Five Years
Published on Jan 3, 2009 at 9:22 pm.
2 Comments.
Filed under Mars.
Five years ago, today, the Mars Exploration Rover named Spirit bounced to a landing on the surface of Mars. I remember downloading the first images. This was particularly dramatic because only a bit over a week earlier, the British spacecraft Beagle 2 was lost during an attempted landing on Mars. The Beagle 2 was using the same airbag type landing system employed by the Mars Exploration Rovers, so there was some concern that perhaps this was not as safe of a method for landing on Mars as had been assumed. The rover Spirit was supposed to last three months. Spirit was joined in about three weeks by its sister craft Opportunity, which landed on the other side of Mars.
Instead of lasting only three months as expected, Spirit has been going for five (Earth) years. The going hasn’t been easy for it. Besides the brutal cold of Martian nights, Spirit has been battling dust storms. The dust problem has gotten very serious. Large amounts of dust has settled onto Spirit’s solar panels and is blocking most of the sunlight from reaching the photo voltaic cells. Controllers here on Earth have responded by using various energy conserving measures, including turning off some instruments and some heaters on board the spacecraft. So far, this has kept the Spirit rover alive. This is a fantastic track record. Though Spirit’s five years on Mars is phenomenal, it is not quite a record. The record for the longest operational life on the surface of Mars goes to the Viking 1 lander, which operated from July 20, 1976, until November 13, 1982, nearly six years and four months. The Viking landers, though, did not rely on solar power. Instead, they used radiothermal generators, generating electricity from heat provided by the radioactive decay of plutonium.
So, let’s celebrate the remarkable long run of the Mars Exploration Rovers, and may they continue to operate and send back data from the surface of Mars. With luck, winds (or a dust devil) may blow some of the dust off of Spirit’s solar panels, reviving the rover somewhat. Currently, the rover is still operational. Though the dust has caused the solar power to drop to seriously low levels, the rover is not in imminent danger of failing.
-Astroprof
Image courtesy NASA
Burst on January 4, 2009 at 1:20 pm: 1
Those rovers are limbing along, according to Wikipedia “the right front wheel ceased working after having covered 4.2 mi”. So they are driving it backwards. The rock abrasion tool is worn down and Mössbauer spectrometer is dieing.
“Opportunity will likely never again stow [it’s] robotic arm”. It so cool that NASA can find a way around these problems.
Week of January 5th, 2009 « Dad2059’s Webzine of Science Fiction, Science Fact and Esoterica on January 5, 2009 at 2:19 pm: 2
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