The Storm, Dust storm of 2007 Options

[OWW]

Oh no...This is getting bad:

The new and potentially bleak outlook is a stark shift from the prognosis earlier this week.

The dusty squall has reduced direct sunlight to Mars' surface by nearly 99 percent, an unprecedented threat for the solar-powered robotic explorers. If the storm keeps up and thickens with even more dust, officials fear the rovers' batteries may empty and silence the robotic explorers forever.

Opportunity's energy-gathering ability has been slashed to a dangerous 280 watt-hours-enough power to light only three 90-watt light bulbs.

"The worst-case scenario is that enough dust in the sky decreases solar energy to the point that we have to shut down too many things to save power," Lemmon said. "The rovers keep their battery alive by keeping their electronics alive."

"The reality of the situation is that we're limited as to what we can do from the ground by cutting power use," Callas said. "If it continues to worsen and stay that way, it's a survivability issue for Opportunity. If Mars wants to kill the rovers, it can."

http://www.space.com/news/070705_dusty_rovers.html

[dvandorn]

I'm actually a little more worried about Spirit than I am about Oppy. This dust is all still entrained in the atmosphere, it hasn't really started to fall out yet. I don't know why, but I have this gut feeling that Meridiani may collect less dust from this storm than Gusev eventually will. Maybe because there is less overall dust accumulation on the ground at Meridiani than there is at Gusev; it just feels like Meridiani doesn't collect dust as effectively as Gusev does. (Maybe Gusev's crater rim causes a large-scale swirl in the winds that tends to make dust collect within, while the lack of any such circulation patterns at Meridiani keeps it from getting dumped on nearly as much.)

I guess I'm thinking that the dust ought to have specific patterns of fallout, based on when in the year the storms occur and what the wind patterns are like at the time. It also may have something to do with your distance from where the storms start and how they grow. It just feels like, since Oppy was closer to this storm as it formed, it may actually get away with having less of the dust dumped on it than other places on the planet -- perhaps even halfway across the globe.

Also, rather obviously, the polar caps display a process in which dust is often sandwiched between layers of dry ice. It may well be that a majority of the dust pulled up during these major storms ends up being deposited at the fall/winter pole, to which the air is flowing and where the air is precipitating out and plating itself onto the ground. That would tend to make sense from a global circulation pattern perspective.

-the other Doug