InSight Surface Operations, 26 Nov 2018- 21 Dec 2022 |
InSight Surface Operations, 26 Nov 2018- 21 Dec 2022 |
Nov 26 2018, 08:20 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Congratulations to the InSight team on a successful landing! We'll discuss the remainder of the mission here.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Feb 7 2022, 03:09 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 362 Joined: 12-June 05 From: Kiama, Australia Member No.: 409 |
Just out of interest what kind of power production could be expected if instead of horizontal panels it had them facing east west at say a 70deg tilt to the horizontal. That is almost vertical. I assume that dust accumulation would then not be an issue.
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Feb 8 2022, 04:17 AM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 611 Joined: 23-February 07 From: Occasionally in Columbia, MD Member No.: 1764 |
Just out of interest what kind of power production could be expected if instead of horizontal panels it had them facing east west at say a 70deg tilt to the horizontal. That is almost vertical. I assume that dust accumulation would then not be an issue. That's a pretty big geometric loss. I suspect the energy impact for the nominal mission duration would far outweigh the (uncertain) retention of capacity due to lower dust accumulation. It is known after all that at least some dust can be deposited even on vertical surfaces (including camera windows) on Mars. I could well believe that some combination of modest tilt, and mounting arrays closer to the ground (so that sand can more easily get onto them to scrub the dust off) could help mitigate power loss, but that it's also a very site-dependent issue. More practically, InSight was sold somewhat as a 'build to print' Phoenix rebuild, so even though the arrays were slightly larger, the deployment mechanism was the same. You'd need to expensively redesign those mechanisms to have inclined arrays. Arrays as steeply tilted as you suggest would also raise concerns about the effect of wind loads, not least on the seismic noise background. |
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