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Two Months Later: NASA's Opportunity Rover Is Still Lost On Mars After Huge Dust Storm (space.com)
Two months have passed since NASA's Opportunity Mars rover last phoned home. The last time we reported on the rover was on June 12th, when it was trying to survive an intensifying dust storm that was deemed "much worse than a 2007 storm that Opportunity weathered," according to NASA. "The previous storm had an opacity level, or tau, somewhere above 5.5; this new storm had an estimated tau of 10.8." Space.com reports on Opportunity's current status: Opportunity hasn't made a peep since June 10, when dust in the Red Planet's air got so thick that the solar-powered rover couldn't recharge its batteries. Opportunity's handlers think the six-wheeled robot has put itself into a sort of hibernation, and they still hope to get a ping once the dust storm has petered out. And there are good reasons for this optimism, NASA officials said. "Because the batteries were in relatively good health before the storm, there's not likely to be too much degradation," NASA officials wrote in an Opportunity update Thursday (Aug. 16). "And because dust storms tend to warm the environment -- and the 2018 storm happened as Opportunity's location on Mars entered summer -- the rover should have stayed warm enough to survive."
Engineers are trying to communicate with Opportunity several times a week using NASA's Deep Space Network, a system of big radio dishes around the globe. They hail the robot during scheduled "wake-up times" and then listen for a response. And team members are casting a wider net, too: Every day, they sift through all radio signals received from Mars, listening for any chirp from Opportunity, NASA officials said. Even if Opportunity does eventually wake up and re-establish contact, its long ordeal may end up taking a toll on the rover. "The rover's batteries could have discharged so much power -- and stayed inactive so long -- that their capacity is reduced," NASA officials wrote in the update. "If those batteries can't hold as much charge, it could affect the rover's continued operations. It could also mean that energy-draining behavior, like running its heaters during winter, could cause the batteries to brown out."
Engineers are trying to communicate with Opportunity several times a week using NASA's Deep Space Network, a system of big radio dishes around the globe. They hail the robot during scheduled "wake-up times" and then listen for a response. And team members are casting a wider net, too: Every day, they sift through all radio signals received from Mars, listening for any chirp from Opportunity, NASA officials said. Even if Opportunity does eventually wake up and re-establish contact, its long ordeal may end up taking a toll on the rover. "The rover's batteries could have discharged so much power -- and stayed inactive so long -- that their capacity is reduced," NASA officials wrote in the update. "If those batteries can't hold as much charge, it could affect the rover's continued operations. It could also mean that energy-draining behavior, like running its heaters during winter, could cause the batteries to brown out."
Sounds like every sysadmin feels NASA's pain. Don't you just love when there's a remote machine that doesn't respond to any means of contacting it you have, and getting there would take a whole day's trip, preceded by two weeks of having access there organized?
NASA just has exactly this, scaled way up.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
https://xkcd.com/1504/
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Seize the Sol.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The Massive Mars Dust Storm Is Starting to Die Down
The dust is finally beginning to clear on Mars, but it'll probably still be a while before NASA's sidelined Opportunity rover can phone home.
A global dust storm has enshrouded Mars for more than a month, plunging the planet's surface into perpetual darkness. That's complicated life significantly for the solar-powered Opportunity, which has apparently put itself into a sort of hibernation; the rover hasn't contacted its controllers since June 10.
A long-awaited dawn seems to be on the horizon, however.
"It's the beginning of the end for the planet-encircling dust storm on Mars," NASA officials wrote in an Opportunity mission update yesterday (July 26).
Scientists studying the storm "say that, as of Monday, July 23, more dust is falling out than is being raised into the planet's thin air," agency officials added. "That means the event has reached its decay phase, when dust-raising occurs in ever smaller areas, while others stop raising dust altogether."
Other data points support this conclusion. For example, measurements by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show that temperatures in the middle atmosphere have stopped rising, indicating less absorption of solar heat by dust particles.
In addition, NASA's Curiosity rover — which is nuclear-powered and can therefore work through the storm — has observed a decline in overhead dust at its location, the 96-mile-wide (154 kilometers) Gale Crater, agency officials said.
Some Martian landforms previously hidden beneath the dust can now be spotted from orbit again, they added, and may even be visible using Earth-based telescopes by early next week, when Mars will make its closest approach to our planet since 2003.
https://www.space.com/41302-ma...
“The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.”
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I have a remote ham station that's 5 hours from my home. 10 acres out in farm country. It's off grid and cellular network only. That sounded good until I realized how much interference the neighbors solar controllers make. Any visit means I sleep there and drive back the next day. Obviously, I want that site to be reliable.,
Bruce Perens.