Dust Storm? |
Dust Storm? |
Dec 29 2004, 08:23 PM
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Member Group: Admin Posts: 468 Joined: 11-February 04 From: USA Member No.: 21 |
QUOTE Pando : Latest: There are indications that there is a possible dust storm developing. The power levels have dropped quite dramatically at around Sol 330 for Opportunity and is somewhat worrisome. At Gusev things are trending similarly although it's a Sol or so later. This is getting interesting as it may even mean a global dust storm This seems to be deserving of its own topic, going off of Pando's post in the heatshield thread. Unfortunetly, the TES mainpage doesn't have daily dust maps anymore, and the latest bolometer images are from Dec 21: QUOTE The TES spectrometer is currently being used intermittently. At this time we're no longer producing daily images or movies of 15 micron atmospheric temperature or dust opacity. The TES bolometer is still being used full-time, and we will continue to update the daytime and nighttime temperature movies. I was looking at the rear haz from Sol 331, wondering what sort of clouds might be responsible, but a dust storm might make more sense. This post has been edited by slinted: Dec 30 2004, 09:15 AM |
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Jan 26 2005, 11:47 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
It's barely possible kinematically ( i..e the IDD could reach perhaps 5% of the cells I'd guess ), and the 'brush' is, I believe, made of something like steel So it would scratch the hell out of the solar cell cover plates and possibly crack them
Reach back over your head with the inside of your elbow against your nose - the wrist just about on top of your head - and your hand probably just reaching over the back of your head. Now try and scratch your back No mobility left to do it We see about as much as the IDD can do when it uses the MI, APXS and Mossbauer on the magnets on the front of the rover - and they used the MI on a few of the solar cells right near the front as well - but it just cant reach much further than that. I spoke to Colin Pillinger on this very issue once - at an Open University Open Day - we were talking next to a Beagle 2 model - and a passer by said "couldnt you brush the solar panels clear of dust", and as Colin thought of a sensible way to answer, I simply replied "better to have dusty solar arrays than broken ones" Doug |
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