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.'"

Comments

Well, look at the bright side

[Anonymous Crowhead]

These rovers have lasted something like 15 times their original intended/predicted lifespan.

Re:Turbines

[Surt]

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.

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-w ith-generato.html

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.htm l
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 ... 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.