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Opportunity Rover Hasn’t Woken Up and Engineers Are Getting Nervous

posted by mrpg on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the nemure-akira dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for cmn32480

NASA's Opportunity rover has had an incredible career already, spending years upon years studying the Martian surface and proving to be an incredibly reliable and hardy piece of hardware. Unfortunately, a NASA dust storm that began kicking up in May may have abruptly ended its historic run.

In mid-June, the solar-powered Opportunity ran out of juice and was forced to go into its dormant standby mode. The dust storm which swallowed the entirety of Mars had blocked out the Sun, cutting the rover off of its only available source of power. NASA engineers had remained optimistic that the rover would wake back up when the skies began to clear, but things aren't looking good thus far.

[...] That's...not great news. NASA knew that the rover would be forced to sit dormant for a while because of the intensity of the storm, but that was several weeks ago. The dust has since began to settle, and enough light should be pushing its way down to the surface to begin recharging Opportunity's batteries once again.

Source: NASA's Opportunity rover still hasn't woken up from a Mars dust storm, and engineers are getting nervous

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:51AM (3 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Wednesday August 15 2018, @03:51AM (#721672)

    I'm trying to picture that, and I can't decide if it's absolute genius, or completely stupid.

    Maybe it's both.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:58AM (2 children)

    by zocalo (302) on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:58AM (#721700)
    It seems like it could work to me, and probably wouldn't weight all that much either - a battery, a bit of electronics, a small motors, carbon fibre supports etc., and the brush/wiper. Keeping some power back in a rechargeable battery for quick brush over the panels once the storm passes might be able to clear enough dust to restore at least some of the solar power capacity, which you could then use that power to drive several more brushing cycles and enable a full-reboot. You also need a means to trigger that first pass of the brush, given that power might be completely out and the entire rover coated in a thin layer of dust - including any sensors. The simplest approach - assuming the forecasting of Martian dust storm duration is good enough - would be to just pre-set a timer from Earth before the storm hits and run that from the wiper battery, but as a backup maybe you could also have a light level sensor on the end of a whip antenna, then hope the Martian breeze dislodges enough dust to trigger the reboot cycle once the storm passes.

    Practically though, the two Rovers managed to get a *lot* more done than was expected, even without such a rig, and we're talking NASA here - something a kid could knock up with a Raspberry Pi and some bits and pieces would likely end up having a seven digit price tag, once all the over-engineering, pre-launch testing, getting it to Mars, and - of course - the RoI assessment of whether it's worth doing in the first place is factored in. Besides, we need these things stashed away for any potential future Mark Watney [imdb.com], don't we? :)
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:39AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:39AM (#721708)

      That's not Mark Watney, that's Matt Damon, you bastard.

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday August 15 2018, @01:47PM

      by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday August 15 2018, @01:47PM (#721768)

      How about a small copv and compressor to blow them off? In either case the hard part is reliably activating the device without power and when cold, and after the proper amount of time.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek