NASA's Opportunity rover braves huge dust storm on Mars as scientists keep watch
The hardest working rover on Mars is fighting for its robotic life on the red planet.
NASA announced on Friday that the Opportunity rover is currently being hit by the worst dust storm it's ever experienced in the 15 years since it landed on Mars.
"A dark, perpetual night has settled over the rover's location in Mars' Perseverance Valley," NASA said in a statement.
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Scientists are worried the rover won't survive this storm, but there's still hope.
On Sunday, Opportunity phoned home, sending a transmission to engineers back on Earth. This means the rover had enough power to send a message despite the fact that the sun was blotted out by dust, preventing a full charge to its solar panels.
A brutal dust storm on Mars is trying to kill Opportunity ... and that little rover is sending back images LIKE A CHAMPION. pic.twitter.com/p7WBIfCLiw
— Kristen Walbolt (@kWalbolt) June 10, 2018
The storm is actually 7 million square miles across, meaning that it's larger than North America, according to NASA.
Since the storm began bearing down on Opportunity, the rover has started conserving energy by ending science operations and only using minimal power to keep it warm during the tempest.
This storm is bad, but Opportunity is made of hardy stuff. The rover was only designed to last 90 days, yet here we are more than a decade later, a still-functioning Opportunity on Mars.
Keeping watch over the rover
Scientists working with the rover and many others have become attached to the intrepid space robot. They're hoping for the best.
Oppy’s ops team has really bonded this week. We’ve cried together, we’ve cheered at beeps together, we’ve made silly memes together, and so much more. I honestly am so proud of this team for coming together. We’re all hands on deck and it’s amazing to watch. 💜
— Keri Bean (@PlanetaryKeri) June 11, 2018
If everyone could just send a little love to @MarsRovers Opportunity right now, I’m pretty sure love penetrates dust storms and is a good alternative to solar power
— Bobak Ferdowsi (@tweetsoutloud) June 11, 2018
Day is night is an accurate way of describing the rovers predicament. It’s not an exaggeration. https://t.co/GU9MJOtWtf
— Doug Ellison (@doug_ellison) June 11, 2018
That said, it's a terrible storm.
"The storm's atmospheric opacity — the veil of dust blowing around, which can blot out sunlight — is now much worse than a 2007 storm that Opportunity weathered," NASA said.
"The previous storm had an opacity level, or tau, somewhere above 5.5; this new storm had an estimated tau of 10.8 as of Sunday morning."
On MER, we call optical depth tau, since tau is what you solve for in the equation. It’s a measurement essentially of how much solar radiation is hitting our solar panels.
The value we measured this morning was 10.8. To give context, average non dust storm values are 0.5-1.— Keri Bean (@PlanetaryKeri) June 11, 2018
This might be bad math, but a tau of 10.8 is 0.002% of sunlight reaching the surface. That's equivalent to a 11.5 magnitude difference, so the brightness of the Sun at midday is about -14. That's about one lux, which is the brightness of rural night sky on a moonless night. https://t.co/eDwR3mGNoP
— Justin Cowart (@jccwrt) June 11, 2018
The main concern NASA has with this kind of tempest is that the rover's batteries will get too cold and it won't be able to function once the dust storm ends. Opportunity is in low power mode in order to make sure it can keep warm until the storm ends.
For now, the engineers will just need to wait it out and see how the little robot comes through the storm.
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