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After decades in space, three intrepid robot explorers seem to have reached the end of their lives after living well beyond their original goals. Of course, this is not a coincidence, because scientists plan their missions this way.
The rover robot Opportunity has been on the Red Planet for almost 15 years as part of a mission that is expected to last 90 days. With smart planning, the Kepler Space Telescope, a four-year mission launched in 2009, has been extended for nine years through intelligent planning. The Dawn mission on an asteroidal planet and a dwarf planet lasted eleven years. .
If only our cars went so well beyond the guarantee
Deep space exploration is expensive, especially with shrinking budgets, so scientists often only request funding for short-term missions. Time is money after all. Either way, the essence of science occurs at the start, when a robot lands for the first time on a planet or pbades near another world. But robots must be made difficult to survive in the hostile environment of space, which means that they are usually able to do much more than the stated goal at the same time. origin. And scientists plan a lot more, they stay silent until the mission is started.
Artistic reproduction of NASA's Dawn probe while she was heading to Ceres. (NASA)
In the case of the Twin Rovers Opportunity and Spirit, who landed on Mars in 2004, their 90-day core mission was accomplished with ease. After that, the scientists said that the spacecraft always worked perfectly. Could they then pursue them? This provided them with additional funding to continue, which ultimately exceeded anyone's expectations. Spirit lasted until 2010 and Opportunity remained silent last June, when a dust storm swept the entire planet and scientists have been unable to contact him since.
In both cases, the mobiles are not dead because of mechanical problems. Spirit is stuck in soft sand and Opportunity's solar panels are so covered in dust that they can not absorb enough sunlight to keep the batteries charged. If anyone could ride there and push Spirit out of the sand, then use a broom to sweep Opportunity, the rovers could probably continue. In fact, NASA engineers will be listening to Opportunity until January, just in case the winds clear the dust from the solar panels of the little tread and it comes back to life. But the opportunity may well be lost.
Fixing problems that occur on a machine that is millions of miles away is a daunting task. And if that can not be solved, scientists will find ways to get around the problem.
Of course, it's always a bittersweet moment when they arrive at the end of their lives, shutting themselves up in a foreign world or drifting endlessly across space, but when they do, it's always with a huge sense of pride that we have accomplished so much. with so little.– Bob McDonald, Quirks & Quarks
The revolutionary Kepler telescope, which has discovered more than 2,500 planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy, has encountered problems with its gyroscopes that keep it oriented in space. Normally, everything would be over, but scientists have found a way to use the low pressure of sunlight so that the telescope is directed in a direction in space, that they rotate between different places every 80 days in using the body of the telescope. the spaceship as a solar sail to keep it stable. This trick allowed the instrument to continue to explore the sky for another five years, until it ran out of fuel.
This illustration provided by NASA shows the Kepler Space Telescope. The spaceship hunting the planet has been in space for almost a decade. (NASA / Associated Press)
Space Explorers Recorders
The absolute record holders for the extended warranty missions are the Voyagers twins, who left the Earth in 1977 with the goal of pbading near the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 eventually continued to Uranus and Neptune. And now, the two spacecraft completely leave the solar system, still sending back information about interstellar space more than 40 years later.
Robotic explorers really go where no one has gone before. It is our artificial senses that open our eyes to worlds that man has never seen before. Scientists who have been treating them for decades, surmounting broken gyroscopes, broken computers or stuck wheels, treat them like pets that have been sent very far from home to discover new environments. But most of them make a one-way trip to never go home. Of course, it's always a bittersweet moment when they arrive at the end of their lives, shutting themselves up in a foreign world or drifting endlessly across space, but when they do, it's always with a huge sense of pride that we have accomplished so much. with so little.
This artist rendering released by NASA shows the NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft sneaking into space. (NASA / Associated Press)
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