Mars reaches superior conjunction and passes behind the Sun on September 15th making communications with the rovers difficult, thats not to far off..

What exactly are the mission planners planning to do with the rovers over this time? I've read articles about "hibernating" but they dont seem to have slowed down that much, certainly not as much as they seemed to predict earlier in the mission.

In terms of solar power, temperatures etc when will the rovers experience the most harsh environmental conditions? I imagine it's not going to get much worse than it is now, infact the latest Opportunity update says power generation is up, the highest since about sol 100

When do conditions start to improve, and at which future date will conditions be at their best again.

See my press conference posting here.

In short: midwinter is around October 15, but mid-September has Earth farthest from Mars (with solar conjunction) and Mars farthest from the Sun at the same time. If the rovers can last until January (one Earth year!), power conditions will be vastly improved.

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I think the October 15th midwinter applies more to Spirit, at 15 degrees south lattitude vs Opportunity at 1.95 degrees south lattitude.

Unfortunetly, we do still have the constant electrostatic dust accumulation on the panels to fight, which I believe was confirmed to be a constant rate of power loss (x watts lost per day due to dust) at some point midmission. I'm curious how much dust they believe has accumulated on the panels at this point.

I've got some old sweaters they can borrow, if it will help. Hang on in there Spirit and Opportunity. You're doing fine. Let's make it a year each on Mars.

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C'mon, give the poor rovers a break. They've aready exceeded designed mission length by about 50%. Let's hear it for 'Murican engineering!!

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They should have little automated brushes that clean the dust off the solar panels once a day that would probably help!!

I realize you're probably kidding, but just in case it's stated somewhere that the dust is so fine that it bonds to the solar panels - brushing wouldn't do any good.

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Not to mention that brushing would probably just build up more static.

And the real kicker is that the brushes would require power to operate - would that power required balance the gain from cleaning the dust off the panels? Especially if the dust is too fine to brush off?

How about if they did like the TV broadcasters do on their NASCAR race car cams. Have a long sheet of transparent film covering the relevant surface, with extra on a motor operated spool. When it gets covered with crud activate the motor for a few seconds and roll a clean sheet out. 8)

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From slashdot.org (my former home until I found this board!)
Some scary comments in that thread too. I guess there are plenty of anti-space woo woos amongst the programmer class.

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

oh well, just a thought

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Mars beats us again! The next rover will be NUKE-U-LAR so it should just keep going and going and going and going.....

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

The MERs may die of mechanical problems long before the panels are too dust ridden to supply the needed power. So there is no point going nuclear until we can demonstrate rovers with sufficient relability to justify the theoretically unlimited range. Plus nuclear would probably be more costly than solar panels, so there is a cost-benefit analysis needed. Nuclear is ANoption, but not neccessarily THE option. Of the next rovers salted to fly, MSL is currently nuclear, ExoMars solar.

Cheers

jon

Geoffrey Landis, one of the Mars scientists, said at Worldcon that there were all sort of approaches considered for dealing with the dust accumulation. The engineers decided, though, that the simplest approach for the mass allocated, rather than try to install some fancy gadgetry, was just to make the solar panels bigger.

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I love it. The archetypical American solution to power problems. Just put a bigger engine on it. =D> corvette vs. porsche :P

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SPIRIT UPDATE: Spirit on Autopilot - sol 239-242, September 09, 2004
Opportunity seems to be humming along in the aptly named Endurance crater. Anyone know if the MINI-TES is broke yet? Has it gotten cold enough to break it or is there a chance that we can dodge that bullet too?

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

The Opportunity status report at the link you provided indicates that they used the mini-TES on Sol 211.

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You know I skimmed the article for mention of the mini-TES and missed it because they had the gall to call it the miniature thermal emission spectrometer. I've never seen them pass up a perfectly good acronym moment before.
I am humbled now, and shall retire to my chambers.

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

Just a thought- re. the rovers-could the rock grinder be used to blow dust off solar panels? Does this thing generate air puffs?

Whoever wrote it probably had to go stand in the corner for a couple of hours for blatant acronym avoidance (BAA). We don't tolerate that sort of thing here at NASA!

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