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Thick Dust Alters NASA Mars Rover Plans
coondoggie writes "NASA's long-running Mars rover Opportunity is getting ready for the harsh Martian winter, but this year for the first time in its nearly eight-year history it needs a sunnier location to continue its work. NASA said the rover, which depends on solar power for energy, is sitting just south of Mars' equator and has worked through four Martian southern hemisphere winters. Being closer to the equator than its now defunct twin rover, Spirit, Opportunity has not needed to stay on a Sun-facing slope during previous winters but now its solar panels carry a thicker coating of Martian dust than before."
A good guess is that, going forward, all new Mars landers will have either a wiper system or the ability to compress Martian atmosphere ...
The new rover Curiosity currently en route to Mars has nuclear power.
They thought of all these solutions, and in the end it just made more sense to make the solar panels larger than do anything complicated.
Don't forget these rovers were designed for a 90 day mission.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
It's my understanding that dust devils have done a pretty good job of keeping the solar panels clean over the years.
yeah, RTG:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/rover/energy/
http://www.ne.doe.gov/pdfFiles/MMRTG_Jan2008.pdf
I believe one of the major problems is that dust on Mars can become very, very fine. There's no rain to clear dust from the atmosphere, so the little grains just keep hitting things and breaking apart, over and over. Martian fines can get down near 1 micron; for comparison, your red blood cells are about 8 microns wide. This stuff gets on everything. It goes through everything.
I mean the panels can be rotated already no? Otherwise you don't even need windshield wipers, just a brush going over the panel once every few weeks...
No, the panels are fixed in position. They were folded during the flight and were spring loaded to unfold. Once deployed, they were locked into position. Also, since the rovers were only meant to last for 90 days, the extra complexity of a wiper or blower (or my favorite, a spool of cellophane, like an overhead projector) was deemed unnecessary.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
yes, Spirit is not sending data. It either got too cold, or something, but it's gone silent. The folks at JPL spent several months trying to contact it, but no joy.