Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mars Winds Clean Spirit's Solar Panels Again

Posted by timothy on from the like-mom-making-the-bed dept.

Titoxd writes "In a blast from the past, NASA reports that Spirit's solar panels have received a much-needed cleaning courtesy of the Red Planet. The report states, 'The cleaning boosts Spirit's daily energy supply by about 30 watt-hours, to about 240 watt-hours from 210 watt-hours. The rover uses about 180 watt-hours per day for basic survival and communications, so this increase roughly doubles the amount of discretionary power for activities such as driving and using instruments.'"

3 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Next time . . . by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Informative

    They decided that a windshield wiper didn't have a good benefit/cost (in both money and weight) ratio. Especially for a 90-day mission. I understand that the best they could get the wipers to do was smear the dust around (something about static cling keeping it from coming off), so it wasn't going to do much good, anyways.

  2. Re:Amazing by evanbd · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not 240 watts; 240 watt-hours. With 24.6 hours per Martian day, that's about 9.75 watts average consumption.

  3. Only on Slashdot! by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Only on Slashdot can a post that confuses power (watt) and energy (watt-hour) be modded +3 Interesting.

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.