How JPL keeps the 13-year-old Curiosity rover doing science

spectrum.ieee.org
pseudolus
5 hours ago
138points
25 comments

Comments

rented_mule3 hours ago
The total cost of Curiosity to date is well under 5% of the cost of the recent trip humans took around the moon (something like $3B vs. $90B, or $20 vs. $600 per US taxpayer). Imagine the amount of science that could get done if we gave even half the budget of crewed spaceflight to rover / probe style exploration.
thegrim332 hours ago
Yes, and Curiosity weighs 899kg, whereas a single SLS launch can put 26,988kg of robots, cargo, and humans into trans-lunar orbit.
andyjohnson02 hours ago
> Curiosity [...] has traveled nearly 37 kilometers, drilled into and sampled 42 different rocks, and as of publication has snapped nearly 763,000 photos.

Without in any way minimising the amazing scientific and engineering achievements of the team and the rover: we need crewed space exploration because people on Mars would be able to do the above in significantly less than thirteen years. Or, to put it another way, would do much more science in the same amount of time.

0cf8612b2e1e6 minutes ago
Can we realistically send humans to Mars plus the return trip? I would maybe believe we can do a one way trip and leave those astronauts to die after they snap some pictures.
Thrymr2 hours ago
> much more science in the same amount of time.

I'm not convinced by the time argument, as astronauts would have limited time on Mars dictated by orbital mechanics and return schedules, but the bigger problem is cost. You are replying to a comment about how rovers and probes are cost effective; there is no way that crewed exploration could accomplish more science than Mars rovers without orders of magnitude more cost.

tkcashman2 hours ago
A manned mission to Mars isn't even on the table yet (sorry, Elon) until we solve several huge problems, including cosmic radiation, landing heavy payloads, and a feasible alternative to chemical propulsion (most likely nuclear, but untested).
peterburkimsher7 minutes ago
Not to mention supplying astronauts with food and managing their waste for 6+ months.
rented_mule2 hours ago
And if we're keeping costs proportional, send orders of magnitude more rovers and that helps the time argument for rovers as well.
jahnu1 hour ago
I’m no expert of course but I get the impression that we’re trying to run before we can walk. Many more robotic missions and way more basic research done more scientifically first could quite plausibly get humans there quicker in the end. Reading A City on Mars I found myself thinking this is many orders of magnitude more complicated than Apollo and will take more time.
ccamrobertson1 hour ago
...and further imagine the science that could be done if we mass manufactured probes rather than using experimental engineering for each one. We could have had dozens of Voyager probes in the outer reaches of our solar system by now.

I would have loved to see more Huygens probes dropped to the surface of Titan or more New Horizons zoom past Pluto.

I don't think human spaceflight is to blame, rather it's what connects taxpayers to space exploration as an inspirational human pursuit. But, I do agree that can be more efficient with how we spend those dollars all around.

zitterbewegung1 hour ago
Much easier to get a moon mission due to politics .
zbendefy3 hours ago
Maybe we would get a microphone on mars. Just kidding i know air pressure is vastly different, but still it would be cool to listen to ambient sound from there
boxfire3 hours ago
Mars 2020 has a microphone. You can probably find audio out there but here’s some:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/soun...

drstewart1 hour ago
Suddenly HN is very pro automating human jobs with machines because it's cheaper
bezier-curve16 minutes ago
The moon is probably the only celestial body humans can actually occupy with current technology, for every other object in the solar system we need robots.
squeedles2 hours ago
Was excited to hear that they have a lower power rad-hard snapdragon system going into the new missions! The RAD 750 is basically a 30-year old IBM RS-6000. Very well known, but has been the goto CPU for way longer than I thought it would be.
themafia11 minutes ago
It turns out GNC is significantly easier than rendering a video game. You don't even need that fast of a control loop. Your bigger concern is legitimate real time processing over raw compute power.

Otherwise, we have shown, if you need power, send the astronaut up there with a laptop. Which is far easier to replace and upgrade as years advance.

ezst4 hours ago
Curiosity is a teenager now? Damn, I didn't need to feel this much older today..
NooneAtAll322 minutes ago
bepicolombo arrives on Mercury this autumn too
MinimalAction3 hours ago
I am happy to know this emblem of knowledge stream keeps coming until 2035. It is wonderful to know our innovations have flown 200 odd million miles and work for so long!
beastman822 hours ago
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for those who are missing basic writing standards.
xp842 hours ago
JPL has been around for over 80 years now -- I'm not sure that assuming basic familiarity with it, among people who would care about the Curiosity rover, is even a controversial choice, let alone 'substandard' writing.

I think especially for an organization like JPL, where the name is far from a full description of what they're currently about anyway, people tend to just think of them as 'JPL' rather than how we think of, say, the United Nations.

Edit: Also, all a reader even needs to know is what the sentence already directly implies -- that "JPL" are the ones in charge of operating Curiosity. It's like saying "How AMR Corp keeps American Airlines flying during challenging times for aviation"

DharmaPolice2 hours ago
I do care about the Curiosity rover but I'll be honest that I only know JPL from The Martian.
bruckie45 minutes ago
The first line of the article starts out "Thirteen years ago last August, I was camped out in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory press room..."