[X] My Assistant

[karolp]

I am currently digging in the Planetary Radio archives and heared Bill Nye saying that the Mars sundial sitting on the solar panels takes about 1 to 2 percent of power by covering them. The sundial itself is of course a great outreach idea and probably does not affect the mission as Bill said. BUT: what if the 2 percent were the LAST 2 percent left? What is the minimum power requirement for MERs? And namely a) for being able to rove for being able to use the RAT c) for being able to sit calmly and just send data to the orbiters. No intention to question the "Two Worlds One Sun" thing, I really love it. Just made me curious about the power as it might be relevant in speculations about their expected lifespan.

[djellison]

2% of 280 Whrs = 5.6 Whrs...

Via UHF - data costs about 0.8 Whr / Mbit - so you could get perhaps 7 Mbits of data home via UHF

But of course, with onlly 5.6 Whrs - you've not got enough to warm up some instruments to take data to fill that 7 Mbits

However - to put this into some sort of context..

Shadowing causes losses of up to around 20% per sol

Doug