Mars Exploration Rover Update - September 29, 2005

I'm constantly amazed by how enduring those little robots are. 618 sols, who would ever have guessed, and yet I wonder how many people are even aware they're still up there boldly going where no robot has boldly gone before. We should have a national day of celebration in their honour. Spirit and Opportunity - I salute you!

Hi Can someone tell me why the rovers were not fitted with video cameras so that we could see the dust storms, sunrise, sunsets, rock grinding experiments, movement of the robots, panoramic views etc. in real time instead of just still pictures. These could be beamed back to earth either live or recorded and would vastly increase the publics interest in this incredible project. If the technology to do this was used in

1969 for the first mo> On 30 Sep 2005 08:46:34 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net wrote: >

On a sunny day (1 Oct 2005 06:15:25 -0700) it happened snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote in :

Bandwidth.

I was around when those pictures of 'small step for man' came in. You should have seen the resolution! (lack of it). Also the sun got in the camera and that was it. IIRC that camera used a rotating color wheel, so motion sucked anyways. The mars rovers give really high resolution incredible photographs, a lot more valuable for science.

Any movie is a sequency of picture, although encoding may ad some interpolated stuff... Better have a few high res pics then a lot of thse that show nothing in detail. You can always add the high res pics together to make a movie.

To watch 'live' as the probe

There is already plenty of interest, NASA does not need more money. they need engineers with a vision. They need a Von Braun. Good thing is a technical person now heads NASA. Bad thing is NASA[s targets] seem to change every election.... Bad thing is they waisted all their time since moonlandings on the ISS and not on a nuclear powered mission to mars. Fun thing is that you payed for it.

Because there actually isn't a whole lot that *moves* on the Martian surface, and the MERs have nowhere near the data storage and transmission capacity for even compressed movies, never mind real-time video.

Bear in mind that the rovers are *not* in touch with Earth anywhere near full-time. Most of the pictures that come back are relayed via one of the Mars orbiters -- stored on the rover until there's an orbiter pass, then stored on the orbiter until DSN talks to it. Running the rovers isn't like a video game; it's much more like playing chess by email. You send up a move, and half a day or a day later you see the result.

Because in 1969, the distances were much shorter and the resources devoted to communications (mass and power on board, and dish time on the ground) were much greater.

NASA is interested in the idea, but the technical challenges of getting that much data capacity at affordable cost are severe.

Simple explanation? Bandwidth.

see:

I have to agree, but the bandwidth just wasn't available this time. However, for "Son of MER" the Mars Science Laboratory, some video capability will exist thanks to the relay bandwidth provided by the recon orbiter already on its way. Admittedly not much moves around up there (apart from the Hopping Rocks and the Dancing Sand, of course ;