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Huge Martian Dust Storm Threatens Rovers
Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that a severe ongoing dust storm on the Red Planet has blocked 99 percent of the direct sunlight that powers the Opportunity rover. If these conditions persist for too long, it could finally bring an end to the marathon mission of this robot geologist, and perhaps of its partner Spirit as well. 'Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity's solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust in the air reduced the panels' daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic arm, cameras and spectrometers to study the site where Opportunity is located ... A possible outcome of this storm is that one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or even disabled. Engineers will assess the capability of each rover after the storm clears.'"
Martian dust particles have been "smoothed" by millions of years of weathering. Lunar dust is jagged and more like a sea of glass shards, and the Moon lacks wind to provide any erosion.
If we can get a handle on lunar dust, Martian dust really shouldn't be a big problem.
Considering their history it would be premature to write them off so soon.
When the storm ends and the dust settles and no signal is received from Spirit and Opportunity then, and only then, will I raise a glass in memory of those two incredible machines and the end of their mission.
On a side note has anyone every thought of using Tesla's energy transmitter or other "beamed" energy delivery system (microwave?) to power a planetary probe? Use a big nuke power module, keep it in geostat orbit, or land it with the transmiter, and then drop the rovers down. years of power for the rovers and it could be used by later missions as well.
There was an earlier article on Slashdot that mentioned a problem with dust settling on the solar panels and subsequently reducing their efficiency. I wonder if this storm will cause dust to settle on the panels or is the wind to strong? Anyway, this dust situation sounds like a persistent problem for longer run mission, which clearly was never the "primary" intent of these rovers to begin with, which leads me to my point/question: Will future rovers have dust wipers like the kind have on vehicles? It only makes sense to me, and I like to think these brilliant folks at NASA have thought of this.
~ In Trust, We Trust ~
It's hard to believe that air so thin can hold up so much dust.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."