[X] My Assistant

[mcaplinger]

I wanted to make sure that everyone interested sees Adrian Brown's articles at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1319/1 and http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1318/1 about the technical and budgetary problems with MSL that led to the launch slip. While I can't claim to be privy to the budgetary and political issues at the mission level, the technical discussion seems like a fair summary of the situation as I understand it, at least as good a one as can be gathered from public sources.

People in other forums have complained about errors in these articles, but without giving specific examples or providing any factual basis for their objections. I don't find that very useful. If there are real flaws in this account, I'd be quite interested to know what they are.

p.s. I guess we need to change the name of this subforum.

[SpaceListener]

And hope that these probably existence of solar panels must have their own self cleaning mechanics by applying the learned lessons from MER's experience.

[centsworth_II]

...solar panels must have their own self cleaning mechanics...

My favorite solution is to mount the panels on vertical surfaces, like the sides of the electronics box. They would give less power with the sun overhead, but more with the sun near the horizon. Best of all, they should stay clean with no additional cleaning apparatus needed.

[mcaplinger]

My favorite solution is to mount the panels on vertical surfaces, like the sides of the electronics box. They would give less power with the sun overhead, but more with the sun near the horizon.

Obviously, they would only produce power when the sun was near the horizon and when they were on the sunlit side, assuming the rover was always parked with the panel pointed east or west. If the panel was pointed west, they wouldn't produce anything in the morning.

Fixed near-vertical panels have some use at higher latitudes, but not really near the equator. You can work out the math for various latitudes and orientations, but the cosine losses are quite dramatic, to the point of unworkability.