Climate Change Impacts even Mars

Shashank Shah
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

NASA’s Rover is Facing a Planet Wide Storm

A massive violent dust storm is becoming a problem for the 15 year old Mars rover, Opportunity. What started out as a local phenomenon in May turned into a massive planet wide dust storm by late June and is now causing problems for the Mars explorer.

The start for Opportunity

Opportunity is a part of the Mars Exploration mission along with it’s sister robot Spirit and a newer rover, Curiosity. The primary two rovers were launched in 2003 and the mission for both rovers was to explore Mars’s surface elements and geology. Both rovers landed safely on different parts of Mars in 2004 and started exploring. The team hoped that the rovers will survive for 90 Martian days (each day is about 40 min more than the days here on Earth). Both rovers exceeded the teams expectations with Spirit being active until 2010 (6 years 2 months and 19 days) and Opportunity which is still not decommissioned. Opportunity is currently holding the record for longest distance driven by any off-Earth wheeled vehicle.

Rover Design

Both of the primary rovers are six-wheeled, solar powered robots that stand 1.5 m ( 4.9 ft) high, 2.3 m ( 7.5 ft) wide and 1.6 m ( 5.2 ft) long, they weigh 180 kg ( 400 lb). The six wheels are seated on a rocker boogie system which was built specifically for the rovers. The system allows the robot to climb obstacles using a “ rocking” motion. The wheels also absorb shock allowing for a smooth ride. The wheels can turn up to 45 degrees but the “ fault protection system” only allows for 30 degrees rotation. The front wheels can also do a 360 rotation if they are stuck. The rovers have a top speed of 50 millimeters/ second and an average speed of 10 mm/s because of the “fault protection system” which causes the rover to stop every 10 seconds for 20 seconds to observe and understand the terrain.

The rover’s solar arrays can generate up to 140 watts for 4 hours per Martian day. It also has 2 lithium ion batteries for storing energy for a later time. These batteries degrade over time. The team added the extra energy storage so the rovers can survive the violent dust storms on Mars. Even then the rover’s team still didn’t think the rovers could survive more than 90 Martian days because the dust would block up the solar panels. The team was surprised to learn that cleaning events happen more frequently. This fact was one of the first key observations that the rover helped to make. These cleaning events are windy and the wind ( for the rovers) helped clean of the solar panels. Since these cleaning events happen more frequently than first expected, the solar panels produce more energy, thus expanding the rover’s life. So far both rovers have survived after many storms because of these fantastic events. The rovers each hold Panoramic cameras which allow for detailed observation in color. The rovers also have navigation cameras which have a larger field of view but aren't in color so team can navigate the rovers.

Naming of the rovers

Names for the NASA rovers were selected by a student essay competition, the wining essay was Sofi Collis , a third grade Russian-american. Here is her winning essay.. “ I used to live in an orphanage. It was dark and cold and lonely. At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better. I dreamed I could fly there. In America, I can make all my dreams come true. Thank you for the ‘Spirit’ and the ‘Opportunity.’
— Sofi Collis, age 9”

Saving Opportunity

While Spirit is already decommissioned, Opportunity isn't. There is still an opportunity for Opportunity to keep exploring (pun intended). As of now, Opportunity is battling a long dust storm, because of this storm all communications to rover have stopped. The rover isn’t producing any energy and might die. On top of this NASA is giving a 45 day window to re communicate with Opportunity or will decommission Opportunity. NASA had already spent a year trying to communicate with Spirit in 2010–2011 with no results, NASA is not planning on doing that type of desperate searching again. Even after understating why NASA is putting a 45 day cap on the excommunicating mission experts believe Opportunity's team is not getting enough time. Even though we can’t do anything about the dust storm on Mars we can do something to extend the deadline.

Shashank Shah

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