
NASA fixes Mars lander by telling it to hit itself with a shovel - sixstringtheory
https://futurism.com/the-byte/nasa-mars-lander-hit-itself-shovel
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redis_mlc
For you space fanbois ...

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian space program put on a "world
tour" of their capsules and landers to raise cash. Museums could pay them to
setup a major staffed exhibit.

I had a chance to go when it was in SE Asia.

I got to:

\- stick my head inside one of the capsules and see the "gyro globe"

\- operate their lunar lander via a remote control

\- learn about their numerous trips to Venus.

One of the highlights of my life actually.

Also got to see the Red Arrows do a full formation takeoff with 9 planes at
high speed around the same time, and went to the Langkawi military air show.

After takeoff, they levelled off at 200' and accelerated to about 500 mph.
They were a blur against the trees just below them - totally awesome.

(In Asia and S. America, jet airshows are still allowed to do low-altitude and
supersonic flight over residential areas. Those are banned in Europe and N.
America because of numerous previous accidents.)

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_-___________-_
> Also got to see the Red Arrows do a full formation takeoff with 9 planes at
> high speed around the same time

I saw Blue Impulse (Japan's military aerobatics team) last year. One of the
most incredible things I've ever seen. Probably not too many airshows
happening at the moment, but if anyone ever gets a chance to go to one, don't
pass it up.

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martythemaniak
I feel that people that think robots are the future of space exploration don't
follow these missions too closely. Robots are terrible and not getting better
very quickly at all.

This thing has been trying to dig a small hole for more than a year, something
any person can do in about 15 minutes. In 8 years Curiosity has covered the
same distance as a long afternoon walk.

We're not gonna be able to send people to places like Europa, but any
meaningful Mars exploration will need people.

~~~
balfirevic
That's not clear at all. Part of the reason why these robots are not very
capable are very small mass budget and inability to iterate often, both due to
high cost of shipping stuff to Mars. Under those restrictions, humans are not
getting to Mars at all.

When those restrictions are relaxed enough to contemplate sending humans to
Mars, the robots will become much more capable too.

Disclaimer: I'd still love to see humans on Mars because it's exciting as
hell!

~~~
logicallee
> Part of the reason why these robots are not very capable are very small mass
> budget

"The InSight lander weighs 794 pounds (360 kilograms)"

[https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/faq/](https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/faq/)

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khafra
Are you implying that 794lbs is substantially heavier than a human, plus
supplies for over a year, plus the extra delta-v to lift the human and half
those supplies back up off Mars?

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gundmc
Good to see even NASA makes use of percussive maintenance with their
equipment.

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ASlave2Gravity
I always loved this video/music-video on percussive maintenance. It shows you
how much it's in the culture—and how good a successful whack feels!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=insM7oUYNOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=insM7oUYNOE)

~~~
supdatecron
That was clever, though I get the feeling someone spent 5+ years of their life
watching movies just to clip all the percussive maintenance haha

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ars
It's compiled from:
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMainte...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PercussiveMaintenance)

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rjvs
Surprise, the clickbait headline misrepresents what the original article they
were summarising said. They didn't hit it with a shovel, they used the shovel
to add pressure:

> In late February, the team moved on to what Spohn calls “plan C.” They
> positioned the scoop above the mole’s tail and pushed it straight down into
> the dirt.

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pengaru
Cool that they managed to get it digging.

The "mole" is actually an interesting bit of engineering, since they wanted to
dig to a depth of something like 16 ft IIRC, and obviously needed to keep the
weight down. It's a sort of self-hammering nail.

~~~
gmueckl
And it almost turned into a highly engineered dud producing no scientific
results for all the effort that went into it. I'm glad that they didn't give
up on it easily.

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verytrivial
They've previously coaxed the probe into the soil a few inches by applying
pressure to the side, only to have it auto-reverse out when the internal
hammer starts working after the pressure is released.

I can't find a reference to the specific dynamic process but it reminded me of
how larger stones 'float' to the top during vibration because smaller
stones/sand tend to fill the cavities below. To be honest I never had a feel
for how this was going to work and just assumed Martian soil has some
distinguishing features they'd tested before that would allow it to work.
Turns out, not so much ...

Let's see what happens when the scoop is retracted. Perhaps if the probe can
get entirely below the surface it will descend (at some funky angle now!)

~~~
klyrs
> I can't find a reference to the specific dynamic process...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_convection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granular_convection)

~~~
dirkc
> In astronomy, it is common in low density, or rubble pile asteroids, for
> example the asteroid 25143 Itokawa. and 101955 Bennu.

Didn't they also expect Bennu to be a sandy desert? Seems like this is new
knowledge to astronomy

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Shivetya
The article at [https://www.popsci.com/story/space/mars-mole-
plan-c/](https://www.popsci.com/story/space/mars-mole-plan-c/) is far much
better and reference by the futurism article

~~~
MaxBarraclough
Thanks. I think Futurism's web design is the worst I've ever seen used by a
seemingly serious outlet.

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spectramax
Just curious - why didn’t they test the probe in different types of soils here
on earth to see if it would get stuck? Or may be the article is twisting the
actual reason? The article just says “It got stuck because the soil was
clumpier than expected”. That can’t be the reason otherwise NASA would have
tested it.

~~~
zaarn
It might have been clumpier than all the mars emulation soil that NASA tested
the equipment with.

~~~
mjevans
Setting up an artificial Mars would involve different gravity, air pressure,
atmosphere composition, and the weathering patterns of the material are
probably difficult to predict.

Most of the reason to send a probe somewhere is to learn more about it, so I
assume the only knowledge was sparse and possibly inaccurate educated guesses
based on other data.

That's also probably a good reason to send up a wider tolerance, but less
useful design first and follow up with a more targeted design that can do more
as a revision on the product. Budgets are probably the reason to not do that.

~~~
zaarn
There is commercial soil available that mimics the conditions of martian soil
fairly well.

Gravity can be emulated by hanging the device from a spring (which you can
optionally adjust to always take X newtons of force via a computer
controller).

Atmosphere and weathering can be simulated in a vacuum chamber. All those
things can be put into a vacuum chamber to simulate low pressure.

This is how NASA is developing their drone for the upcoming missions that will
fly on mars and other celestial bodies.

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darkerside
I couldn't help posting this neural knee jerk:

[https://youtu.be/bifOI4MbHVU](https://youtu.be/bifOI4MbHVU)

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sebazzz
I never understood why they made this not a vehicle. Then they could have just
driven to a different spot, right?

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THE_PUN_STOPS
Yes, but by not being a vehicle you can allocate more schedule, weight, and
money to the science type stuff on board instead of the locomotion type stuff.

Engineering for space is all about brutal trade-offs.

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crooked-v
To emphasize this point, the InSight lander is five feet across and 800
pounds. Make all of that mobile, and either you need a substantially larger
and more expensive rocket, or you need to dump a bunch of the planned
equipment to free up mass.

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Kipters
1.5m and 362 kg

~~~
jeroenhd
Thanks

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pvaldes
Shovelnites will be pleased. Finally this shy creature introduced himself
using the official salute.

