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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am sure it comes down to economics really, but I do wonder now about a mission in far future, that would clean solar panels of all those older missions to make them work again. For shits and giggles I guess.
Like a long range Ingenuity helicopter that cruised the planet using its downwash to revive old rovers ?
Interesting thread on why it's not possible for the solar panels to be self cleaned: https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1590736220199735296?c...
I went out of it thinking, "yep, look at these excuses we are making for the state of robotics." - the quote is: "A system like that would have added cost, mass, and complexity. The simplest, most cost-effective way to meet my goals was to bring solar panels big enough to power my whole mission – which they did (and then some!)."
So robotics is at the state where it is possible to send a rover to Mars, but a simple robotic arm can't easily brush off some dirt. The lander weighs 789 lb and the cost-effective solution is not try include a simple cheap lightweight robot arm that is foolproof and can easily sweep some dirt, because there is not such thing. Robotics isn't at the level where that is easy, cheap, or lightweight.
If a human could reach through a portal to there with a brush, it would take less than five minutes to brush off the dirt that had fallen on solar cells.
A simple, light, and foolproof robotic arm that can easily do that doesn't exist. Now that we have superhuman levels of general AI in chatgpt, isn't it time to work on foolproof and lightweight robot arms for all sorts of tasks?
Interesting thread on why it's not possible for the solar panels to be self cleaned: https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1590736220199735296?c...
As a programmer my first thought reading this was: If I was designing a program to send me back a message and it was super critical I received it, I wouldn't put any quotes or non-alphanumerics in the message. Even if my string handling checks out, if the stakes are sufficiently high, I don't trust em!
Perhaps one day we'll achieve something like that. Heck, maybe we'll send up the grandchild of ChatGPT to be the voice of a future exploration probe. But that's not what we have today. These messages were coded by the engineers who built the thing, and any implication of sentiment is bogus.
I'm confused on why the end state for all these rovers is to loose power because of dust on the solar cells. They did such a good job engineering these things to survive the trip and the conditions in general, but they can't give them "windshield wipers for dust"? Seems like with that minor upgrade they could have much longer lifespan. Can someone enlighten me?
I am sure it comes down to economics really, but I do wonder now about a mission in far future, that would clean solar panels of all those older missions to make them work again. For shits and giggles I guess.
As a programmer my first thought reading this was: If I was designing a program to send me back a message and it was super critical I received it, I wouldn't put any quotes or non-alphanumerics in the message. Even if my string handling checks out, if the stakes are sufficiently high, I don't trust em!
If I was designing such a message I'd make sure there is a lot of redundancy in the message so even if I only received part of it I could figure out what it was. Adding quotes and other non-alphanumerics can add more clues that make the message unique enough to identify it even when significant amounts of the data are lost in transmission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_detection_and_correction...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding (1), almost all of these Mars robots seem to do useful science well beyond the end of the stated mission, I think the OP was suggesting that maybe it’s time we start trying out solutions for much longer duration missions ? (2) - could it be possible to introduce an oppositely static charged layer on the panel surface to repel dust to stop it settling in the first place ?
> almost all of these Mars robots seem to do useful science well beyond the end of the stated mission How are we defining "useful science" here? They all do some kind of scientific investigations, but it's hard to say if it's useful or not. If you look at coverage or discussions about the lander (including here), people get very excited about the landings, and somewhat excited about the pictures. The science almost n…
The reason engineering exists is to be useful: to create artifacts and technology to make our lives better, easier, etc.
But science only has three uses: to inform engineering; to satisfy our human curiosity; and to beget more science. Any "usefulness" here is of a very narrow scope. I don't mean to say that it's not important, but that's not the same as being useful.