The Storm, Dust storm of 2007 |
The Storm, Dust storm of 2007 |
Jul 5 2007, 05:57 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 710 Joined: 28-September 04 Member No.: 99 |
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 |
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Jul 17 2007, 08:08 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 646 Joined: 23-December 05 From: Forest of Dean Member No.: 617 |
QUOTE More than 5! NIGHTMARE. I'll have to change the scale of the Y axis on my graph!!! It's much worse than that -- it also means I have to sit here hitting ^r on an innocent Dust Devil page when I should be looking after someone's network security... I've been rather distracted since seeing your last Tau chart heading back upwards for the last few days. Could anyone enlighten me as to the typical timescale (if there are such things with such a small sample set to work from) for a regional or hemispheral storm to develop into a global storm, if it decides to do so? Or even how long the Viking and 2001 global storms took to develop from this stage to their full extent? fredk already quoted this from the last status update, but it bears repeating: QUOTE A tau measurement of 5.0 would result in approximately 150 watt-hours. >8. -------------------- --
Viva software libre! |
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