Slashdot Mirror
Mystery Phenomenon Cleans Mars Opportunity Rover
vg30e writes "It seems that some unexplained phenomenon has cleaned the dirt off the Mars Opportunity Rover. While the Spirit rover is down to 400 watt-hours per day due to the dirt obscuring its solar panels, Opportunity has gone from 500 watt-hours to 900 per day. I wish this phenomenon would clean the snow off my car."
I've got a theory, and I think you may all agree with me on this:
We've stumbled on an ancient Martain car wash.
It's invisible, of course.
To think anything different would be just plain silly.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Static build up during the day attracts dirt and particles, and during the night, when the machine shuts down most of the way the static charge bleeds away, and martian wind blows the dust off.
I been wondering why they didn't just design a slow moving wiper brush to clean the panels in the first place. One wipe every 30 days or as needed.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
This sounds very much like a hoax. From the Reuters article ...
"It said something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night."
It just strikes me that this was written by a naive reporter at the butt of a Nasa-inspired joke.
You have to love an article containing the phrase "exciting and unexplained cleaning events".
I sure wish some of these would happen in my car and apartment!
You insensitive clod! I wish I had snow to clean off!.
We don't get much of the white stuff here in Georgia, USA....
/. is a bunch of nerds at a million typewriters. It's not a political conspiracy determined to undermine your beliefs.
I, for one, welcome our little green dirt cleaning overlords.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
This sounds interesting, and I'm looking forward to an answer to what did it. However, the "It said something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels" sounds very unscientific. Did the New Scientist magazine really say this?
It's happened before (rover getting cleaned) and it will continue to happen.
It rains on Mars.
know to mankind as "wind" which sometimes is able to "blow" dust "around".
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
Women are from Mars.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
... there stands a martian squeegee kid.
http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/2000/February/3/photos/s queegee.gif
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
it doesn't even cover the facts. The other rover isn't getting cleaned.
Maybe at least two months ago? Regardless, this is pretty neat. I can picture a martian standing there with a piece of cloth. Every time he wipes, he expects something in return. Alas, the rover ignores the poor martian and spares not three Martian cents.
A blog like any other.
is apparently the first guy on Mars
It's the phone sanitizers!
Or more likely, dust devils, given how thin mars' atmostphere is:
8 /24.php / dust_edgett_010702-1.html
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000317.html
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-dust-04b.html
http://www.weathernotebook.org/transcripts/2004/0
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem
(google has tons more of this stuff)
A dust devil is a basically a minature tornado. Not to be underestimated, the martian variety can make tracks visible from space, as they come in all sizes. It stands well within the realm of possibility that a dust devil (of the smaller variety) just happened to tag the rover and suck the dust off of it.
Its only by scientific prudence that the phenomenon is called a "mystery" at all. We have no real way of proving if this is how it happened, let alone if any other theory is more or less valid. There's simply no data other than the solar cell output before and after (and possibly some photos of the solar array itself). But given the lack of evidence for any other "dust moving phenomenon" on mars, we're left with what we already know about mars: almost no wind and the occasional dust devil.
"And hey, what's about this whistling roaring sound going past what I'm suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that ... wind! Is that a good name? It'll do ... perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I've found out what it's for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it..."
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence...
Never give any object more potential energy than you want it to have.
Why is this news? It was all over the science mags and sites a couple of months ago. Not to mention I'm pretty sure it was posted on /. back then as well.
As a recent transplant from the Twin Cities to Smyrna, I find myself missing the white stuff.
:-)
On the bright side, I've been able to wear shorts outside every day so far. it's only gotten down into the teens!
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
either a troll or never read niven, either way deserves downmod
Maybe they also packed a Roomba?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Theories abound, but some crazy British supporters insist the Beagle2 is hiding behind a rock in this photo, the last photo taken from the Opportunity rover.
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
They've got 2 rovers, with dirty solar panels their main lifespan factor. Why don't they get the rovers to clean each other's panels? How much extra weight is a 3" squeegee? The existing control SW seems close enough to manage the motion, or maybe just a little extra code for the operation. If they gouge the dying panel, they've lost nothing; if it works, they've doubled their capability, and perpetuated it.
--
make install -not war
|snip|...shorts...down...into...teens...|snip|
The horror!
After the whole mooon landing hoax ;), NASA still hasn't learned to keep the janitors from having keys into their top-secret sound-stages. One of the cleaners saw the poor little dirty machine, and decided to give it a thorough scrubbing.
I hope they take better care of the dolphins with lasers on their heads.
Bah, those of us from Alaska wear shorts all the time down here in the "warmer states".
Duh, that's obvious. It was one of those bums that run up and wash your windshield at a traffic light, then try to demand payment.
"Merging into heavy traffic at near light speed!"
"Our inertial mass ever increasing!"
Check out this site.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status_oppo rtunityAll.html#sol209
The diagnostic images of the rock abrasion tool brought good news with the revelation that there is no longer a pebble jammed between the grind bits! Apparently, sometime after the last previous images of the tool were acquired on sol 200, the pebble fell out, perhaps due to thermal cycling or vehicle motion.
Fell out, my ass! A monthly check-up by the mysterious Martian Service Engineer?
This is the final proof ... there IS water on the mars! Can there be a better evidence?
"Life is a heuristic guided depth-first search without backtracking"
Dude the editor is duplicating news from the future! Check it out...
2 /2 3/1929201&from=rss
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/1
The face on mars stuck out its tongue and cleaned the solar panels.
Or maybe it rained in the Arizona desert unexpectedly.
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0