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‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#81

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Communitivity wrote: post #63
simonswords82 wrote: post #19

Interesting thread on why it's not possible for the solar panels to be self cleaned: https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1590736220199735296?c...

I am seeing a lot of comments along the lines of 'windshield wipers?' Cars were invented in 1886, the first windshield wipers became available for them in 1917, 31 years later. That is... - in an environment with plenty of water - not near waterless, - on glass windshields (much less fragile than solar panels), - where we can physically replace the wipers when needed, - where we can adjust if they get stuck, - and wh…

The tweet thread itself doesn't say that using self cleaning panels would be impossible, or even that hard, just that it's easier and more cost effective to just bring bigger panels. Not of your bullet points seem that relevant honestly - using an equivalent of a leaf blower would do the trick. But any added complexity to a mission just means there are more failure points.

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#82

Post by stavros »

bamboozled wrote: post #3
prettyStandard wrote: post #2

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?

Windshield wipers add weight and complexity but more importantly add to the budget. These things are designed only to serve the mission. This rover was designed to last 1 year and went for 4 so it’s a pretty good result. Some good discussion here [1] on Astronomy Cast regarding this topic and potential solutions NASA is working on. Such as an electrostatic dust blaster. 1. https://podcasts.apple.com/vu/podcast/astron…

But why windshield wipers? The panels look like they extended somehow, so why can't we simply retract them so that enough dust falls off?

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#83

Post by CWuestefeld »

Clamchop wrote: post #48
CWuestefeld wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was pretty annoying that the communications are put forth here as if the lander is an animate thing engaging in conversation with us. 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 s…

Because the messages were written by people, the sentiment is more authentic than anything made by gpt.

The messages were written by the very people that they are ostensibly sent to. It's sock-puppeting.

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#84

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

logicallee wrote: post #32
simonswords82 wrote: post #19

Interesting thread on why it's not possible for the solar panels to be self cleaned: https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1590736220199735296?c...

After reading your note "why it's not possible for the solar panels to be self cleaned" I clicked through and as I clicked I was thinking "okay so obviously it is possible for the solar panels to self-clean. prove me wrong." I mean how hard could it be? No way is that an "impossible" task. 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 t…

This reply completely misses the point. All missions have an expected lifespan. The reason why they didn't use some sort of cleaning system is simply because it wasn't needed. The lander gathered all the data it was expected to, and then some. Why add complexity if it isn't useful?

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#85

Post by brrwind »

Mistletoe wrote: post #76
simonswords82 wrote: post #19

Interesting thread on why it's not possible for the solar panels to be self cleaned: https://twitter.com/NASAInSight/status/1590736220199735296?c...

Who decided to anthropomorphize the rover like that? It’s creepy and honestly scientifically dishonest, like the rover has intelligence and is writing the posts. Something for children, but children hate being fooled like that and being talked down to. It’s something I might expect from the current version of NASA though.

It's... the twitter profile of the rover, it's not that big of a deal

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#86

Post by fdvbvvgh »

zander312 wrote: post #61
_joel wrote: post #38

So long Insight! Pleasure having some flash memory that was sent with you, there's a few bytes that have my name in it.

Woah that is so cool. What did the bytes do? Was it code for the lander?

[flagged]

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#88

Post by SkyBelow »

bnralt wrote: post #28
danw1979 wrote: post #9

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…

It is a bit like asking how exactly does the XGB matrix build in stable diffusion create images. We know the end result that is produced, but we can't pick a single number and talk about what it contributes to the overall algorithm. I would even guess that you could replace any single number with another random value within the appropriate range and you wouldn't be able to tell which AI was before and after. The links each item serves is too complex to work out.

In the same way, any single 'act of science' can be hard to measure. They enable some experiments, which allow us to test some hypothesis. In some cases it is simple enough to point out when it is testing hypothesis that end up benefitting humanity, but that's only part of the effect. Many times a hypothesis is either rejected or fails to be rejected and slightly influences a larger theory which in turn is used to create new hypothesis. This creates a circular reference until some time later we end up with a theory that is useful for improving humanity. But which hypothesis were actually pivotal to forming the theory? Which acts of science allowed testing a hypothesis and receiving a clear enough failure that future effort was reallocated to other, eventually more fruitful, areas? Other than trivial cases, the cause and effect becomes such a tangled web we can't be sure.

You even have the publicity side. Where sometimes the effect isn't directly contributing to the theory, but engaging more attention to a field which leads to more children choosing the route of becoming a scientist.

Math has a similar issue. Much of pure mathematics has no known or foreseeable application. Yet, we can look back at what math does have very useful applications and see how many times the math predated the application being found, sometimes by long enough gaps that those who discovered the tools never saw them to be applied.

Re: ‘My power’s low’: NASA’s Insight Mars lander prepares to sign off

#90

Post by fdvbvvgh »

jcadam wrote: post #64
zander312 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah that is so cool. What did the bytes do? Was it code for the lander?

I assume it's this: https://www.space.com/38413-your-name-on-mars-nasa-insight-l...

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