Images of Mars are showing a global dust storm covering all the neat stuff. This is starting to look like the 2003 opposition where all we got was a boring orange ball with no surface detail visible. Glad I got my image when I did.
In other government agency news, I hopped in a Paladin today and the gunner turned to me, and said “watch out this thing will randomly burst into flames all the time.”Designed to work for just 90 days when it landed back in January 2004, Opportunity has managed to keep on rolling even though it does so now only in reverse and the arm that it uses to put instruments next to rocks to examine them is arthritic.
600Wh means it'll provide 600 watts for an hour. It'll provide 1200 watts for a half-hour. It'll provide 2400 watts for 15 minutes. Or it would if it were linear and batteries rarely are. It's a guideline, though. The iPhone 8 plus has a 2675mAH battery. It runs at 3.7V. That's basically a 10Wh battery. Opportunity is basically 60 iPhone 8 batteries. Your Chevy Volt has an 18kWh battery. Your car could power 30 Opportunity rovers. House voltage can provide 115V at, typically, 15-20A. As a consequence most commercial appliances top out at 1700-1800W. You could plug 3 Opportunity rovers into a single circuit before you blew the breaker. A 4x10 bass cab rated at 1000W peak prolly pulls down between 1200 and 1500 W. Two Opportunity rovers would rawk as hard as a single 4x10 bass cab.
Ill have to find where I read it, but the researchers believe curiosity has a good chance of weathering the storm. Still, I'd consider getting 14 years out of a planned 90-day mission a pretty damn good run. The crazy thing is that, while highly unlikely, Opportunity could possibly outlive Curiosity since Curiosity has no way of replenishing its battery once the RTG decays (12-15 years). Even after 14 years Opportunity still manages to get an 80% charge on its batteries, so assuming it can survive the storm, I suspect we may have boots-on-the-ground before either rover bites the dust.
Coming out of the woodwork after being 6ft under in rover work for the last several months. I think you meant Opportunity in the first paragraph; Curiosity will be fine =) I drove her yesterday. We're re-tracing our steps to go do more drilling, so as long as we can localize ourselves the impact of the dust storm right now on that mission are minimal. Oppy has -some- chance; she's in a low power state now, but if the ambient conditions are right (not too cold, Tau goes back down sooner than later) then even if she does turn off she has the ability to wake back up.
There was a scientist on the radio who said odds are good the rover will pull through, the storm might even be good for it because it's warmed up the temperature and cold temperatures killed the Curiosity rover. But he also compared the morale of the rover team to that of a family with a sick elderly relative. I think the thing was supposed to cruise around for like 90 days and it's lasted something like 14 years. It still has like 80% battery capacity so they're worried but optimistic if it makes it through this