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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.'"
Has anyone checked on the Buggalo? This could be another kidnap attempt by the native Martians.
When the storm has settled the dust devils will come to clean the rovers... no worry!
extern warranty;
main()
{
(void)warranty;
}
These rovers have lasted something like 15 times their original intended/predicted lifespan.
It's too bad these rovers don't have some sort of wind turbines to be utilized for energy. They could have extended an already impressive run.
Jim
RunFatBoy ( http://www.runfatboy.net/ ) - A workout system for beginners.
Indeed we're being duped into repeating the same discussion.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Is this related to the dust storm in Arizona? (photo and video) Maybe the giant face of Mars saw Arizona and decided he could out-dust-storm us.
Somewhere between a super nerd and a rock star...
So now I guess we'll be seeing on of those Energizer commercials showing that rabbit strolling by a pile of dead, dust covered rovers, playing that drum.
I saw a show on Spirit and Opportunity's trek a few nights back. Pretty amazing couple of machines. I was very impressed. When they brought up the topic of their panels' susceptibility to dust and dust storms, I was wondering why no one had thought to install a couple of panel sweepers or something (like windshield wipers)?
All in all, these two little guys have done pretty well.
S-
Why don't they have a high tech windshield wiper for the solar panel? Or a transparent window shade that could prevent dust from hitting the solar panel during the storm? Ultra sonic shaker to shake the dust off? There must be a way.
The more I learn of Mars, the less I think that any manned mission to the Dust Storm Planet would be anything more than stupid. And probably suicidal.
Luna has it's own dust problems, but no months-long hemisphere-wide storms, and that's a Very Good Thing.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Aw, poor little Rover needs a little snack or some munchies to give him a little pick-me-up! Rover is a very loyal and obedient friend... I think we need to blast a rocket off with a nice care package: send him some chew-toys and other treats.
I can throw as many stones as I wish; my house is made of transparent aluminum.
Go into Firehose, find the article (it'll be a dark green bar), click on "-", then click on "dupe".
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Maybe electric companies convert to a usable measurement like Library of Congress' or width of human hair. I know mine comes as a percent of how many dollars it would take to circle the earth.
Swi
Easy. The electric bill says "Pay $ammount", so they pay $ammount.
Now, checking to see if that is the correct ammmount, on the other hand...
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
What you might not realize, however, is that it's also enough to power a 70-watt bulb for ten hours!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Are people really so stupid that they need this explained to them? And if so, how on earth do they ever make sense of their electric bill? You presume people make sense of their electric bills, instead of just paying it like blind obedient sheep.
Your comments are at odds with your low UID. It confuses me.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I was going to try a joke like "I don't think anyone could have predicted that the rovers would fail", but that wouldn't have worked if this is a dupe. It would just be an open invitation to all those smartasses who berate you for missing articles that slither down the front page at some point when you were off having a life. Personally, I usually have my Slashdot RSS feed uploaded to my cellphone but I was vacationing on Mars recently (my wife and I especially like the Tharsis region near Nix Olympica- less crowded) and a storm interfered with my reception.
Nah. Juse needs a little kudzoo to brighten up the place and hold the soil down.
But it would light a nanowatt bulb for seven hundred billion hours -- that's nearly eighty million years! Isn't science amazing?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
This should tell ppl that if we are going to continue sending new robots AND humans, then we are going to need a real power source. One possibility is geothermal, but that has to be ascertained. About the only real choice is nukes. Afterall, I know that I do not mind risking my life on something like this, but I would want the best chance possible. I would assume that anybody who goes to Mars will want the same.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Like Wargaming?
How many football fields per volkswagen is that?
A) The dust is charged (static electricity). Brushing would just shove it around and scratch the solar panels. So some other means of cleaning them would be required, e.g. charging the solar panels so it repels the charged dust?
B) What good are clean solar panels when the sky is opaque with dust? Needs more nuclear power, which is what the upcoming rover will have.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
This is not about the build-up on the panels. This is about sand in the air. What the next rover (MSL) would be better with is either full nukes, or having simple nuke heaters onboard combined with solar panels for powering all else.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Let me guess. You have a watt metre and have measured and labeled every light fixture and outlet in the house. You then calculate the time of use and multiply that by the rate of electricity. If it doesnt match your bill you bitch and scream at the electric company about them "stealing ur powers".
Meanwhile us hoopleheads just pay the damn thing and let the elecric company handle the monitoring. What fools we are!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I for one am so stupid that I need it explained to me. I'm sure that if I had been interested in the subject before now that I could have researched it and quickly found the answer. Yet up until now, all I really cared about is that a 100-watt bulb is brighter than a 60-watt bulb and will cost me more per month to turn on.
Really, it's not fair to blame mediocre writers for writing badly. Ideally, it is the job of the editor to keep crap off the front page. Of course, the quality of the editors/janitors at slashdot needs no more elaboration...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The cake is a pie
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.
How about people who happen to be ignorant of what the watt measurement means?
I would think there are a lot of people not even out of high school that read slashdot.
I would wager that there was a time in hyour life when you didn't know that the watt rating was a rating over time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They are probably quite happy thinking in terms of watt hours per hour
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You really think you know better than hundreds of the top scientists and engineers in America who have spent their entire lives working in the space industry?
Wow. Okay.
To help you gain a little perspective I'll give you one word to consider: tradeoff.
Here are two more: design parameters.
Now be a good boy and google about the Mars rovers and someone will explain why they built them the way they did, in language you should understand.
"Researched it"? How old are you? This is high school-level knowledge. To be blunt, it's nothing short of idiotic to be paying for something where you don't understand what it is you're paying for or how it's measured. Your electric bill shows you how much energy you've used in kilowatt-hours. If you've been paying it every month without knowing what a kilowatt-hour is, you might as well pay for gasoline without knowing the size of a [litre|gallon].
And the brethren went away edified.
I have somehow retained the dregs of my youthful idealism. It never fails to disappoint.
And the brethren went away edified.
It's (Mars) Global Warming out to kill us all!!!!
Run for your lives!
As always, just my $0.02 worth.
As for the knowledge being high school level, I suppose I'm one of those people whose life didn't stagnant at the high school level. Was the prom the crowning social event in your life?
...are sensitive to extremes of temperature, and are needed to maintain temperature stability. Frankly I am surprised they have lasted as long as this, given the treatment they are getting.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Ok so you brush off some dust. Then what? The dust in the air is so thick it obscures sunlight. Cleaning the panel will do not good.
A more robust system would use a radio isotope heater and not depend on battery power to run heaters. But these were designed to be within a set budget and had a short design lifespan.
I am sure that when humans go to mars a nuclear power plant will go with them to the surface.
My, aren't we crabby today?
Don't be silly. For one thing, I don't speak l33t. For another, the benefit of knowing how something you're paying for is being measured is key to understanding how to economize if you feel the need. For example, if you're trying to decide between a propane and electric hot-water heater, you'll want the one that's cheaper to run. They tell you an estimate of the cost, but that's based on average rates and usage. You can get a much better idea if you understand your own usage pattern and how that would translate into energy usage and therefore costs.
And for another, yes, you can get at least a rough idea of your average electricity use. Figuring your load as a back-of-the-envelope calculation isn't hard, and it will help you detect if your bill is way off for some reason. The electric company does make mistakes you know. Or you might have some energy leakage you don't know about otherwise.
And the brethren went away edified.
If there were a number of small air nozzles directing dust off the panels, a small compressor and air tank could be charged up over several days or even weeks. Time is not a factor so a tiny compressor would suffice. Then wooosh! open the valves and it's done.
Or, this device could have been on the landing platform. After the rover rolls off, a boom extends outwards, a metre or two off the ground. Every couple of months the rover returns to the platform, drives underneath and gets a blast. This would of course mean the rover could never travel too far so perhaps the on-board one would be better.
But this is something that 12 year olds learn ... it isn't "little details of life".
Not knowing stuff like this really shows the shallowness of someone's education.
Also it is "privilege", not "privledge". "Asphalt", not "asphault". "didn't stagnate", not "didn't stagnant".
What are you, some kind of retardo-jock? Maybe you don't need to know this stuff to live, but if your mind isn't curious then what is the worth of your life?
You're bitter about something. I can tell.
So you're saying you forgot everything you learned in high school. That means most of American history. (Or British history, or Eritrean history, or wherever it is you come from.) I sure as hell hope you don't vote, because you obviously have insufficient background knowledge to make civic-minded decisions about anything.
No, I don't know the brand names of the chips in my car any more than I know the manufacturers of the light switches in my house. But I do know how fuel injection works, along with how my car works in general terms, and what might go wrong with it. The result is that I'm never mystified about what my car is doing, and on those very rare occasions when I have to take it to a mechanic it's impossible for him to cheat me.
Knowledge is good. I suggest you acquire and retain some.
I also suggest you review the tagline of this site. Electricity is something nerds are supposed to know about.
And the brethren went away edified.
It took me a few minutes (looking up the length of Mars' day) to guestimate they're getting around 50W from the solar panels when they're in operation, and now they're trying to keep the probe alive on .5W plus whatever's in the batteries. Makes it simple to understand how grave the situation is for our poor, superannuated, underfunded rovers on the surface of Mars.
After all, he's been to Mars a couple times, and his assistance could prove useful in fending off attacks from those damn flying creatures.
TFA was a NASA press release, presumably aimed at adults, and the phrase in question was taken from it. It's one thing if /. felt the need to explain this to younger readers, but I think this is just something an adult who buys electricity should know.
And the brethren went away edified.
For a 90-day mission, you get more power and reliability by spending the mass of the cleaning system on just having larger solar panels and letting them get dusty. I guess NASA must have asked a fourth grader, eh?
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
If the sunlight is further cut back for an extended period, the rovers will not be able to generate enough power to keep themselves warm and operate at all, even in a near-dormant state. The rovers use electric heaters to keep some of their vital core electronics from becoming too cold.
Now if reptiles had designed these rovers instead of warm-blooded mammals, they wouldn't have given them this limitation.
Table-ized A.I.
High five digits are a low UID now? I thought *I* was late to the party. When slashdot first introduced user registration I was like, why?, for a couple months.
But still, when someone reads 700 watt hours surely they comprehend that's can be expressed as 100 watts times seven hours, ya? Eh.
Is there a single person who might be reading a Nasa story who needed that "fact" explained?
Who would operate the brush?
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
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."
I'm the guy who is here for you to berate so you can satiate your ego and puff yourself up in front of your peers.
Currently most of my curiousity is directed towards Taoism, qigong, tai chi, kung fu, whole foods, enzymes, probiotics and just enough NLP to keep those around me focused on positively driven, directed outcomes for the betterment of all of us. Of course I do find time for the occassional /. diversion, and -1 troll, -1 flamebait, -1 off-topic moderation just to make sure that I don't take myself too seriously.
...if the dust storm passes quickly enough, and a side effect is that it actually loosened up dirt and cleaned up the solar panels allowing them close to max capacity again.
:)
Here's to hoping.
Nope, you're saying that I forgot everything I learned in high school. I said, "As for the knowledge being high school level, I suppose I'm one of those people whose life didn't stagnant at the high school level."
I will avoid the urge to make a quip about your reading comprehension (or not) and go ahead and vote for Ron Paul anyway, even if supporting a Constitutionalist shows my lack of background knowledge and inability to make civic-minded decisions.
Knowledge is good. I suggest you acquire and retain some.
Alright, you've got yourself a deal. I'll trade you some courtesy for it. I'll even hook you up at a three to one ratio of courtesy to knowledge to make sure we both come out closer to the level of where we ought to be.
How many metres per watt do you get?
News at 11!
...they shouldn't have made the solar panels flat like sand-holding plates -- and perhaps they should have been at an angle so that the sand would slide off...?
.. you would know that dust storms actually remove accumulated dust from the rovers' solar panels. The problem is that it's dark, not that the panels are covered with dust.
The Sojourner rover experienced a steady reduction of power due to accumulated dust, but it didn't operate long enough to have its panels "cleaned" by a dust storm. Until Spirit and Opportunity weathered their significant major storms, it wasn't known whether dust storms would increase or reduce accumulated dust.
I guess the fear is that the batteries will flatten and the rovers will power off. But surely they would have thought to include a provision for bootup-on-power-restore? No? Oops...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
You don't have any courtesy to trade, as you so deftly demonstrated by equating a basic understanding of energy with going to the prom. So sorry, but no deal. You're going to have to learn basic scientific facts on your own. (English, too. You want the intransitive verb "stagnate"; "stagnant" is the related adjective.) It was a nice attempt at distraction despite being so wide of the mark it had no chance of scoring, but that doesn't make you any better informed.
I'm trying to fathom what kind thought lies behind an attempt to demonstrate his political knowledge by proclaiming the presidential candidate he supports. If you're trying to impress me by naming the one Republican candidate who isn't a carbon copy of all the rest, (aside from McCain, who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell) it's not working. And as for Paul being a Constitutionalist (whatever that's supposed to mean. Everyone claims to support the Constitution. What you want is a particular reading of it), he's a Libertarian, which was the ballot on which he ran for president the last time he tried. Exactly the political philosophy I'd expect from someone who don't know nothin' 'bout history.
And the brethren went away edified.
700 watt hours ~= 2.5 mega-joules; 400 watt hours~= 1.4MJ . I'm not sure when "watt hours" became the standard unit of energy.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
The power expression is the one used by JPL / Caltech when speaking of the power the panels generate. I'm nowhere near EE enough to be able to debate the pros and cons of alternatives...
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Why does Bush have to be included in every article? ...
oh you said Brush...sorry!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I remember back before the whole 'the REAL Bruce Perens' controversy when registration ID #'s didn't appear on comment headings. The someone masqueraded as Bruce Perens which justified (in the eyes of the kids running the site) putting UID number up front on the headings.
Now it's kinda like a little kiddie's BBS from back in the day, when 'account hierarchy' was listed on the heading of each message posted and the commie-64 kids would battle in online games to have the highest status.
(the REAL Bruce Parens has the UID "who gives a fuck" btw)
If I am trying to decide between a propane and an electric hot-water heater, I will want to consider wether I want a tard with a tank truck to have to show up twice a year and run over the bushes to fill the propane tank.
Now, if there is natural gas in my neighborhood, there is an obvious third option that you didn't mention.
I think it's pretty well-established that the propane option is always higher, and only people who live in remote areas out in the country use it.
http://www.planetary.org/news/2007/0720_The_2007_M artian_Dust_Storm_Crisis_for.html mentions that the storm has cleared the solar arrays of dust, so they're perfectly capable of collecting whatever light passes through the current dust. Good summary and up to date.
As someone who lives in a remote area out in the country, I assure you that the propane truck shows up rather more often than twice a year. And as a California resident who used to have an electric hot-water heater, I assure you that it was much cheaper to go with propane until past couple of years, when it became close to a wash.
And the brethren went away edified.