Wow, that's pretty scary.
Saw it mentioned that summer temps might be kind to the rovers, but what is the primary part that, if failed, would stop a rover waking up in the morning.

Is it the WEB cooling down too much?

5.2-5.5 guestimated from array power on Marks latest update.

Doug

Bad news.

Well - good news in so far as the vehicle is healthy enough to tell us the solar array output from which the figure has been derived.

Doug

And, for those of you not reloading Lemmon's page every five minutes, also this:

Pardon my ignorance, but if they do a deep sleep during the day to save power - would the batteries still charge? Or is that an automatic hardwired function?

Just wondering if they would even want to do that to conserver power to ride out the worst...

It would be ironic and cruel beyond words if Oppy succumbed to this dust storm after all she's survived to get here. What an adventure she's had so far... Surviving technical difficulties and deadlines on Earth before launch, then surviving the fiery plunge thru Mars' atmosphere, the boing-boing of landing and the "hole in one" bounce into Eagle Crater... countless long treks across the Meridiani desert... getting stuck in Purgatory Dune... the loooooong drive south the Victoria... and now, just when she was days away from entering the crater, and fulfilling what many see as her destiny - to explore the interior of the huge martian crater - the Great Ghoul of Mars, that has claimed so many other probes, finally turns its gaze on little Oppy and stops her in her tracks...



Hang in there Oppy, don't look at the sky...

Trying to think positive
I'm wondering if, once the Storm will have receded, it'll be worth trying to re-image all the others landers (V1, V2, MPF) to see if we can see any clean-ups as we see on Spirit & Oppy. I'm not sure the differences in albedo will show up but it could be an idea to submit to MRO's team. Any thoughts ?

The batteries are disconnected from the main power bus (electrically isolated) from the solar arrays during Deep Sleep. It is like pulling the plug out of the wall. You don't want to do that during the day, otherwise the batteries will not be charged. And assuming you decided to do such a thing, you would have to wait until solar array wake-up the next morning to come out of Deep Sleep...

Thanks Del Palmer, that's what I was afraid of...

I become te be more and more anxious about the rovers and especially for Oppy.
I have the very bad sensation that the storm will not dicrease so quickly and will during a few month...

I have lots of feelings for the rovers and this could be a shock to broke definitly contact with them

I want to say in french : tempête, je commence à en avoir ma claque, tu dégages de là!!

Ah, I'm glad sombody knows this. I've only ever been able to find reference that all *loads* are removed from the battery. As clearly something of the solar array power gets to the BCB* (as it is this power that tells the BCB to reconnect the battery in the morning) I was never sure if the battery could be charged while in deep sleep.



Well unless the array power was less than the minimum 'do nothing loads', particuarly with the sholder heater, in which case the battery is not going to charge anyway. The issue is: do you want to conserve power in the battery or do you use every drop trying to stay alive...



Me too, only in the last few hours have I started to really worry, tau > 5 wow!

James

* BCB = Battery Control Board

Well, we definitely don't want a dead battery while in deep sleep. If that happens, then I'm afraid it would be R.I.P. for the rover.

Actually, after thinking and reading more about this, I'm not sure it's actually possible to deep sleep during the day (unless day is like night, not impossible at the moment!) as deep sleep works by disconnecting the BCB and ends when the BCB is naturally repowered by the solar arrays at dawn (when ~0.2 Amps is generated), ending deep sleep whether you want it to or not.

James

There are so many questions I could ask here - eg, if the batteries are receiving little or no charge from the arrays, but are fully charged to begin with, how long will they retain their charge? I'm also curious whether they've had any sort of "action plan" in place for this kind of scenario. More than anything, I'd like to hear the level of confidence that the folks in control are expressing at this time. The last we heard from Squyres a few days ago was pretty confident.

BTW, welcome back James!