[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Currently it's Mid Southern Hemisphere Summer - the sun is 85.5 degrees above the horizon at noon for Spirit.

100 sols from now - that figure will be 74 degrees and it will be Early Autumn
200 sols from now - 56 degrees, Mid Autumn
300 sols from now - 50 degrees, Early Winter
400 sols from now - 60 degrees, Mid Winter
500 sols from now - 81 degrees - Early Spring.

Basically it's the 150 to 450 sol's in the future period that will be the worst of it

That's all using the mars24 applet - our resident Purveyor of Whr's might be able to do a better job

Doug

Off topic posts from after 30 October moved to new thread:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=4837

Alan

[dilo]

In the last weeks, you can see again high dust levels on the sundial (perhaps comparable to pre-storm levels) and also lot of dirt/residuals on solar panels, clearly visible in Sol1355/58 self portraits!

Was the dust storm so violent to bring these smal pieces of rocks over Spirit?

[dvandorn]

Well... we're at a 30-degree angle. How difficult would it be to use the IDD to "tap" the rover deck a few times? Maybe get the larger clumps to fall off?

No brushing, just a few taps...

-the other Doug

[djellison]

How difficult would it be to use the IDD to "tap" the rover deck a few times?

Well - bad analogy time. Go up to your coffee table. Now touch tap it, with a motion of about 5mm/sec in one corner. Does any of the dust come off?

[dvandorn]

Well - bad analogy time. Go up to your coffee table. Now touch tap it, with a motion of about 5mm/sec in one corner. Does any of the dust come off?

Well -- if there was flour on it, not dust, and it was close to the flour's natural angle of repose, and if I kept my coffee table at a 30 degree angle, I could answer the question... *smile*...

I'm mostly thinking that, even with a relatively slow, soft impact, even a small vibration might shift rock/salt dust if it's near the dust's natural angle of repose. Of course, we've likely gotten more of a jolt from descending down this slope than we could generate with the IDD.

I will point out that you don't see a lot of dust collected on 30-degree slopes of exposed rocks in the area, and the only things around to clean them off are winds and seismic shocks. One might hope that a combination of this tilt and whatever natural vibrations plus winds might tend to clean Spirit off as time goes on, here.

Still, I think we need to generate some way to shake these things so the dust can shake off...

-the other Doug