Tomorrow, January 24th, is the anniversary of the landing of the rover Opportunity on the surface of Mars. This little scientific probe was designed to wander around the Red Planet taking pictures and analyzing samples for three months. That was nine years ago. Opportunity is still going strong as it rolls into year 10, although it is showing its age and travels in reverse much of the time due to a stuck wheel. But none of us are what we were, and we all would be damn lucky to exceed our design parameters by so much.
A shout out, too, to Opportunity’s twin, the rover Spirit, which stopped communicating with base in 2010. Even though the more sophisticated rover Curiosity has stolen their thunder over the last year or so, Spirit and Opportunity were the originals, and they are still true classics.
If you want to know more, watch the Nova documentary “Mars, Dead or Alive”, which follows the development of the twins and their successful landings on Mars. It is free for the streaming in several places on the ‘net, but be warned. This is a real three handkerchief show– as the scientists load the rovers into the spacecraft, they realize they will never see their beloved little robots again, and, well, things get little emotional. Do not watch this doc with other people in the room if you are sentimental.
The storyteller in me feels confident that human beings will see Spirit and Opportunity again, in person. And after that, in due time, they will be among the great historical treasures of the Martian people.
(I got the heads up about this story from USA Today here. image from universetoday.com)
While you’re at it keep your eyes peeled for “Tank on the Moon” which plays on the Discovery Channel or Science Channel every so often.
Unbeknownst at the time to even a space buff like me, the Soviets put not one but TWO rovers on the Moon during the early 70′s, concurrent with the Apollo missions. Both traveled many miles and did some very good science, and quite a bit of the basics for Mars rovers came straight out of their research. The head Soviet for the project even had a chance, post-breakup, to visit and consult with the West about his experiences.
A fascinating glance back at the Cold War and the space race.
I’m so going to look for that doc. I have a vague memory of some Soviet Moon rovers with long Russian names, but I don’t know anything about them and had no idea they were on the Moon at the same time as the Apollo missions. There’s a lot we in the West don’t know about the Soviet space program, and it’s really sort of criminal, considering that our astronauts are now dependent on a developed version of classic Soviet technology for transportation.
If memory serves, they had originally planned to stick a thumb in America’s eye by landing the first on the moon just a couple months before the Apollo 11 landing…but their big lifter rocket blew up on takeoff.
They had to start from scratch and rebuild the rover and it didn’t land until a couple years later.
I’ve loved these things for years… absolutely love the designs. So ugly they’re beautiful. And I don’t even want to know how much radiation they leaked all over the damn place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod
Meh, radiation on the Moon. No mutation, no foul.
Besides, after a further bit of thought, leaking radiation isn’t that big a deal, it’s when they start leaking radioactive materials that I begin to get concerned. Throwing out a few hundred REM’s here and there? Ehh…go elsewhere, or wear protective clothing. Dribbling out loose bits of plutonium on the other hand…
Concern for radiation is not for any indigenous life but for the folks who designed it and who installed the nuclear heat source (I’m sure the Soviets were extremely careful with their nuclear projects… cough cough) . Also, since I know that someday we will colonize our solar system, I’m thinking it’ll be hard to put them in any sort of museum without major decontamination. Maybe a quonset hut to shield it from solar degradation and micrometeorites- presumably moon tourist space suits would be radiation-shielded. Or maybe (probably) people will simply visit it through telepresence.
My favorite design feature is the lid. I like that it really, literally, was a lid- it flipped closed at night to keep itself warm and flipped open during the day so the solar panel on the inside could charge the batteries. Yes, it looks like a tub or an apple basket, but it also resembles a potty. A wheeled, robotic, nuclear-powered commode with TV cameras that went to the moon. What hath science wrought?
Note the part of the article that talks about how the design was resurrected and used to help clean up the Chernyobl disaster.
Fascinating! And I agree that this rover is charming to look at– it looks like a laundry basket or one of those tubs people use to hold apples during apple picking. Nuclear powered apple tub on the Moon. Awesome.