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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!
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These rovers have lasted something like 15 times their original intended/predicted lifespan.
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...
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-
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
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Space, weight, and environmental limitations make this impractical. Before this mission, we bairly understood the make-up of the dust and how much there may be, let alone being able to create a turbine shaft with seals to keep the dust out of the mechanism (to keep it from causing the prop from binding). The space limitations are another issue. It is not easy to package up a turbo prop into a smaller form-factor for initial launch and travel, unlike the ability to fold up a solar array. At best, what this teaches us is to include a "wiper" system for at least part of the panels so that we can maintain at least a minimal section of solar panel to generate energy for the essential gear and would give us the ability to keep the rover alive long enough to let the wind that exists on the plant to "clean" the other panels in the time after a storm.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
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.
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
I volunteer. I am willing to bet that you would find more than 10K just in America who would go. This is the ULTIMATE adventure. Hell, if you are worried about dieing, that can happen in ALL sorts of ways here on earth.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
You're confusing the possibility that a dust storm can lift enough dust into the atmosphere to block sunlight with the possibility that the wind intensity is sufficiently high to drive a wind turbine. Mars has a very thin atmosphere, and this wind isn't nearly enough to drive a turbine that would produce enough power for the rovers. Lifting dust is a lot easier than pushing the blades of a fan.
w ith-generato.html
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... even at peak windspeed it's going to be hard to generate enough power with turbines that the rover could reasonably carry, and that would all be deadweight for the solar panels during non wind times.
Also, whatever turbine you added would go into the weight of the rover, which then affects the parachute/airbag requirements for landing, and during drive around time you're carrying that extra weight uselessly most of the time.
This setup:
http://store.motorwavegroup.com/8-micro-turbines-
generates about twice as much power as the article suggests is needed, on earth (presumably 1atm pressure) at 10m/s wind speed.
http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309084261/html/22.ht
claims that martian windspeeds peak at 50m/s, but that the dynamic pressure is only 1/9th of that due to the lower atmospheric pressure.
That gives you an equivalent of only 6m/s equivalent speed (at peak intensity!).
So
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
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 problem is that the dust storms are blocking the light before it hits the panels, not just covering the panels with dust. I doubt they'll know how much dust has accumulated on the panels as a result of this storm till it's over.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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.
Just about all manned architecture studies use nuclear generators for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Martian weather. A manned crew would not be left without power or heating due to a dust storm of any length. The bigger concern with Martian dust is that it would erode airlock seals, cling to EVA suits, get tracked into the habitat, and generally screw-up mechanical hardware. That's the same exact problem we face with lunar dust (probably more so), and developing techniques and equippment to handle lunar dust would likely be applicable to Mars. I think there's plenty of good reasons for not going to Mars, but dust is an issue I belive we could engineer around today if we had to. These rovers themselves are proof that we can build working hardware that lasts for months/years in Martian conditions and they're not dead yet.
Larry Niven tells a story about a NASA panel he was on in the 80's regarding future exploration. It was obvious that the NASA administrator was a bureaucratic hack, and Niven got irritated and started pushing him.
Niven asked him what the future plans for colonizing the Moon was, and the man replied, incredulously, "Why would anyone want to live on the moon?"
Niven turned to the assembled reporters and said "Why don't we ask? Let's have a show of hands: How many of you would want to live on the Moon" About 90% of the hands went up, baffling the administrator.
One reporter said out loud "I'd have to ask my wife". The reporter next to him turned and said "I'd leave my wife."
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The architecture studies are assuming maturation of compact nuclear power. I think that is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make since we aren't talking about going to Mars today, tomorrow, or even ten years from now. The point of an architecture study is to say "We need technology 'x' to make the mission possible." Solar power is DOA for manned Mars missions, so we won't be going until we have compact nuclear power. Over about 5 kw, RTGs are already more mass efficient than solar power on Mars and there are concepts in the works to make them nearly efficient as conventional fission reactors.
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."