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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."
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.
That would add additional complexity to the spacecraft, especially as it was not expected for the rovers to last past the period of 90 days.
If the air was too thin to carry dust, how would the dust get on the solar panels?
Well if the wind does carry the dust on to the panel, can you expect the same wind to carry it off the panel instead of add more?
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.