Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

online.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 106 posts

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#31

Post by vlad »

A quick take on the project.

Software Architect: "Hello sir! As you know, it has taken millions to billions of dollars and years of time to develop your project. We are ready to launch! As you know, it will take a year to actually deploy it in production, during which point a bug or misconfiguration of the software during the transfer, installation, or activation stages would cause it to fail. If a failure happens, we will need millions of dollars and lots of time to rebuild the project, as well as to figure out what went wrong and to try again. However, if we do succeed in installing the project as we hope, we expect will be able to run for ten years without updates. If you do need an update or if an error is encountered or the hardware deteriorates (such as because of a memory error, hard-drive crash, etc.), then parts of the application never work again. Also, as a reminder, the user will have to wait many hours after submitting input before receiving acknowledgement from the system, and many days to receive even partial results."

Customer: "Thank you for your report. It sounds great. I have one suggestion. Lets make sure that when ask the system for an image, we use the .BMP format to increase the file size. This way, we can please the media with numbers about how much raw data we have obtained."

Software Architect: "This will take additional time and millions of dollars and not be much of a benefit."

Customer: "Ok, fine let's skip that."

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#32

Post by reitzensteinm »

EternalFury wrote: post #19
opminion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the $100 camera fails in Mars you can't just replace it with another one. You can't take it to the repair shop either. You can't try to "shake it a bit". Hell, you can't even bang it on your knee: http://www.pechorin.com/m/2006/06/13/SONY_Cybershot_E6100_ER...

You know, I didn't claim to understand the reasons behind the technical limitations, but the reactions of some of you are puzzling to me. We can go on and on about familiarity considerations, and planning considerations, and instrumentation considerations, and scientific concerns, etc. It all sounds like excuses after a bit. Let's reformulate the question: Why not keep the same enclosure, the same lens assembly, the…

Say you were developing a website, and once you get the first real life visitor, you can't SSH in any more; it's set in stone forever. Would you swap out a JSON parser on your backend just before you ship? They're functionally equivalent, and should be interchangeable, right? Your unit tests say it's fine, so what's the problem?

Any kind of change is adding risk to a project that costs billions of dollars.

The rover a one of a kind project, and any issues are set in stone before any kind of real world testing can be done.

If anything, the team should be praised for being conservative enough that they managed to pull it off with success.

You're right that dropping an extra 20 megapixel camera in there would be less risky than changing the main lens; but it's still an unspecced addition to the plan. I don't blame them for choosing not to.

In the future when launch costs are cheaper, people with a hacker approach are going to make rovers on their own. Lots of experimental designs, safety in numbers, and they'll do amazing things.

But when you've got one shot, your risk profile makes you conservative in the extreme.

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#33

Post by monkeytaco »

EternalFury wrote: post #20
bertako wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so plebian to complain about the image quality, especially when we haven't seen any full images from the rover's main camera yet.

It may even be "plebeian" to ask questions about the technical features of a data collection instrument named "Curiosity". I should have been an aristocrat instead of an engineer ; I could marvel at everything wrapped in the bliss of my ignorance. And for the record, I think it is amazing and wonderful to receive these images. I am so thankful for that. But, for a data collection instrument that cost $2.6 billion to…

The $2.6 billion price tag is not just for the rover, it includes R&D for the rover itself, employee salaries, Sky Crane & parachute R&D as well as the rocket to launch it, which cost over $100 million.

Also included in the budget is funding needed for all of the science teams to do what they do over the next few years while the rover does experiments.

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#34

Post by uvdiv »

jser wrote: post #17
EternalFury wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! The reason seems to be: It's the way it was planned 10 years ago and we don't go back on planning on a project like this one.

Several articles have mentioned bandwidth limitations of about 250 megabits per day, which also has to be used to send instrument data. But I haven't seen an explanation why bandwidth is so low -- is it lack of spectrum? Interference issues?

The bandwidth to the orbiters is up to 2 Mbps, but because they're in low orbit they're only in sight 8 minutes per day.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/communicationwithearth/...

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#35

Post by [deleted] »

jser wrote: post #17
EternalFury wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! The reason seems to be: It's the way it was planned 10 years ago and we don't go back on planning on a project like this one.

Several articles have mentioned bandwidth limitations of about 250 megabits per day, which also has to be used to send instrument data. But I haven't seen an explanation why bandwidth is so low -- is it lack of spectrum? Interference issues?

[deleted]

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#36

Post by yaix »

EternalFury wrote: post #8
sunsu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this discussion and article from earlier today: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360502

Thanks! The reason seems to be: It's the way it was planned 10 years ago and we don't go back on planning on a project like this one.

Maybe Instagramm built the camera?

But seriously, I guess for the same reason Couriosity runs on old PowerPC processors. They are just well tested and less likely to fail. If you want a high res image, you can always take 10 images and glue them together, result is the same.

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#38

Post by Cogito »

jorgem wrote: post #28

I am surprised by how many good sized pebbles are on the top surfaces of curiosity. I guess I expect dust, but those are pretty big. Kicked up during the landing?

I had assumed that they were blown there by the wind. I'm sure it's just as likely they settled after being kicked up during the landing.

[EDIT] From the nasa website [1]:

Today's Sol 3 morning and afternoon passes by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft provided a plethora of new data, including more high-resolution black-and-white 360-degree and deck panorama images from her Navigation Camera, or Navcam, which revealed some small pebbles deposited on the deck during landing, which should pose no problems for mission operations. Curiosity also returned 130 low-resolution thumbnail images from the color Mast Camera, or Mastcam, providing scientists and engineers with their first color panorama glimpse of Gale Crater.

[1] http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAct...

Re: Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

#39

Post by 10098 »

eta_carinae wrote: post #26

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this piece of metal traveled 350 million miles through space and then landed on Mars.

Me too. I mean, look at this. The place looks like a desert on Earth, and yet its millions of miles away in space, on another planet. There's a certain feeling I experience when I look at those photos, like there is a vast, cold void inside of my chest. I felt something similar when I touched a meteorite for the first time. That rock came here from god knows where, probably it was floating around in space for many many years, and now here I am holding it.
Post reply on HN