{"id":52283,"date":"2012-08-06T11:52:47","date_gmt":"2012-08-06T15:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=52283"},"modified":"2012-08-06T15:34:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-06T19:34:59","slug":"for-curiositys-sake-from-moon-buggies-to-mars-rovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2012\/08\/for-curiositys-sake-from-moon-buggies-to-mars-rovers\/","title":{"rendered":"For Curiosity\u2019s Sake: From Moon Buggies to Mars Rovers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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"Seven minutes of sheer terror" ended when Mars rover Curiosity touched down.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He may be \u201cLightning\u201d Bolt, but Curiosity, the buggy now beginning its two-year mission on Mars, draws its power from 10.6 pounds of plutonium dioxide.<\/p>\n

In a week dominated by the Olympics, it has taken a successful mission to the Red Plant, capped by what NASA officials earlier described as \u201cseven minutes of sheer terror\u201d to grab some headlines.\u00a0 The successful, if tricky landing means a 6-legged, unmanned rover packed with science gear might soon be able to offer hints as to whether life once grabbed a tenuous foothold on Mars.<\/p>\n

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Your Trusted Source for News and Reviews!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dubbed Curiosity, it is the most sophisticated in a line of rovers that date back to the days of the Apollo era when astronauts on a series of moon landings were able to extend their range with the help of a lunar equivalent to the dune buggy.<\/p>\n

How do the various rovers compare?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Lunar Rover, or LRV served on Apollo missions 15, 16 and 17.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The former Soviet Union launched several primitive devices, starting with Lunokhod 1, in 1970.\u00a0 The first rover worked for 11 months, Lunokhod 2 for just four months, sending back pictures and analyzing the soil, but traveling only short distances.<\/p>\n

The only manned models ever taken into space were known as the Lunar Roving Vehicles, or LRVs, battery-powered four-wheelers that served \u00a0Apollo missions 15, 16 and 17.\u00a0 Developed in part by General Motors, they were as stripped down as possible to permit them to be loaded onto a Saturn V for launch, on them to fold up inside a cargo bay inside the Apollo mission\u2019s Lunar Excursion Module, or LEM.<\/p>\n

Power was provided by what was, for the time, a highly sophisticated 36-volt silver-zinc potassium hydroxide batteries.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t rechargeable, which didn\u2019t matter on a one-way mission like Apollo. The key was the battery pack\u2019s durability in the moon\u2019s devastating environment.\u00a0 Maximum range was 57 miles, though the longest distance driven was 22.3 miles on Apollo 17 \u2013 with the astronauts never getting more than 4.7 miles from their LEM base.<\/p>\n

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Bridgestone's moon buggy ad.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Incidentally, despite a humorous Bridgestone ad that ran last year suggesting moon buggy tires might be worth stealing, regular, inflatable rubber tires wouldn\u2019t have worked in the zero-atmosphere environment.\u00a0 Instead, the LRV\u2019s \u201cresilient wheels\u201d had titanium chevrons, or plates, covering a weave of metal around an aluminum disc.<\/p>\n

The Apollo mission ended in 1972 and it took another quarter century before the a rover\u00a0 was again to reach alien soil. In 1997, a 23-pound craft named Sojourner rolled out of a fixed base ship called the Mars Pathfinder.\u00a0 It boasted limited range and functionality, but showed that a vehicle operating somewhat autonomously could extend man\u2019s reach off the planet.<\/p>\n

Sojourner was the proof in concept for another rover mission launched into space \u2013 or two rovers, to be more precise \u2013 in 2003.\u00a0 Dubbed Spirit and Opportunity, these little buggies, not much bigger than the remote controlled cars many hobbyists play with, were heading for a much further destination than the LRVs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
NASA sent two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to Mars in 2003. One is still operating.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The two crafts landed in January 2004 and were expected to function for just 90 days each. \u00a0In fact, Spirit continued to roam the Red Planet until getting stuck in a sand pit in 2009.\u00a0 Opportunity continues to operate, roving the surface around Mars\u2019 equator on a series of new missions not even conceived of when it was launched.<\/p>\n

The two crafts each boast six legs mounted to what is, for practical purposes, a little boogie board.\u00a0 The design allows the two rovers to skitter over surprisingly large obstacles \u2013 though deep sand appears to have been an insurmountable obstacle.\u00a0 Each wheel has its own motor and power is generated from solar panels then stored in a set of batteries \u2013 which were originally expected to be the weak links that would give out after 90 days.<\/p>\n

While the Apollo\u2019s LRV could move with reasonable haste, Spirit and Opportunity were designed to march forward at barely 2 inches a second.\u00a0 And their early autonomous object-detection software required them to stop ever 10 to 20 seconds to observe the terrain and decide how to proceed next.<\/p>\n

While the moon is only a couple seconds away, communicating with Mars takes precious minutes, depending on its position relative to the Earth as it revolves around the Sun.\u00a0 So, like the little skateboards, the big Curiosity lander also had to be designed to make a series of autonomous decisions \u2013 starting with its perilous landing.<\/p>\n

That Rube Goldberg-like process began with the spacecraft holding the rover turning its head shield into the thin Martian atmosphere at 13,000 miles an hour. As its speed decreased the heat shield was discarded and a massive parachute was deployed.\u00a0 As the craft descended it needed to slow even more, something the chute couldn\u2019t achieve in the thin air so a rocket-powered \u201cbackpack\u201d fired up, descending until it was just above the rust-red surface, Curiosity being lowered the rest of the way on a cable.\u00a0 The cord released, the backpack flew off before crashing to the ground.<\/p>\n

NASA had good reason to be worried considering a string of other rover-equipped Mars landers, including the Soviet\u2019s Mars 2 and 3, and America\u2019s Beagle 2, crashed as they attempted to land.<\/p>\n

After traveling 354 miles over the course of 263 days \u2013 at speeds of up to 54,000 mph \u2013 Curiosity will now move at a snail\u2019s pace, barely 1.5 inches a second, or less than a tenth a mile per hour.\u00a0 As it has an anticipated range from its landing point of barely 15 miles, that\u2019s probably more than enough.<\/p>\n

Though sized somewhere between a Smart fortwo and a Fiat 500, at 129-inches length, the 6-wheeled Mars buggy is as wide as the original Hummer H1, at 109 inches.\u00a0 It measures 87 inches high, or more than a Ford F-150 Raptor pickup.\u00a0 And its total payload is just 88 pounds.\u00a0 Of course, since Mars\u2019 gravity is only 38% of Earth\u2019s, that\u2019s more than you might think.<\/p>\n

As with Spirit and Opportunity, the unmanned Curiosity has to operate autonomously.\u00a0 One-way communications times can reach a maximum 13.5 minutes so it would otherwise be impossible to function effectively.\u00a0 But controllers on Earth can upload extensive software commands to get the craft to do their bidding.<\/p>\n

Unlike the earlier Mars landers, Curiosity won\u2019t have to worry about keeping its solar panels aimed.\u00a0 The craft uses 10.6 pounds of nuclear fuel to operate its six individually powered wheels, radios, cameras, science lab and a 43.3-inch robotic arm.<\/p>\n

While America\u2019s space program may be struggling for budget during the current fiscal belt tightening, few expect Curiosity to be the last rover to leave Earth\u2019s confines:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • The increasingly ambitious Chinese are looking to send the unmanned Chang\u2019e 3 to the moon in 2013;<\/li>\n
  • India also wants to dig some lunar soil with a mobile craft it calls Chandrayaan-II that is set for a 2014 launch;<\/li>\n
  • NASA, meanwhile, is exploring several rover projects including the six-legged ATHLETE, or All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer, Scarab and SEV, or the Space Exploration Vehicle.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Beyond that? Perhaps we\u2019ll see something from private industry.\u00a0 Several firms have this year announced interest in mining asteroids.\u00a0 They\u2019ll need some help and a new rover could be the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In a week dominated by the Olympics, it has taken a successful mission to the Red Planet, capped by what NASA officials earlier described as \u201cseven minutes of sheer terror\u201d to grab some headlines. The landing of rover Opportunity is, however, just the latest in a series of space buggies sent to the moon and Mars — and there’ll be still more to come, reports TheDetroitBureau.com. Here’s how they compare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52284,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"make":[],"post-state":[],"category_old":[151],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52283"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52283"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=52283"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=52283"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=52283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}