal (and documented) verification and validation of all system requirements" ignores numerous things: whether the verification and validation process actually works, that no Earth-side test (especially one of the computer simulation sort) can fully compensate for a lack of space-side testing (especially when you don't know what you're supposed to be testing for!), a lack of questioning of those system requirements (for a glaring example [soylentnews.org], why should Ares and SLS be dependent on the Shuttle supply chain, particularly those solid fuel rockets? That's political favoritism turned into a system requirement!), and that one can spend more time doing engineering than busywork.
You just made my argument for me. 50 personnel to do one engineer's job.
Also this demonstrates another one of the flaws in your argument. If a designer of a spacecraft is designing things down to the individual electronic components, then they're doing it wrong. A designer isn't supposed to micromanage.
I'm sure you will do plenty of R&D in that R&D meeting. /sarc
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @06:02PM
Complexity is a matter of degree. But consider that SpaceX's Superheavy despite its fancy cutting edge electronics will be considerably less complex than a Saturn V with moderately better performance. It'll also be vastly less expensive due both to its partially reusable design and to the fact that SpaceX will be throwing at least an order of magnitude less staff at the problem (currently 10k people versus several hundred thousand). My take is that the money spent on NASA's SLS could have instead funded about ten Superheavy designs simultaneously.
That same inefficiency carries over to the unmanned probes as well.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 27, @09:30PM (1 child)
>My take is that you are already doing it wrong. Doing complex systems in space is part of the reason they're high priced in the first place.
O.K. Genius, back to my original comment: simpler is better was the clear point.
>SpaceX has since determined a superior way to do that. Break stuff cheaply and see what fails.
SpaceX didn't invent anything with those methods, they're actually enshrined in the original ISO 9001 procedures regarding corrective action feedback loops in the product design process.
>ignores numerous things: whether the verification and validation process actually works
Do you have another ass you can talk out of? Because the ignorance of this one is getting seriously boring.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @10:28PM
Spending more money was your clear point.
That is, need more people and budget, not simpler systems. You then followed that up in a later post with:
Sure, this implies more complexity is bad, but it also heavily implies that the complexity is necessary. My point is that it is not. Consider this scenario. The basic development history of US rovers on Mars is (including mission costs):
Now, if instead after Sojourner, the money for the next generation had been used to develop and build vehicles of the previous generation (keep in mind that development costs are one time only), we would have roughly 5 or more Sojourners, about 8 MERs, and maybe 4-5 MSLs. The above is 5 rovers over a 25 year period. For the same money, they could have put almost 20 and they would have likely arrived sooner on average since they could have launched them every time they had a launch window with Mars - every two years. Admittedly, it might have delayed a sample return mission somewhat which has very high scientific value, but given the high risks of that, I think NASA would probably be more comfortable with having multiple tries (and samples from all over Mars!) rather than one big gamble.
The simplifying thing here is that even though the systems aren't made less complex individually, you make more of them at a time - that allows you to streamline the manufacture and operations process (even for a handful of space probes), and be able to correct issues with design after the first one launches while covering more locations on Mars.
Boy, I hope that's a joke. NASA and its contractors were doing that back in the 1950s and 1960s too. That predates ISO 9001 in any form by decades (started in 1987). And various labs were doing that before 1900 (for example, Edison's lab). We probably could find examples that are thousands of years old, should we look for them.
The point is not that SpaceX "invented" this process, but that they're following it very successfully!
Look it's great that someone pays you to play engineer. But we just need to look at what NASA does and doesn't do to see the problems. For example, they just did their first flight of SLS. It's been 17 years since they decided to do a replacement for the Space Shuttle and well, here we are. And SLS, even if it does reach full service, will never match the flight rate or cost of Superheavy meaning it will always be a dead-end albatross for NASA.
Similarly, you can count NASA's rover missions on one hand and a quarter of a century. This is not a serious space program. People will die of old age before important parts of Mars are explored!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @05:23PM (7 children)
Oh boy, would you be surprized at what goes on in "actual science". You know all those untrained foreign grad students brought into the country... well, I've got news for you. They aren't trained, they aren't supervised (except in the most minimal authoritarian way) so guess what they end up doing? The same old shit over and over, but usually worse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @05:31PM (6 children)
Do I sound surprised?
Yes, I've seen that. Should we be surprised that when the premier science organizations of the US are slacking on actual science, that we would also see the same in the far less accountable environs of the average university?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday February 27, @08:54PM (5 children)
Scientists and engineers are not in charge; MBAs are.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @09:30PM (4 children)
MBAs aren't messing with internal dynamics in labs at a university.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @10:45PM (3 children)
Are you actually literally clueless as to how the world actually works?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @11:27PM (2 children)
Nope. Which is why I pointed that out. Here, I think the problem is that public funding sources and university administrations are no longer interested in or knowledgeable about scientific progress. We could blame that on MBAs, but my take is the dynamic would exist independent of MBAs. For public funding sources, appearance is everything. Once they look like they're buying science, then that's good enough. The public can't understand what the money is spent on, so as long as the funding organizations write checks to scientists, they're safe - outcomes are irrelevant.
Similarly, university administrations get more money when they play the funding game right - that is, provide public theater for the politicians and sufficient entertainment for tuition-paying students and alumni donors. When the money and authority isn't interested in science, then it's no surprise that the attitude rubs off on the actual academicians. It's a collection of bad incentives from top to bottom. MBAs have nothing to do with it.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday February 28, @12:13AM (1 child)
> ...dynamic would exist independent of MBAs.
I'll give you that- people are people and competition seems innate, no matter how destructive it can be for everyone in the long run.
> Once they look like they're buying science, then that's good enough. (and the rest of your post)
You didn't understand how MBAs are the big giant factor, but you posted that?? Do you not understand how the proliferation of MBAs are a huge problem? I'll accept an argument stating that the too-many MBAs are a symptom, but how do you prevent greed from rotting a society from the inside out? (serious question, not being argumentative)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 28, @12:23AM
I didn't "understand" because they aren't the big factor here. First, MBAs serve a legitimate need - business and their processes/dynamics needs academic study just like everything else. Second, how many MBAs are in those labs? I'd say there's a small chance that someone picked one up because sometimes people do get multiple masters degrees or equivalent, and an MBA is relatively popular as a second masters in that case. So you're speaking of MBA behavior in an environment with almost no MBAs. Time to think about what's really going on.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @03:31AM (3 children)
The article it is.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 27, @03:41AM (1 child)
(Score: 4, Funny) by Mykl on Monday February 27, @03:53AM
Perhaps it's Pining for the Fjords [youtube.com]?
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27, @12:35PM
You sound like a dirty red sympathizer. Don't you know there's a war on? (not sarcasm)