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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.
"The brave little rover": https://xkcd.com/695/
The more pressing problem isn't that it can't reboot, it's that it won't be able to clean its panels after the storm, and that's assuming it can even do that. Not to mention the drop in efficiency from getting the panels scarred up by abrasive dust.
Godspeed little rover, keep up the fight!
It needs battery to keep the internal components at safe temperature levels. It is not about calling home; it is about not freezing.
Since this article doesn't explain it, an optical depth tau value of 10.8 means approximately 0.002% of the sunlight is reaching the rover, compared to 0.4% for the last storm. It's really, really dark out there.
...someone needs to loose their engineering degree.
Someone needs to remember this hardware was originally expected to last 90 days. It's been running for over fourteen fucking years.
This would probably be one of those times where you should STFU about failures in engineering and design, as the statistics tend to speak for themselves.
Opportunity and Spirit are not fitted with any mechanism to clear their solar panels. Originally, it was assumed that dust on the panels would be what would end the mission. But winds and whirlwinds were found on the planet, these occasionally blew dust from the panels, and the mission was extended.
The pressing problem is that there won't be enough energy to keep the heaters running, the electronics will cool down to -50C, and either the heaters won't turn back on when the sun returns, or, if they do, the electronics won't work when they defrost.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
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.