Opportunity General Health |
Opportunity General Health |
Aug 15 2013, 10:25 AM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 102 Joined: 8-August 12 Member No.: 6511 |
I've been clicking around for a general health status for Opportunity, but haven't been able to find one.
Power -- The solar panels seem to be showing signs of degradation over time but it's not clear how much. NASA reports regularly on power output, tau/opacity and dust levels, but not on the status of the panels themselves. They did clock well over 500 watt-hours as recently as May, so it doesn't look like their performance is a serious issue. As for non-solar power, the radioisotope heaters seem to be fine; they're Pu-238, so they would only have lost about 10% of their power since launch. So the WEB is still toasty. Motors and joints -- I know we've got one bad wheel motor (which means we spend a lot of time driving backwards) and the bad arm azimuth joint and the separate issue with the arm potentiometer. Electronics -- There was the flash memory issue earlier this year but I don't know if that was a one-off or a sign of age. Instruments -- The Mossbauer spectrometer is done because its radioactive cobalt source ran out. MiniTES got dust on its mirror after the big 2007 dust storm and stopped working. AFAICT the other instruments are okay? Pancam, Navcam, Hazcams, and the APXS all seem to be working fine. There was a NASA press release last month that said "Opportunity imaged the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) bit to assess remaining bit life", but it didn't say anything about what they saw and I haven't been able to find any more information. Clearly the RAT is still working, at least for now. What else? Doug M. |
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May 6 2018, 04:04 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2106 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
The meantime... the newest A.J.S. Rayl update shows that apparently the power situation is so good, the team is attempting to use the excess(!) for more astronomical observations:
http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-top...-extension.html I am wondering what the issue is with the batteries remaining fully charged; I've heard about this before, but does anyone have more details? Not just asking because I'm a laptop user who wants to preserve my own as much as possible... |
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May 6 2018, 04:44 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2542 Joined: 13-September 05 Member No.: 497 |
I am wondering what the issue is with the batteries remaining fully charged; I've heard about this before, but does anyone have more details? http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article...based_batteries Your battery would last longest if you constantly maintained it at somewhere between 50% and 75% of capacity. Of course you want to discharge it sometimes since otherwise there's not much point in having a battery. -------------------- Disclaimer: This post is based on public information only. Any opinions are my own.
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