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Spirit and Opportunity Are Back Online
PinkyGigglebrain sends us news that the Mars rovers have survived the dust storms that have swept the surface of Mars for the last 6 weeks. How well they survived remains to be seen. Due to a combination of dust still suspended in the atmosphere and dust on the rovers' solar panels, they are only producing about half the power they normally would. The article is a little sparse on the exact health of the rovers but it's good to know they are still with us.
So the site didn't get too many details? Just go to the NASA page... Convienient NASA website
I used to think that there was just NO WAY that R2D2 could take the kind of crap he took and still survive... who'd of thought. Those robots are completely amazing to me. Designed for a 90 day mission, and here we are at over 13 times that number of days. The best part of the mission is all of the fantastic images they have sent. Check them out here
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WAIT. Eventually a Martian dust-devil will pass over a rover, and after this "cleaning event" occurs, THEN is the time to start significant operations again.
Here's the actual mission site that has more than just multimedia: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html The mission status update page is particularly helpful: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html
The problem isn't necessarily dust on the panels, but dust in the atmosphere.
It's both actually. The dust in the atmosphere appears to be settling on the rovers as it settles from the sky. Spirit's microscope became fogged with dust during the storm because of this and they are taking images to assess the damage and to use as reference images to attempt to digitally correct the distortion caused by the dust. I've read that both rovers are currently performing tests of most their instruments to assess dust pollution. If they know the extent of the pollution they can correct for some of it by subtracting out the changes. However, this reduces total sensitivity.
Table-ized A.I.
The issue was complicated. First, they weren't sure what the effect of dust storms would be. They got lucky; the storms seem to clean the panels more than they add dust. Second, they evaluated a number of different options for panel cleaning -- wipers, peel-away plastic covers, electrostatic devices, etc. The conclusion was there were a number of options, any of which would probably work for a while. However, it was decided that any of the options would take the place in space / weight of approximately one instrument. They decided that they'd rather have better info for a shorter time, especially given that the dust storms might turn out to clean the panels and let the rovers keep going without any cleaning system at all. So, they opted for instrumentation over longevity, and lucked out and got both.
It's very simple. They had the opportunity to put on a panel cleaning system that may or may not be effective, or launch another scientific instrument. The weight and power budget did not allow for both. They made the right choice.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...