Dust Storm Options

[sranderson]

Spaceweather (www.spaceweather.com) is reporting a dust storm on Mars visible in amateur telescopes. Hope we don't get too much dust-fall on the solar panels....

[dot.dk]

Indeed the dust storm is over and a fresh new cleaning event was in order

Rover update at JPL/NASA

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity

Opportunity is healthy. The solar array was apparently cleaned again on sol 638. Average solar array energy is around 720 watt-hours after the cleaning event!

[helvick]

720 watt hours is nice and healthy, the cleaning event seems to have boosted Oppy's energy generating capacity by about 10%. Before this dust storm she was generating somewhere around 670 watt hours and the total insolation has dropped slightly so I had been expecting that she would return to around 650 watt hours when the dust cleared.

[Nirgal]

720 watt hours is nice and healthy, the cleaning event seems to have boosted Oppy's energy generating capacity by about 10%. Before this dust storm she was generating somewhere around 670 watt hours and the total insolation has dropped slightly so I had been expecting that she would return to around 650 watt hours when the dust cleared.

helvick,

what would be your best estimate of Oppy's remaining life time, if it were limited by solar power alone ... a) without further cleaning events or assuming one or two additioanl 10% cleaning events during the remaining life time ?
From your latest chart it would seem that we could expect solar power to last well into February, right ?

Nirgal
... who still can't stop dreaming the Victoria dream

[helvick]

helvick,

what would be your best estimate of Oppy's remaining life time, if it were limited by solar power alone ... a) without further cleaning events or assuming one or two additioanl 10% cleaning events during the remaining life time ?
From your latest chart it would seem that we could expect solar power to last well into February, right ?

Nirgal
... who still can't stop dreaming the Victoria dream

I now think that it will be well past February, in fact I don't think that declining Solar power will be an issue at all until very close to mid winter (around the start of July 2006). She now has a very good chance of being able to generate enough power to survive for at least another martian year and a half. Other things are probably becoming more critical though but power is definitely looking very good indeed.

A few weeks back I estimated that the power levels at mid winter on her second year would be around 260 Watt hours but that was based on the then current level of dust loading. This cleaning event has added about 70 watt hours of capacity at the moment and if the pattern of dust deposition between now and Sol 870 (the Sol with the lowest insolation ~ July 5 2006) follows the pattern from Sols 1 to 196 then my estimate needs to be increased by 35-40 watt hours.

So I think we're now looking at a minimum of 295-300 Watt hours for a few days in mid winter. That is survivable, particularly if the planners\drivers can find some handy 10-15 degree north facing slopes to pitch out on for a week or two in the depths of winter.

[ElkGroveDan]

That is survivable, particularly if the planners\drivers can find some handy 10-15 degree north facing slopes to pitch out on for a week or two in the depths of winter.

Heck they can find a slope like that on any large sand dune.

That raises another question though. Does anyone know if the wheels can be partially retracted again? (For example to create an artifical tilt to the rovers) or did they permanently lock into place upon initial deployment?

[bergadder]

Heck they can find a slope like that on any large sand dune.

That raises another question though.  Does anyone know if the wheels can be partially retracted again? (For example to create an artifical tilt to the rovers) or did they permanently lock into place upon initial deployment?

Locked on deployment..


In terms of power, was there an issue of battery cycles and can we tell if they are degrading?

[Marcel]

In terms of power, was there an issue of battery cycles and can we tell if they are degrading?

I remember them being designed to be able to do about a 1000 cycles. That (to my opinion and guess) is going to be THE problem in the end. As far as i can tell, the degradation of the batteries can be assessed easy when charge and recharge currents, -times and -characteristics are compared over time.

Is this data available to the public ? Can we ask for this numbers in some way ? It's pretty important considering how much more adventure we can expect on the long run.

There might be a possibility of solely operating on solar energy directly from the arrays when batteries get worse, there will be no (or not much) energy left at night however to prevent the Warm Electronic Box to drift outside temp. design limits. Eventually, they'll probably freeze to death.

But that might take another Martian year !