Huge Dust Storm on Mars Hits NASA's Opportunity Rover

[Judi Lynn]

Huge Dust Storm on Mars Hits NASA's Opportunity Rover
By Tariq Malik, Space.com Managing Editor | June 10, 2018 08:07am ET

A massive dust storm on Mars has sidelined NASA's Opportunity rover, stalling the robot's science work as it waits out the still-growing tempest.

The Martian dust storm was first spotted from space by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA officials said.

"As soon as the orbiter team saw how close the storm was to Opportunity, they notified the rover's team to begin preparing contingency plans," NASA officials said in a statement. "In a matter of days, the storm had ballooned." [The Greatest Mars Discoveries by Opportunity & Spirit]

As of Friday (June 8), the storm covers more than 7 million square miles of Mars (18 million square kilometers), according to NASA. That's an area larger than all of North America on Earth.

More:
https://www.space.com/40847-mars-dust-storm-stalls-opportunity-rover.html?utm_source=sdc-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180611-sdc

[Judi Lynn]

1. Opportunity fights for life amidst a giant Martian dust storm

David Szondy
35 minutes ago

VIEW GALLERY - 2 IMAGES
NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has gone into minimal operating mode as it rides out a giant dust storm that is blotting out the Sun. The storm, which is much worse than originally thought, is preventing the solar panels from recharging the veteran probe's batteries, but mission control have said that NASA engineers received a signal from Opportunity on Sunday morning.

One of Mars' more unusual characteristics is its tendency to generate dust storms of incredible size. When NASA's Mariner 9 orbiter arrived at Mars in 1971, there was a storm so great that it engulfed the entire planet and left the surface blotted out for two months. This fact is not only of scientific interest, it also has an impact of present and future missions to the Red Planet.

Unlike the nuclear-powered Curiosity rover, Opportunity relies on solar panels to keep its batteries charged. If those panels don't receive enough sunlight, the batteries will drain and the rover will be unable to power its heating units. Since the nights on Mars can get as cold as ?225° F (?143° C), Opportunity's systems would freeze and never be able to restart again, as likely happened to its sister Spirit rover in 2010.

According to NASA, the present storm was detected by the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on June 1. It now covers an area of 7 million mi² (18 million km²) or about that of North America, including Opportunity's location in Perseverance Valley. The concern of mission control is that the light levels from the airborne dust might increase the opacity level to the point where the panels would not get enough light, so the rover was ordered to suspend all science operations and concentrate battery power on running the heaters and telemetry.

More:
https://newatlas.com/opportunity-mars-dust-storm/54990/

[krispos42]

2. C'mon, Opportunity!

We have faith!



Hovertext:

We all remember those famous first word spoken by an astronaut on the surface of Mars: "That's one small step fo - HOLY SHIT LOOK OUT IT'S SOME KIND OF DRILL! Get back to the ... [unintelligible] .... [signal lost]"