NASA fixes Mars lander by telling it to hit itself with a shovel
futurism.com
futurism.com
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.)
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.
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.
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!
"The InSight lander weighs 794 pounds (360 kilograms)"
NASA is a politicized bureaucracy that has its hands tied behind its back. It cannot afford to take risks (both from a budget point of view and a politics point of view; failed missions are a wound to national pride). It cannot afford to hire the best and brightest because government payroll levels can't match industry wages.
NASA is mired in old engineering superstition and has wrapped all progress in procedures that make it impossible to iterate quickly. They've made hardware and software decisions produced for them by niche industries that charge 10-20x consumer prices for inferior hardware that is certified by NASA standards.
NASA is not the organization that made it to the Moon anymore.
We will, just probably not in the next 20 years or so.
> 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.
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.
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!)
Didn't they also expect Bennu to be a sandy desert? Seems like this is new knowledge to astronomy
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.
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.
I’m sure on earth you can find soil both softer and harder. They didn’t make it to work against any kind of soil or rock you could ever encounter on earth because that is optimizing for the wrong thing at the cost of others.
Engineering for space is all about brutal trade-offs.
You could make an "unlimited" suply of high quality lenses to replace broken ones, replace small pieces or even fix small cracks in space hatches. If you can make a glass table in situ you don't need to pack it. You can just pack a set of legs for a small table and made it extensible to fit a bigger surface later (Metallic spacial furniture should be printed as a mess of spongy filaments in any case to reduce weigth without losing resistence). And another important matherial that will be needed at some time is the optical fiber, of course.
I assume that heating sand to 1400 degree would be expensive but possible in a combustion chamber with modified pressure and all rockets have some kind of this.
The need to cool the melted glass fast to harden it should not be a problem in Mars. Just put it outside. And there is plenty of sand available.