Mars rovers get new lease onlife as Dust Devil Wind/ice clean solar arrays

[papau]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/03/15/rover.spirit/index.html

Mars rover gets new lease on life
Dust devil cleans Spirit's solar arrays
By Leonard David
SPACE.com
Tuesday, March 15, 2005 Posted: 12:48 PM EST (1748 GMT)
(SPACE.com) -- Mars scientists and engineers are elated about a dust-busting blast that has struck the Spirit rover at its Gusev crater exploration site.

Turns out that a Martian whirlwind -- dubbed a dust devil -- likely zoomed over the robot high up in the Columbia Hills. That fleeting flyby effectively cleaned Spirit's solar arrays, giving the robot a new lease on life.

Engineers report that the rover's power reading quickly shot up to almost as high as when the rover landed on Mars over a year ago.<snip>

As to what caused Opportunity's solar panels at Meridiani Planum to become cleaned is a puzzle, Squyres said. "Wind has to be involved at some level you figure. Frost might have helped. A frost build-up on arrays could coagulate the dust...but the fact is that we don't understand it very well. But I'll take it."

[skylarmae]

1. cool, very cool! n/t

[Occulus]

2. Wow. Cool.

So they're hoping for bad weather now? :silly:

Seriously, these rovers have been a truly amazing achievement. They shouldn't still be operative, but they are.

Kudos to the engineers who designed them.

[papau]

3. I agree - but what do we owe the Martian squeegee men?

:-)

[Squeegee]

5. Did you say Squeegee?

Oh, you meant something else. :(

[papau]

7. :-) Welcome to Mars!

:-)

[HeeBGBz]

4. Isn't this the second Rover car wash event?

There was one several months ago and they were debating what cleaned the solar panels. Is this the same crater and a different event?

[slutticus]

6. Check out the difference in the solar panels!

Before the "cleaning", Sol 409





After the cleaning, Sol 424



The panels look brand new!

Compare with day 10 of the mission...

[Billy Ruffian]

8. Wind?

Nah ... google showed what happened.

http://www.google.com/holidaylogos04.html

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