Spirit the Dusty Rover
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I knew the little Martian Rovers were getting dusty, especially after the global dust storm of last year. The image above is a very close up image of one of the solar panels on the Rover Spirit. The image on the left is what the solar panel looks like now and the one on the right shows what it should look like. It’s kind of a wonder the thing is even running at all, but it is hard to keep a good Rover down.
Here’s the Mars Rover website press release:
If Mars had an on-line Web site for ads, one of them might say something like this: “Wanted: Gentle space-age dust removal system to clean solar cells without leaving grit behind. Please direct inquiries to NASA.”
NASA’s Spirit rover has accumulated a lot of dust during four years of exploring Mars, especially following last year’s dust storms. Only about one-third of incoming sunlight is able to penetrate dust on the rover’s solar panels to be converted to electricity. As a result, Spirit is experiencing the lowest energy levels to date and accumulating a backlog of data waiting to be transmitted to Earth. The only available cleaning agent would be a timely gust of Martian wind!
Microscopic image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS
Heh, I wrote this post and felt so guilty I went out an washed my cars.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA,well that explains why it is cloudy here ;P !.How are the new Bee’s doing?.
It’s even better than that! It is supposed to rain for the next week!
The ladies appear to be doing very well. I will be opening the hives tomorrow to see what is going on. The existing hive will be opened too and I am going to put a honey super on that one.
Unfortunately,we need the rain!.Seems strange really.We just ended the 2nd snowiest winter on record and are now in need of rain!.
We were pretty normal for snow, but yeah I suppose we do need a little rain. :/
“Should look like” is a funny way to put it. Indeed, I’d say that for a device that’s been wandering around the surface of Mars for several years, the image on the left is what the solar panels “should” look like. A better way to put it would be to say that the image on the right is what perfectly clean solar panels look like.
[...] On a more serious note, four years on planet (and one dodged budget cut) is an amazing accomplishment. [NASA via Tom’s Astronomy Blog] [...]
[...] de zonnepanelen schoon zou kunnen vegen. Spirit is duidelijk toe aan een voorjaarsschoonmaak. Bron: Tom’s astroblog + Universe [...]