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."

Comments

Re:Wipers?

[Tom Rothamel]

(Btw, instead of a wiper, which could potentially get gritty and scratch the panels, I'd just be inclined to implement the panels such that they can be "flipped over" once a day to dump the dust off -- shouldn't be too hard depending on how they're already mounted.)

The problem with this is that, if the motors that flip the solar panels fail, we have one dead rover. So is it better to live with a slow degredation of the rovers' performance (which still lets them accomplish everythings they need to, almost a year after they landed), or risk a sudden and dramatic end to the mission?