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...

[glennwsmith]

I didn't intend to jump into this discussion about solar cell cleaning, but if you wiggle a lure in front of a fish long enough, somethimes it will strike out of frustration.

At any rate, aren't the solar cell panels equipped with hinges and motors that lowered them into a horizontal position in the first place? And if so (and I don't mean on this mission), wouldn't it be possible to use this same mechanism to raise the solar panels back to a vertical position -- perhaps several times -- to at least shake off much of the dust?

I realize this is a stupid idea, so someone please set me straight.

Glenn

[Marcel]

I didn't intend to jump into this discussion about solar cell cleaning, but if you wiggle a lure in front of a fish long enough, somethimes it will strike out of frustration.

At any rate, aren't the solar cell panels equipped with hinges and motors that lowered them into a horizontal position in the first place?  And if so (and I don't mean on this mission), wouldn't it be possible to use this same mechanism to raise the solar panels back to  a vertical position -- perhaps several times -- to at least shake off much of the dust?

I realize this is a stupid idea, so someone please set me straight.

Glenn

Hey you, it's a stupid idea !
No, seriously, the participants in this discussion (which know a hell of a lot about the machines) stated, that the amount of energy from the arrays is not going to be the bottleneck. I might as well go for that opinion, since, indeed, after almost 550 sols of ops., there's STILL no reason to be concerned about the dust on the solar panels. Next year there will be, probably, but what the heck, we will have had such a treamendous amount of data......we should be satisfied.

If, however, both rovers would have ended after 100 sols (just after primairy mission) due to dust cover on the arrays, I AM SURE the next solar powered rovers would be equipped WITH a cleaning system.

But the great experience they have now with the energy budget of these two sweeties does not require elaborate effort for that.

Better to invest in optimization of EDL, RTG's, instrumentation and mobility performance for the next generation rovers.......

Marcel.