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Mars Opportunity Rover Is In Danger of Dying From a Dust Storm (engadget.com)
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.
On one hand, I think those engineers need a discussion about underestimating capabilities.
On the other, I think they need to be given god damm medals for making a project beat its lifespan estimates, not by 10%, not by 100%, not by 1000%, but by 5500%.
The problem with the RTG isn't that it's going to decay completely, it's that being about the size and weight of car it's packed with way more power hungry systems the RTG may not be able to power anymore once it's been going around for the better part of a decade. Sure, it's got batteries to cover for peaks, but those have been needed from the start and will probably decay faster than the RTG and a battery failure was after all what killed Viking 2 despite also being RTG powered.
Solar panels definitely also decay over time, but those on the Mars Pathfinder mission saw a long term degradation of only about 0.15% per (earth) year. Their decay doesn't also require more energy to be used for heating due to less waste heat being produced.
I'm probably worrying too much and the thing that kills Curiosity probably is the environment with the way the soil is rich in really corrosive substances like perchlorate.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
Others have supplied more uplifting endings to this strip:
https://i.imgur.com/VZvj5S7.jp...
https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/...
And my favourite:
https://imgur.com/VbKV9DF
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.