Ten Year Old Mars Rover is Having Senior Moments

erco

So is computer memory just a flash in the RAM? Opportunity knocks once, or so it recalls after waking up to failing memory and forgetting data and what it has already accomplished. Robo-dementia rocks!

https://screen.yahoo.com/nasas-mars-robot-losing-mind-153026178.html

Moskog

erco wrote: »

So is computer memory just a flash in the RAM? Opportunity knocks once, or so it recalls after waking up to failing memory and forgetting data and what it has already accomplished. Robo-dementia rocks!

https://screen.yahoo.com/nasas-mars-robot-losing-mind-153026178.html

But the rover on the video is not Opportunity, its Curiosity who has been there just a couple of years.

Dave Hein

The project goal for Opportunity was to function for 90 Martian days. It has greatly exceeded that design goal. NASA believes that the problem is due to the flash memory failing because it has been overwritten too many times. They have been using RAM to store programs and data, but of course that is volatile memory that loses information whenever the rover powers down. They are currently trying to determine which memory banks are causing the problem so they can avoid using them.

Cluso99

The rover Opportunity (and its twin which expired a year or so ago) have been on Mars for 10 years.As was said, they were designed for a 90 day mission. The first one lasted 9 yearsbefore it died (didn't recover after its winter sleep IIRC).
It took a coulpe of years to get to Mars. Add to that probably 5 years to build and you have around ~17 years.

Most likely they are actually using EEPROM chips. I bet that all the testing of the electronics systems was done (heat and cold recycling, and reprogramming) using the same sets of boards. Reprogramming cycles of these chips was not as good as chips today. The chips have just been reprogrammed too many times.

Hopefully they can isolate the banks causing issues so thdy can squeeze further life out of this rover. It may just be a single or few bits that are failing today, but its likely there will be a lot more failure bits coming soon, depending on how they have been rewriting the memory.

BTW Lets hope the new NASA designs dont use 22nm or smaller chips (such as the latest x86 or ARM, etc) because it is expected these chips will only have a 10 year life. The metal layers are not truly solids and so the metal lines flow, and over time are expected to go short or open circuit. Those 10 years are from chip manufacture date, not usage!
This likely includes the newer DRAM and Flash too.

It is going to become difficult to build Voyager style probes with the latest chips
Voyager 1 and 2 have been going for ~35 years so far, with computers predating the Apple, and IIRC use tape as mass storage as there is so little RAM.

RobotWorkshop

Cluso99 wrote: »

The rover Opportunity (and its twin which expired a year or so ago) have been on Mars for 10 years.As was said, they were designed for a 90 day mission. The first one lasted 9 yearsbefore it died (didn't recover after its winter sleep IIRC).
It took a coulpe of years to get to Mars. Add to that probably 5 years to build and you have around ~17 years.

Most likely they are actually using EEPROM chips. I bet that all the testing of the electronics systems was done (heat and cold recycling, and reprogramming) using the same sets of boards. Reprogramming cycles of these chips was not as good as chips today. The chips have just been reprogrammed too many times..

I wonder how well this custom chip is holding up:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/marsroverdarkfield.html

Cluso99

RobotWorkshop,
Nice article - I had missed this one.