[X] My Assistant

[Astro0]

So it seems for the amazing Mars Exploration Rovers that another sol has come and another milestone has been reached.

Opportunity has passed the Viking 1 lander for operational time on Mars - 2245 sols.
While Spirit remains in hibernation, there's no way to know whether she has the record.
I'm sure that Opportunity will happily stand aside for Spirit when we hear from her again

Here's a banner logo and desktop image to mark the milestone.





Enjoy

[helvick]

I can't speak for anyone else but as an engineer I have to take my hat off and bow to the master and his team. We've seen discussions about wipers, fans, electrostatic plates, tilting and shaking panels and a host of other solutions to a problem that the team eliminated by designing the best possible system they could to meet the objectives they had been given.

The pre-flight assessment said 0.25% power loss due to dust deposition per Sol. So they built a set of arrays that would give them 90 Sols of mission even with 0.25% per sol losses. Anything better than that was a bonus and here we are 2000 and whatever sols later with at least 50% of the mission still powering along and we can't rule out the other 50% waking up sometime. Come on folks - if you can't see that as a vindication of good, no scratch that, awesomely great design then you really do need to reconsider your standards (in my humble opinion at any rate).

I'd say that pretty much conclusively proves that fans, wipers, electrostatic wotsits and tilting panels would all have been a pointless waste of valuable time and money and the decision not to invest time and energy into them was a very smart move by MarsEngineer and his band of MERry men (and women).

[Poolio]

a pointless waste of valuable time and money...

...and mass. With mass such a precious commodity in terms of launch and EDL criteria, adding gizmos to clear the solar panels would mean giving up something else. Or possibly investing in a bigger booster and redesigning the landing system... which, now that I think about it, is exactly what you said... time and money.

[jamescanvin]

...and mass. With mass such a precious commodity in terms of launch and EDL criteria, adding gizmos to clear the solar panels would mean giving up something else.

I think what would have given, would have been the large multiple folding arrays - after all, with a cleaning gizmo such large arrays wouldn't have been needed to make it through the primary mission. This would have given us less power in the summer and if it failed (or plain didn't work, given how little we knew/know about the mechanics of the dust) then they would have have had a much more serious problem during winter.

I personally don't think they would be roving today if it hadn't been for the simple yet oh so effective array design that the team came up with. All hail the MER engineering team for getting us a frankly astonishing 2.255 THOUSAND sols into a 90 sol mission!