Let's suppose for the sake of discussion that a rover becomes immobile, but that its cameras and instruments still work. What's the best science you can do with a stuck rover? For example, you could do atmospheric studies indefinately; you could take closeups of everything within reach; and you could look for change over time at the site. Now chances are, we'll get rolling again, but maybe someday we'll face the question of salvage science. What's Plan B?

Steve Pendleton

You can do MB and APXS spectra of the soil infront of the rover (technically, behind the rover in the direction it's been travelling) for exceedingly long integrations for a more detailed spectra. A full MI mosaic of the surroundings. Also MI, MB and APXS data on the magnetic dust targets on the front of the rover.

Use Mini TES to do temp profiles thru the sky for prolonged periods to further investigate and understand the day by day temp cycle.

Conduct a verbose 14 filter 22 x 5 image panorama in LOCO compression (1614Mbits ) over a period of several weeks.

Accept submissions from undergraduates, and even schools, for observtaions or experimentation for the rover to conduct over time.

Take day long time lapse images of the sundial to better understand the illumination of the surface and the scattering of light.

Take day long temp profiles of soil around the rover to understand its composition.

And even do what they're already started doing while they test the engineering rover back at JPL - super resolution imagery of the horizon.

Doug

The idea for "student experiments" makes a lot of sense, as do the other suggestions.

X-ray and Mossbauer composition data can accumulate super-long integrations for maximum signal/noise data on soils

In the long run, you run out of things to do other than "environmental monitoring". If one rover is immobilized for whatever reason, I expect it would be used fairly extensively as long as the other rover is operational. If we have 1 or 2 immobilized rovers operating, after "wringing out" all the easy quick science that can be done over a few months, the no longer roving "stations" would probably be reduced to a periodic cycle of selected "variable feature" imaging and especially atmosphere profiling / opacity studies at regularly scheduled times of day in a perioduc cycle.

Eventually, like the Viking landers and orbiters, they'd be subject to periodic efforts from NASA HQ to kill the extended missions to save money for the budget-busting manned program "de jour"... in that case, the so-called Space Transportation System.

I'd think they might try and keep one of them at least 'hybernated' to act as a UHF test source for MRO, and perhaps MTO

Doug

All of the above are good, bit I think that the best long-term use of an immobilre Rover would be to study long term weathering, erosional and depositional processes. We think we kow what is happening, but that is really an educated WAG...

I think she'll move on, though.

--Bill

The best way to do that would be to look at the solar panels over time. Observe the waxing and waning of the dust cover.

Spin the wheels until they've seized up, dug the rover well into the ground, or else it gets out.

If they seize up, well, you're not going anywhere anyway.

If the rover digs into the ground, then you might be able to figure out how far down it went, and maybe ascertain the consistency of the ground it dug through, as well as see what it churned up.
Then it'd be fairly well anchored in place, to serve as a stationary platform for who knows what. It'd likely accumulate dust over time, with possible periodic cleanings. Just program it to automatically try to find Earth when it gets adequate power (assuming the electronics box hasn't frozen over), and send back an update.

If it gets out, don't drive into any more dunes like this.

This isn't science, but I think it would be cool if people could communicate with the rover via the Internet. For example, using AIM to chat with it, or just use "ping" to see if it is "alive." Maybe this could be a fund-raising tool for NASA?

LOL good one

It would be a pretty boring with the delay of 20 min between Earth and Mars though

Exhaustive highres microscopic imaging campaign of all reachable areas before and after pushing dirt around with the arm as much as possible, to search for "non-geologic" formations.....? The chances of finding anything are loooow obviously but why not, you'd just be sitting there anyway! Once that's done you could offer a service to use the arm to draw names of people or or messages in the dirt and sell the (sunset background?) pics for $$$!! Well ...ok probably more like .¢¢

ha i bet sombody would pay a HEFTY price to have their name on mars.. like millions. A corporation maybe?? "PEPSI"

I think she'll likely move on, too -- but if she doesn't, we're in a *very* interesting place to observe weathering and erosion.

It's pretty obvious from the layering being exposed in some of the larger dunes we just started seeing recently that *some* of these dunes are ancient and, instead of being built up, are currently being deflated. Unlike water erosion and aeolian erosion of rocks, dune erosion can happen over relatively short time frames. (Of course, it depends on the grain characteristics of the dunes and the "crusting" that may have occurred at the tops of the layers within the dunes.)

The fine striations visible transverse and sometimes perpendicular to the some of the dune crests suggests to me that these are the dunes that are being deflated. Note that some of these dunes display a "crumbling" appearance near their crests, where mass wasting has begin to pull material down -- another indication that the prevailing winds have changed and old dunes are now being blown away.

If a good, layered dune is within the reach of Oppy's IDD, perhaps a combination of the RAT and using the RAT head as a rough scoop will let us do very clean, long integrations of the different layers in the dunes. Wherever the grains forming the various dune layers originated, they will tell a story of changes in the Martian environment over time.

And careful observation of even minute (but detectable) changes in the dunes around Oppy would provide some really valuable data on the speed and characteristics of aeolian deflation/deposition on Mars, maybe even giving time frames for the formation of the layers in the ancient dunes. Thereby providing the possibility of putting absolute (if inferred) dates to recent Martian climate cycles.

So, if we have to become immobile somewhere, there are worse places...

-the other Doug

If she can't get out, and if they send MSL to Meridiani, they might as well pull Oppy out in 2012, after 7 years of immobility in the dust. Then they shouldn't forget a Nilfisk though to clean her panels, lenses, etc...so she can continue for another 1000 sols

That just seems cool - a nuclear powered rover with a winch pulling a small solar powered thing out. Send it to Sojourner next, and let the little thing ride along.


Better yet, use that Chemical Laser thingy (don't remember the name for it, can you tell?) and vaporize the sand near Opportunity's wheels.

That wont do a thing, since it'll vaporize microns of material over a couple of mm patch. It's called "chemcam".

But seriously, i'd consider an anchor and a mortar on MSL to fire it, so it can pull itself out incase it might get stuck....

Ah! Then the light went on! My Lego Mindstorm team has already solved Oppy's problem (mission F). How could I forget!

The kids' Mindstorm design for that mission was a little dodgy, however, as it had a tendency to flip Oppy onto her side and drag her across the field. Not exactly what we need now.

Note that Spirit has already had its problem (mission C) taken care of too.

Actually that is a very valid concern given the increased ground pressure under the wheels of a larger vehicle such as the MSL. Think about how a bulldozer can drive across the top of a muddy field and only sink in 5 or 6 inches when it weighs 10 tons but a pickup truck will sink right in to the hub caps almost instantly. The German's learned this well during World War II on the eastern front when the treads on thier Panzers were narrower, hence had a higher ground pressure and they sank into the mud/snow while the Soviet T-34's rolled on top of it.

I've operated some heavy equipment including a cat-325 exacavator and a much better solution is a robust trenching tool. If you get something with bucket on a boom like that stuck what you do is reach out as far as you can, slam it into the ground and then literally DRAG yourself out of the mud inch by inch. I once saw a 325 drag itself out of a peat bog where the top of it's treads were covered , it had sunk in almost 4 feet deep! Hydraulics (not sure how that would work on Mars) are amazingly powerful! Now with that kinda power on MSL we could do some serious damage. Like oh say flip over rocks. Ever wonder how big a rock like say old Adirondack really is? We could dig 3 foot deep trenches and get a good idea of the depositional rates of the sand on Mars.. Caterpillar could sponsor! :-P I believe MSL was going to have a trenching capability but I hadn't read anything about it recently, and I doubt it would be that powerful.

Has anyone noticed *any* rocks being flipped at all on Mars since Viking?

If it's happened, I've certainly missed it!