Mars Curiosity Landing, NASA doing awesome shit ITT

[Smuggo]

I thought it was only running for 23months?

They always say that about satellites, probes and rovers In reality NASA is very good at making do with what they have so I would imagine, unless the rover breaks, the actual mission duration will be much longer than that.

I guess it is safe to say we'll atleast get some pretty awesome pictures for the next 23months from it

Afaik the 23 months is how long the mission has secured funding for, but the plutonium power source in Curiosity is expected to last 10 years, maybe more, so provided they can keep obtaining funding and at least some of the instruments work then it can continue sending back science data for far longer than two years. See the two Voyager probes for examples of things like this really running far longer than was ever intended at launch. We can only hope NASA is able to keep providing funding.

[Kransthow]

I thought it was only running for 23months?

Opportunity was designed with an operational lifetime of 90 days.

Curiosity was designed with an operational lifetime of 15 years.

[dzajic]

Well MERs had it lucky with their solar arrays that every now and then a strong wind would clean them (I still can't imagine how can you even have wind in such rarefied atmosphere, let alone have it scrape solar panels clean of dust, but I've seen pictures of Martian sandstorms and dust devils, I know its there and real). MSL being RTG powered, once they (isotope supplies) decay too much it will inadvertently loose sufficient power to move or do experiments. But I think that is still a far longer period than those 24 months.

Edit. 90 days was supposed to be guaranteed minimal operational time for MERs. They were always expecting/hoping them to last much longer, not as long as precious little toy cars did, but much longer than 90 days.

[Th3GoodSon]

Curiosity's power pack is rated at 14 years. Here's hoping no crashes, failures or getting stuck!

Via HTC Sensation

[elmicker]

The half life of the plutonium used in the nuclear battery thingummy they've got is on the order of 90 years. For some context, Spirit was designed to generate about 140w for four hours per solar cycle, or 560Wh per day. There were periods towards the end of the rover's life where it was still happily running around and snapping pictures generating just 89Wh per day, or about 16% of what it was supposed to. Curiosity is basically going to last until its wheels fall off.

[ctrlchris]

Opportunity was designed with an operational lifetime of 90 days.

Curiosity was designed with an operational lifetime of 15 years.

A) It boggles me that opportunity was meant to go for 90 days and is still rocking around
B) inb4 curiosity breaks tomorrow

[Rakshasa The Cat]

Afaik the 23 months is how long the mission has secured funding for, but the plutonium power source in Curiosity is expected to last 10 years, maybe more, so provided they can keep obtaining funding and at least some of the instruments work then it can continue sending back science data for far longer than two years. See the two Voyager probes for examples of things like this really running far longer than was ever intended at launch. We can only hope NASA is able to keep providing funding.

Rated for 14 years of sufficient power to operate reliably iirc, minus the two year delay from the missed launch.

Also they are not 'meant to go' 23 months or 90 days, that's just for political reasons they choose those. If something goes wrong before the end of the mission it turns the project into a failure, so they choose the short missions and everything beyond that becomes 'bonus' and everyone is impressed.

[Warpath]

I thought it was only running for 23months?

According to Sky News earlier, the nuclear power supply can last 14+ years?

[Daco]

Yeah tbh I didn't really look up much about it was just told on IRC there was a stream so was like cool I am into space so this will be interesting. All I heard was someone said 23months I gathered it would run longer but yeah just clarifying.

[Lowa [NSN]]

I use the word awesome quite often but this is one the few times its truly appropriate!
After watching the pre-info, EDL sequence and all that shit I honestly didnt think this would work, it was just one step too many in my mind.
Not been so happy to be wrong in a long time and if there is a Nobel price in engineering they should get it, no contest.

[Perry]

[Rudolf Miller]

Science boners best boners.

[spasm]

[Pattern]

Meh,

Page me when we send robotic subs to europa, enceladus or titan.

[Aramendel]

[Fuggin]

Meh,

Page me when we send robotic subs to europa, enceladus or titan.

Now that we know the skycrane system works....I bet we see more of that...

[Fuggin]

[ctrlchris]

Fuck thats cool.

[Celedris]

Total project cost is about 8 days in Afghanistan and congress people still want to cut funding for NASA...

[Reed Tiburon]

Shit is awesome, from the explanation given I thought "No way is this gonna work."

And it's gonna last forever and take sugoi photos of kawaii rocks~

USA USA USA