How Much Driving Time? Options

[Cugel]

Does anybody know how much time Oppy actually can spend on driving on a single sol?

I remember that when she travelled from Eagle to Endurance crater it was no more than 1.5 hours per sol (or so), due to power limitations. I have no idea what the current power situation and battery status of Oppy allows these days...

[Cugel]

Thanks all!

So, if I got this right, with nuclear power instead of solar, we could probably drive all day long (?). This means that MSL, even with the same speed as MER, could travel substantially further, up to 1 km. a day. Of course, if the terrain and software permit it...

Well, I still like those solar panel wings! An elegant idea, living of local resources, and it gives the rovers such a cute appearance. I bet that in a space probe beauty contest they would win by some margin. (Sojourner at 2?).

[Nirgal]

Well, I still like those solar panel wings! An elegant idea, living of local resources, and it gives the rovers such a cute appearance. I bet that in a space probe beauty contest they would win by some margin. (Sojourner at 2?).

it would be the *perfect* design if it also included some cleaning mechnism to prevent dust accumulation on the panels.
This would mean virtually unlimited exploration during the course of many years and over great distances.
Especially if combined with massive redundancy and simlpicity/robustness against hardware failures or wear/tear: think of, say 10 MER-like self-cleaning-solar-panel powered rovers distributed all over the planet ...

[Marcel]

it would be the *perfect* design if it also included some cleaning mechnism to prevent dust accumulation on the panels.

This actually was an issue discussed before in a thread that i forgot what title it had. It has been under consideration by rover builders to try to incorporate some mechanism or system that takes care of a clean solar array for the long run. It seems so stupid that it wasn't built in (was my first idea). Especially because it seems like the most probable cause of rover-death in the end. However, it is not as easy as you (and I before) think.

First of all: NO one expected both of the vehicles to be fully operational after this long. They were designed to last 90 sols and 600 meters of driving distance. Taking this period of time in mind (and the experience of dust accumulation on MPF), there wasn't any concern about the dust. "Probably something else will finish them", must have been the consideration.
Secondly: there's been some research on solar arrays that repulse (is that english?) fines from the arrays by means of electromagnetic forces (and make use of the mineral magnetite abundance in the fines). This hasn't been studied thoroughly enough to be incorporated in the MER design however and also costs a lot of energy. There's also other ways to do it, like incorporate a "rolling foil" that renews itself like an expensive hotel "toilet seat hygienic system", however, this would be far too complicated to fit in because of the folded up configuration combined with the treamendous amount of obstacles on the rover deck (antennas, mast, TES target, magnets, pyro's, wires, sundial). One could think of a pressurized vessel with inert gas (like nitrogen or a noble gas) that could blow the arrays clean every now and then: this idea is nice but has the same problem as most of the others: it is simply too heavy to fit in AND to complex to integrate with the design......

Let our minds keep on cracking this issue until someone calls "Eureka" and finds something that really keeps them clean forever.... That would certainly maximize the amount of available driving time each sol....until something else breaks.

[Jeff7]

Let our minds keep on cracking this issue until someone calls "Eureka" and finds something that really keeps them clean forever....   That would certainly maximize the amount of available driving time each sol....until something else breaks.

How about a way of simply tilting the rover? Like maybe rear it up on 4 wheels so it's angled into the wind? Spirit probably got cleaned because it was angled while sitting on the hills. Look at Opportunity though. It's on flat terrain, and last I knew (long time ago) was that its output started dropping once it left the tilted ground of Endurance crater. Maybe just rearing it up, angling it slightly against the wind, would allow it to get a cleaning.
If the computer animation of the rover's landing and egress process is accurate, the rovers already have some capability to do this - it had to stand on the back 4 wheels while the front two unfolded from their stowed positions.

What's mute mean ?

I believe the term sought was "moot point."