Stroupe's Slide |
Stroupe's Slide |
Jan 4 2008, 07:20 AM
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#1
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Paolo's got his plunge over at Meridiani....and thanks to Ashley's driving, we now have - Stroupe's Slide here at Gusev. It took an email or two to figure out the best alliteration for it. Somehow 'Ashley's Favorable Incline' didn't quite scan, and Home Plate North is just so..dull. And where better to slide, than home plate! Even after as much careful planning ( that some suggested was too conservative ) it was still a major effort to get Spirit safe in time - so kudos to Ashley Stroupe and her colleagues for dealing with a couple of Mars jet-lagged weeks and giving us a shot at celebrating a 5th Martian Birthday.
Get comfortable, we may be here some time Doug |
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Jan 30 2008, 04:44 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
Hopefully there is not much more dust left in the air to settle out -- or to
block sunlight from the rover. Is the dust level in the sky low by now? |
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Jan 30 2008, 05:40 PM
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#3
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
We're into SH Autumn now with the Winter Solstice arriving on June 25
The previous high atmospheric dust periods have shown that Tau rises very fast and then tends to follow a gradual exponential decay as the dust settles out. The previous less significant localised dust storms cleared out (for the most part) over the course of a couple of weeks to months. One complication is that as the air clears the rate of deposition of dust on the panels is noticably higher for a similar period. By now I would expect that most of the atmospheric dust blocking the incident sunlight would have settled out and I would be surprised if the current rate of dust deposition was dramatically different than it was at similar times during Spirit's two previous Autumn seasons but the amount of dust that is already on the panels is far higher than it has ever been before. If the Rover team were to publish some recent data on the amount of power the panels are actually generating vs the current tau and the orientation of the rover we could work out fairly easily just how much power was "lost" due to dust on the panels on that date (and other gradual systemic degradations, but I beleive the vast majority would be due to dust) and with that predict what the situation is likely to be at mid winter and at the date of lowest insolation which trails mid winter by a couple of Sols. |
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