Author: Science News Staff / Source: Science News
NASA’s Opportunity rover explored Mars for more than a decade until a dust storm last year led to its demise, Lisa Grossman reported in “After 15 years on Mars, it’s the end of the road for Opportunity” (SN: 3/16/19, p. 7).
Reddit users had a lot of questions about the rover, nicknamed Oppy.
scazon wanted to know why the estimated life spans for Opportunity and another Mars rover, Spirit, were initially so short, and what these missions’ longevity means for future Mars missions.Scientists originally estimated that dust collecting on the rovers’ solar panels would stop the rovers from recharging after about 90 Martian days, Grossman says. Luckily, winter wind storms cleaned off the solar panels often enough to allow the rovers to keep going. “No other rover or lander had spent so much time on Mars before, so the team didn’t know to plan for that,” she says. The next two NASA Mars rovers — Curiosity, which landed in 2012 and is still going, and Mars 2020, which is slated to launch next year — use nuclear batteries. So dust isn’t much of a concern. But the next European and Russian Mars rover is a different story. That rover, named Rosalind Franklin, is solar powered, Grossman says. Scientists plan to “use what they learned from Spirit and Oppy to keep the batteries running.”
Other readers on Reddit wondered if Opportunity might someday turn back on.
The chances are slim, Grossman says. “The team thinks the rover…
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