Despite the extremely rarefied Martian atmosphere, it sometimes presents surprises. More recently, Mars began to "storm", as a result of which a large number of small particles appeared in the atmosphere. They closed the sun, so that the surface of the Red Planet together with the objects on it began to receive much less light than before.
One of these objects is the Opportunity rover, which for many years has been studying Mars, helping scientists to get new facts about the neighbor of the Earth. Yesterday, NASA
held a press conference to tell in detail about what is happening. Among other things, the scientists told why they hope that the Opportunity that is now asleep due to a lack of energy will still be felt.
The “sandstorm”, which in fact is not, is the cause of the pollution of the solar panels of the rover. They were covered with fine dust, which reduced the amount of energy produced by the rover to a critical level. Rover stopped functioning normally and went into sleep mode, which somewhat annoys the engineers from the Opportunity team.
The trouble began at the end of May - then the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter orbiter showed that something unusual was happening on Mars. By the 4th of June, the “storm” caused a very significant reduction in the solar radiation flux. And since in the region where the storm was Opportunity, the rover had to experience the charms of the Martian weather. On June 5, the concentration of dust suspension in the atmosphere of Mars reached a maximum, so that the rover’s tools were not even able to measure the level of light radiation near the surface of the planet.
NASA scientists decided that the device should be sent to the minimum energy consumption mode for two days. Then the duration of "sleep" was increased to 72 hours. Now the rover is still not working, although, as far as you can understand, nothing serious happened to it.
What can be expected in the future? There may be several answers, since in this case a lot depends on the temperature and energy production by the rover.
During the final test, the rover produced 22 Wh of energy, which was barely enough to maintain the basic functionality of the rover. There is no question of any kind of work, since electricity is clearly not enough. NASA scientists "set the alarm" of the rover, thanks to which it wakes up periodically and assesses the current state of the systems. If during the next awakening the system receives data on a sufficient amount of received energy, then the device will start working again. Until then, he will continue to "sleep." And, of course, I would like to hope that hibernation will not turn into an eternal sleep.
There is one problem here - if the electricity is generated below a certain threshold, then there will not be enough energy even for the needs of the sleeping system. In this case, the rover will stop waking up at all to check its condition and NASA will not be able to find out what's wrong with the rover. In addition, low temperatures reign on Mars. And if the rover does not have enough energy, then the temperature can disable some very sensitive components of the system. The only additional source of heat is the eight components of the rover, which are powered by plutonium cells with a capacity of 1 watt each.
Now NASA and JPL engineers are modeling the direction of heat flow in the rover case. Now the balance of energy input / consumption is relatively normal, the temperature in the case is maintained higher than the ambient temperature. At the moment,
according to scientists , the temperature inside the Opportunity is about -36 degrees Celsius. And the minimum threshold that the rover can withstand is -40 degrees Celsius. The situation is somewhat facilitated by the fact that Opportunity is now in the region where the Martian summer begins.
And the sandstorm is one of the signs of warming. So what is the result? Experts say that the rover may remain dormant for weeks or even months. But scientists still hope that the atmosphere will be cleared of suspended matter and the solar batteries of the rover will be able to receive the solar radiation needed for energy generation.
By the way, the rover has been working on the Red Planet for 15 years now. Now almost two wheels have failed, plus one of the manipulators is not working perfectly. Nevertheless, the rover was quite suitable for continuing to study the neighbor of the Earth. If it were not for the storm, he would have worked now. The positive thing is that the rover photovoltaic cells are among the highest quality in the solar system (according to NASA staff). For 15 years, they almost did not degrade and are able to produce 85% of the energy of the prescribed volume.
Sandstorm, which stopped the rover, is now gradually expanding the range of action and captures almost the entire planet. This is a very rare phenomenon, the last time this happened in 2007. Now scientists do not know why sandstorms can be so large-scale, but they are being studied. Perhaps soon we will understand what, how and why.