The dust is finer than talcum powder, way way too fine to easily just be dumped off tilted and shaken panels as if it was fine sand.

There's no reason available surface on a rover couldn't be covered with thin, lightweight solar cells as "supplementary" power. Note that Viking's RTG's produced only 70 watts each, at the start of the mission <somebody check my figures...> 140 watts x 24 hours isn't an enormous amount of energy, and supplementary solar could help, if it doesn't eat up too much weight.

I don't agree. Look at opportunities wheels at the moment. The have been milled around in extremely fine dust (especially lately) and at some moments they were filled with dust. And now: they look like being from the dishwasher: completely clean. On Mars, it's not like on earth, where atmospheric water vapour easily clods together dust. Dust on Mars almost falls off just as easy as it settled down. It's a great benefit of roving on Mars: it's dry (also, you don't need to coat your chassis with tectyl against rust ).

3360 Whrs - is a lot more than MER

Doug

True. While there is a slim chance it might wake up after the winter, this highly, highly unlikely.

Unless they put an RTG on the craft to keep it warm during hybernation
Probably too heavy as well......

They will at least try to wake it up after winter, right? I mean, if it still works, we should put it to use! It's nonsense to let a perfectly good spacecraft sit around and collect dust (ha, ha)!

Key thing here though - they are constantly being pressed into the ground. The dirt on the wheels is going to easily stick to the compressed dirt on the ground, not the smooth aluminum wheels.

Someone did mention that the sides of rocks still have dust on them. However, it is definitely not as much dust as on horizontal surfaces - either due to wind or gravity.

This is why I'm wondering about a rover that is capable of standing itself up on 4 wheels somehow - or else pushing down with the front two, to angle itself at the wind. Even if being angled won't make the panels totally clean, but I'd take partially clean over completely dust laden.

About how much time driving will have MERx? No one know sure about the end of date. I think the end of driving time is due to others problems such as an example: low level of Cobalt 57 and other mechanical fatigue symptoms.

However, both rovers has lots future, Oppy with long expected to visit the Victoria's crater and Spirit ones with the Abismal Aleluya -not sure-? The most probably to reach Victoria's crater is by the end of the year and to the abismal by the end of August. After this, all team will start to work for Phoenix and MSL projects. I speculate that they will stop driving by the the first month of 2006... who will bet for this....

Rodolfo

The rovers are funded thru September 2006 (just past the middle of the next Martian winter). While many personnel will be promoted, and some will move on to upcoming Mars projects (many already have), they will always be bringing in new people to train and take over the necessary positions on the MER team.

I think the rovers will last forever. Go on, prove me wrong! You can't.

They may be dismantled when Mars is used for material to make a Dyson Shell.

Not really:

"I think Victoria crater's out of reach. I don't think we're going to get there. It's a nice thing to dream about, but boy, it's far away."
- Steve Squyres

That sounds so familiar!

A note on the dangerous RTG's. They are pretty durable. I remember an article in Aviation Week about an RTG on a military payload launched from Vandenberg back in the carefree seventies where the rocket exploded just after leaving the pad.
Question: "What happened to the RTG?"
Answer: "We wiped it off and re-launched it"

tty

Good note from ToSeek,

It is very difficult to bet about how long will the MER be driving. There are many influences knowing that the MER personnel will stay working until thru 2006:

1) Accident, hope that any MER won't have any more accident. No beer drinking.
2) Tau atmosphere transparency, no one can predict it with advance.
3) Electrical charged dust devil hits the MER, it can damage the electric circuit. Spirit is safeguarded by the Columbia Hill and Oppy is on a free dust devil zone?
4) Broke the motor wheel, both have little problem with actuator drive motor?
5) Low level of cobalt 57, specially to Spirit. Around the Columbia Hill there are lots of interesting stones....and hope Oppy' ones will worn out fast when it reaches on Erberus outcrops.
6) A metorite will hit it. It might occur and if it is true, it would be unbelieving.
7) what else it might stop them?

Rodolfo