Real - Time Rovers?????

Hey!

I've just thought of something. The rovers on Mars - Spirit and Opportunity - why can't we watch the view from their camera's in real-time? Surely we have the technology!

Why is there no website where we can watch the rovers camera views in real - time?

This is not acceptable!

Light speed limitations. If the rovers really are on Mars, then the distance automatically means a time lag. If the rovers are really somewhere on Earth, and it's just a show for the sheeple, then yes, instant is possible, but probably not desirable in that case. Either way, I don't think we're ever going to see "real-time".
JR

reply to post by chemistry


Sorry technology isn't moving fast enough. I think we need to chill out for a few years and really understand the tech we have created before really continuing down this process of manufacturing tech that will be worthless in 6 months. wasting money on a huge scale.

reply to post by chemistry


I think you have the wrong impression regarding the actual technology up there.

You can Google it...the cameras on the current Rovers (one, Spirit I think, may have died...lasted LONG past its expected lifetime, though).

The cameras take stills only. In stereo, with different color filters. Line by scan line.

They have to be transmitted, line by line, then essembled in the computers at JPL, for ultimate publication.

You would be VERY bored, even IF you had a "live" feed from the Spirit or Opportunity.

However, future missions, probably taking advantage of better tech, miniaturization, lowere weights, etc, will include improvements:

news.yahoo.com...

Notice that, from the article...even IF they manage to get footage of the descent and entry, it will be at FOUR fps. Compare to typical modern movie film rate of 24 fps, and TV screen refresh rate of 30 fps....

reply to post by JR MacBeth

Light speed limitations.

Irrelevant, in this case.

Sure, the distance means that anything seen might be from as long as ~22 minutes in the past...but, so what?

IF you take a picture with your digital camera whilst on vacation, then come home, take out the memory card, plug it into the computer and download the image...well, guess what?? Yup...picture, from the past!

BTW....go out and peer up at the Sun.

You are looking BACK in time, each time. Back in time about EIGHT minutes, give or take...

Signals being transmitted though deep space are confounded by background interference. To make matters worse the transmitters on the rovers are weak. More powerful transmitters would be too much of a drain on power. This can cause the transmitted signal to be almost indistinguishable from background radio noise. The solution to this (if I can recall correctly) is that each "bit" of data is sent many times over and over in large blocks. These blocks of data stand out from the noisy background data. As weedwacker touched upon computers scan over and look for these repeating patterns and use this information to compile a coherent signal from all the original noisy signal.

A combination of a power constraints and signal-to-noise ratio makes real time video very difficult.

Originally posted by chemistry
Hey!

I've just thought of something. The rovers on Mars - Spirit and Opportunity - why can't we watch the view from their camera's in real-time? Surely we have the technology!

Why is there no website where we can watch the rovers camera views in real - time?

hoax head here.
you can't watch it because its fake.

There are a few reasons why there is no real time video feed from these rovers.

First off, claim all you want about the rovers not being on mars, or the mission was faked, etc...I work in the industry, and I know for a fact that the rovers are very real and really are on Mars.

Secondly, Signals from Mars via the Mars Global Surveyor take 18 minutes to reach earth, and only during specific times when the orbiter's antennas are pointing to earth, which gives a very small window. The rovers themselves do not uplink directly to earth as a standard, given the size of their antennas and the tremendous amount of transmit power they would need as they would have to penetrate the scintillation effects of the planets atmosphere AND travel the distance through space. The rovers do a "store and dump" method of transmission. By storing their data until it receives a signal from the orbiter to transmit it's data.

Next, there are limitations on the computer systems on board the rovers. We are not talking about today's modern PC's that run processors of 3Ghz or faster, with Gigabytes of ram.

Both Rovers onboard computers use a 20 MHz RAD6000 CPU with 128 MB of DRAM, 3 MB of EEPROM, and 256 MB of flash memory. Rover Specs

Quite simply, the rovers do not have the computing power to transmit real time photographic data. Additionally, even when using their High Gain antennas they can only use a low data rate with forward error correction (FEC), meaning at a max of 256kbps. And generally runs at only 120bps....

Your best bet to see near real time data, is to get an xband antenna, wait for the daily telemetry download from the orbiter, and wait the 15-20 minutes for it to download 1 image from the rovers. But then again, you would need highly specialized equipment to even decode the data from the stream, as it is probably encrypted, as well as the high rate of error correction.

It is possible to recieve live feeds from a camera on the moon. The time lag on the moon is only 1.2 seconds. Furthermore, the time lag is so small that viewers can pay to drive a rover fitted with a camera.

Good question, here's mine:

Why can't we look at EARTH from the satellite camera's in real-time? There are hundreds of satellites out there around the planet.

reply to post by Paul Kine


Go here: www.nasa.gov...

and klick on the right Panel: Live Space Station Video
If you have a bit luck you can see earth near realtime, but mostly you see just the robot arm, not moving, very boring.

[edit on 14-8-2010 by cushycrux]

Originally posted by Xammu
It is possible to recieve live feeds from a camera on the moon. The time lag on the moon is only 1.2 seconds. Furthermore, the time lag is so small that viewers can pay to drive a rover fitted with a camera.

The Soviet rovers - Lunokhod 1 & Lunokhod 2 - were remote-controlled from Earth and operated for several months on the Moon.

Boeing wanted to add this feature to their Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicles (LRVs) so that, after the astronauts left, they could still be driven around. Unfortunately, they couldn't get the package developed, debugged and - most importantly - within the weight budget in time for the final missions.

[edit on 15-8-2010 by Saint Exupery]

Originally posted by Saint Exupery
The Soviet rovers - Lunokhod 1 & Lunokhod 2 - were remote-controlled from Earth and operated for several months on the Moon.

I believe that both of the Soviet rovers were operated in a manner very similar to that of Spirit and Opportunity and not in real time.

reply to post by cmdrkeenkid


Heh, I should read my own links more carefully. Indeed it does say

Driving was not simply a job of looking at the tv monitors and operating Lunokhod like a computer game. Each movement was carefully planned after studying image of the terrain, working out distances and working out movements of the aerial to ensure that communications were maintained.

That said, when the time came to execute the planned move, the operators did, in fact, operate the controls and watch the video in real-time (with the usual 3-second round-trip delay).

There was an excellent documentary on the Lunokhods last year. It really was an engineering marvel.

reply to post by Paul Kine



Also, If you have DirecTV, they have channel simply called "Earth Channel" that shows realtime video of earth from one of its DirecTV satellites. Keep in mind that these satellites are geostationary, so the picture is very stagnant and not very exciting.