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Mars Opportunity Rover Is In Danger of Dying From a Dust Storm (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the hang-in-there-buddy dept.

According to NASA, the Mars Opportunity rover is currently trying to survive an intensifying dust storm on the red planet. "The storm's atmospheric opacity -- the veil of dust blowing around, which can blot out sunlight -- is now much worse than a 2007 storm that Opportunity weathered," reports NASA. "The previous storm had an opacity level, or tau, somewhere above 5.5; this new storm had an estimated tau of 10.8 as of Sunday morning." Engadget reports: The storm was first detected on Friday June 1st by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at which point the rover's team was notified because of the weather event's proximity to Opportunity. The rover uses solar panels, so a dust storm could have an extremely negative impact on Opportunity's power levels and its batteries. By Wednesday June 6th, Opportunity was in minimal operations mode because of sharply decreasing power levels. The brave little rover is continuing to weather the storm; it sent a transmission back to Earth Sunday morning, which is a good sign. It means there's still enough charge left in the batteries to communicate with home, despite the fact that the storm is continuing to worsen.

5 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory XKCD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The brave little rover": https://xkcd.com/695/

    1. Re:Obligatory XKCD by Niggle · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's Spirit.
      You want: https://xkcd.com/1504/ for opportunity

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      - Blah blah blah, missing scientist. Blah blah blah, atomic bomb. -
    2. Re:Obligatory XKCD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Don't anthropomorphize rovers. They don't like it when you do that.

  2. Communicate With Home? by bjwest · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder how long it could last in standby if someone hadn't been foolish enough to force it to waste power phoning home just to say "I'm still here." That single transmission could possibly be what killed it.

    I'd also like to note that if Opportunity wasn't designed to power down safely (or recover to a working state if someone were foolish enough to not have it power down before completely running out of power) recharge the batteries when there's enough sunlight, then have Opportunity restart, someone needs to loose their engineering degree.

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    --- Keep the choice with the user..
    1. Re:Communicate With Home? by GuB-42 · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's 14 earth years, not 14 fucking years.
      That being said, I didn't know that fucking was a planet, we should let more people know, it would really help build interest in space exploration.