[X] My Assistant

[SigurRosFan]

- Light-toned Rock

MGS MOC Release No. MOC2-1329, 1 January 2006

[Marz]

Way cool! Is Hellas too far south for a solar-powered rover? Does this imply it was a sea, or is the groundwater-theory still holding sway at meridiani?

[helvick]

Way cool!    Is Hellas too far south for a solar-powered rover?  Does this imply it was a sea, or is the groundwater-theory still holding sway at meridiani?

This part of Hellas would be fine for a short mission but a MER type rover would probably run into severe power problems around Sol 180 and would have very little chance of surviving midwinter.

The southern edge of Hellas would be way too far south for an unmodified MER type rover to survive for more than a couple of months, it would defenitely die around Sol 60.


These are generated using standard MER-A parameters for landing date, solar panel area, cell efficiency and I used the published MER-A TAU values for Sols 0-190. If such a rover followed the actual MER mission experiences the power generated by the panels would follow the blue line give or take 100 watt hours for the first 400 Sols . Depending on cleaning events it can rise back as far as the red line.

[abalone]

The southern edge of Hellas would be way too far south for an unmodified MER type rover to survive for more than a couple of months, it would defenitely die around Sol 60.


These are generated using standard MER-A parameters for landing date, solar panel area, cell efficiency and I used the published MER-A TAU values for Sols 0-190. If such a rover followed the actual MER mission experiences the power generated by the panels would follow the blue line give or take 100 watt hours for the first 400 Sols . Depending on cleaning events it can rise back as far as the red line.

You could get 250+ sols if you landed the rover when the solar cycle is at the equivilant of sol450 on yuor graph. Dont know if it is possibly to lauch for such an arrival time?
Graph courtesy Helvick

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