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Mars Rover Spirit Reaches Winter Tilt
An anonymous reader writes "The Mars rover Spirit has been inching carefully down the north slope of the feature 'Home Plate' to tilt its solar panels into the sun to survive the long Martian winter. On Friday, it reached a tilt of 29.9 degrees, probably the final tilt it will reach for the winter. Although it's used the tilt strategy to increase power over the Martian winter twice before, this year it's especially critical, since a global dust storm last summer has left the solar-powered rover covered with dust and starved for power. Geoffrey Landis, one of the MER scientists, commemorated Spirit's trek to the winter haven with a sonnet on his blog. (The second of the two rovers, Opportunity, is at a landing site that's not as far into the southern hemisphere, and hence has less need to find a tilted surface.) OSU has a website explaining some of the software used to visualize the terrain to optimize the tilt, and for the latest news, the ongoing log of the rover status is updated weekly."
Great to see these amazing robots still at work!
I read "Roving Mars" a couple of years ago and even back then the mission had superseded all of its goals.
Indeed a very inspiring episode in space exploration
You know they're talking about the apex of human technology when they control tenths of a degree of inclination of a robotic car running over another planet.
I can't even know the angle of the keyboard I'm writing this, with such precision.
Yea, that's why I was thinking of felt or some stationary wiper. And yea, the panels would have slide out beside each other instead of unfolding.
I think the original rovers folded the panels on top of each other. I think if this were changed to stack and slide together like a sliding winder, at the points they meat, it could use the deployment motors to periodically retract the panels which would cause them to be brushed by the felt or velcro strip along the seems of the pannels. Then deploy the panel wings on the opposite side of the craft and you would essentially have swiped both sides the entire panel array.
The only draw back is that you would need to manipulate which panel was on top in order to ensure they could all three (or five or whatever) be cleaned by this maneuver. It appears that it only needs to happen a couple times a year. I'm sure even the simplest design could outlast the crafts.
It might not be as easy as this. Or whats that saying, sound easy until you try to do it. But I think that out of a few simple approaches, something might be able to be worked through relatively easily without costing too much weight or bulk.