Mars Dust Storm Goes Global, Covers Curiosity

Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

From Popular Mechanics

For the past two weeks, a gigantic dust storm on Mars has been threatening NASA’s Opportunity rover, and new reports from the Red Planet indicate that the storm has grown to encompass the entire planet. With no sign that the storm will die off anytime soon, it’s an open question whether Opportunity will survive.

Near the beginning of the month of June, NASA’s Opportunity rover, along with multiple satellites in orbit of the planet, detected a dust storm growing in intensity. Over about a week, Opportunity measured the dust levels increasing dramatically, and the sunlight hitting the rover dropped to nearly zero.

For a rover that survives entirely on solar power, a dust storm like this could be a death sentence. The longer that this storm continues, the lower Opportunity’s chances of recovering from it, and this storm shows no sign of stopping. In fact, ever since Opportunity powered down on the 8th, the storm has only gotten bigger.

A few days ago, the storm covered not just Opportunity’s position, but the Curiosity rover’s as well, on the other side of the planet. Fortunately, Curiosity is powered by an internal nuclear battery instead of solar panels, so it’s not threatened by the storm. Instead, Curiosity has been sending back photos of what the storm looks like from the ground.

This is good news for NASA, as it can use Curiosity’s instruments to provide an unprecedented look at what these dust storms look like from the inside. Even though the storm might take Opportunity out of commission, at least we’ll learn as much as we can in the meantime.

Source: NASA

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