Rovers, Probes, and Uncrewed Craft In General

[Irrev-Black]

Upside-down, Miss Jane!

https://gizmodo.com/japan-slim-lander-f ... 1851196531

[Irrev-Black]

72 successful flights out of a planned five: not bad going, little copter!

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/n ... ed-planet/

[Irrev-Black]

Voyager 2 checks in:

https://bne.social/@NSFVoyager2@techhub ... 8191535125

[stylofone]

I've expressed cynicism about the vast expense of some of the current human spaceflight projects, but the missions on this thread so far are all great, especially Voyager. It is awe-inspiring. Little updates like this prompt me to check on the status of the probes, and others like Pioneer 10 and 11. The last signals from them were received in 2003 and 1995. The two Voyagers could run out of puff next year. It will be bittersweet when they do, but if we are lucky they might last longer and still be sending signals after 2030.

[stylofone]

I didn't know about this project, and this Mastodon post explains it well.

https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/ ... 3745277853

[Irrev-Black]

Voyager 2 checks in:

https://bne.social/@NSFVoyager2@techhub ... 8191535125

https://bne.social/@NSFVoyager2@techhub ... 1966793386

[Irrev-Black]

Work? The SLIM lander can do that standing on its head.

Japan's Moon lander has resumed operations after being shut for a week due to a power supply issue.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said it re-established contact with the lander Sunday night, indicating that the glitch had been fixed.

Its solar cells are working again after a shift in lighting conditions allowed it to catch sunlight, the agency said.

It could not generate power when it landed on 20 January as the solar cells pointed away from the sun.

With the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) spacecraft, Japan became only the fifth country to achieve a soft touchdown on the moon after the US, the former Soviet Union, China and India.

The spacecraft ran on battery power for several hours before authorities decided to turn it off to allow for a possible recovery of electricity when the angle of sunlight changed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68125589

[Irrev-Black]

Ingenuity was made with off-the-shelf parts.

Ingenuity was groundbreaking in two significant ways that will ripple through the culture of NASA and its exploration efforts for decades to come. Although it is impossible to know the future, both of these impacts seem overwhelmingly positive for our efforts to divine the secrets of our Solar System.

First of all, and most obviously, NASA has now demonstrated that powered flight is possible on other worlds. This is an idea that's no longer theoretical; it's grounded in reality. "Engineering has absolutely shattered our paradigm of exploration by introducing this new dimension of aerial mobility," said Lori Glaze, NASA's overall director of planetary science.

In another, arguably more important way, Ingenuity may forever change the way NASA, other space agencies, and eventually private companies explore and settle the Solar System. The program did so by using commercial, off-the-shelf parts.

The scientists and engineers who built the helicopter had no choice. Flying on Mars is incredibly demanding. The air is so thin it is equivalent to flying at an elevation of 80,000 feet on Earth, or three times higher than the peak of Mount Everest. Helicopters on Earth can max out at an altitude of about 25,000 feet before the air is too thin to support the rotation of their blades. So to meet the demands of Mars, Ingenuity's designers had to be ruthless in their choices. They could not afford the mass of radiation-hardened components, like for batteries and computers.

So they bought commercially available parts and rolled the dice—with astonishing results. Many NASA missions will never be the same.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/n ... ploration/

[stevebrooks]

I've expressed cynicism about the vast expense of some of the current human spaceflight projects,

It's a conundrum for sure, but many people confuse the cost of projects with the actual result. Like, "we spent 300b sending a probe to Mars" makes it sound like they sent a ship full of money equal to 300b to Mars, whereas the vast majority of that money actually just went in a circle through the economy, and a thing worth a few million at the most ended up being launched off the ground and reaching Mars.

The problem is that circle tends to be interrupted by billionaires instead of the majority of that money ending up in workers pockets like should have, you can in the end trace everything back to actual worker input, the factories that made the metal to make the parts that go in the probe and the rocket provide income for the workers toiling away there, and at every stage that happens right up til they launch that rocket people are being paid money from that 300b.

Similar to when people complain about the US sending billions of dollars in aid to the Ukraine, no they didn't in fact send truckloads of money, the vast majority of that money was actually spent in the US and ended up recirculating back through the US economy. The value of a tank isn't for instance 50m, the value of a tank is the value of the work spent researching and building that tank, the experts and skilled workers time and effort putting it together, most of which remains in the US.

So the value placed on these projects is moot at best, they value they return is huge, horses for courses I suppose.

[stylofone]

I've expressed cynicism about the vast expense of some of the current human spaceflight projects,

It's a conundrum for sure, but many people confuse the cost of projects with the actual result. Like, "we spent 300b sending a probe to Mars" makes it sound like they sent a ship full of money equal to 300b to Mars, whereas the vast majority of that money actually just went in a circle through the economy, and a thing worth a few million at the most ended up being launched off the ground and reaching Mars.

The problem is that circle tends to be interrupted by billionaires instead of the majority of that money ending up in workers pockets like should have, you can in the end trace everything back to actual worker input, the factories that made the metal to make the parts that go in the probe and the rocket provide income for the workers toiling away there, and at every stage that happens right up til they launch that rocket people are being paid money from that 300b.

Similar to when people complain about the US sending billions of dollars in aid to the Ukraine, no they didn't in fact send truckloads of money, the vast majority of that money was actually spent in the US and ended up recirculating back through the US economy. The value of a tank isn't for instance 50m, the value of a tank is the value of the work spent researching and building that tank, the experts and skilled workers time and effort putting it together, most of which remains in the US.

So the value placed on these projects is moot at best, they value they return is huge, horses for courses I suppose.

Just to clarify, my cynicism is about the cost of HUMAN spaceflight, in particular Artemis, then the moonbase, then putting humans on Mars. I think probes and scientific missions, done well, give good value.