Photo: NASA
In recent months, little was heard of NASA’s Opportunity rover, one humanity’s most enduring machine on an alien world. Making headlines was Curiosity, the rover that was remotely repaired by the space agency’s engineers and kind of found life on Mars last week.
Marginalized, Opportunity is currently fighting for survival in the middle of a huge sand storm that hit Perseverance Valley, the place where the rover is conducting its business.
According to NASA, the current storm is much worse than the one the rover went through back in 2007. The measured opacity level of the current storm is 10.8, nearly double that of the 2007 event and temperatures in the region have dropped to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius).
The storm was first detected over a week ago, on Friday, June 1. It currently covers an area greater than North America, more than 7 million square miles (18 million square kilometers).
Being solar-powered, the rover is severely affected by the lack of sunlight. As a result of the storm, Opportunity’s power levels have dropped, requiring the machine to enter minimal operations mode.
On Sunday, NASA said it received a transmission from Opportunity, meaning the rover is still in working order. Additional information has been requested from the rover via the global system of antennas that talks to all the agency's deep space probes, the Deep Space Network.
There’s no telling when the storm would end, and NASA says it would continue to monitor the rover’s power levels in the weeks to come.
The Opportunity Rover reached the Red Planet in 2004. The agency did not expect it to survive the low-light winter conditions, but 14 years later the rover still pushes on.
Opportunity is a six-wheeler vehicle that weighs 180 kg and stands at 1.5 m high, 2.3 m wide and 1.6 m long. It uses a rocker-bogie suspension system that allows each of the rover's wheels to remain attached to the ground, regardless of the type of terrain.
Top speed of the vehicle is 50 mm/second (0.18 km/h), and in the time it spent on Mars in managed to travel only 45 kilometers (28 miles), unofficially becoming the single slowest, most expensive self-propelled vehicle.
According to NASA, the current storm is much worse than the one the rover went through back in 2007. The measured opacity level of the current storm is 10.8, nearly double that of the 2007 event and temperatures in the region have dropped to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius).
The storm was first detected over a week ago, on Friday, June 1. It currently covers an area greater than North America, more than 7 million square miles (18 million square kilometers).
Being solar-powered, the rover is severely affected by the lack of sunlight. As a result of the storm, Opportunity’s power levels have dropped, requiring the machine to enter minimal operations mode.
On Sunday, NASA said it received a transmission from Opportunity, meaning the rover is still in working order. Additional information has been requested from the rover via the global system of antennas that talks to all the agency's deep space probes, the Deep Space Network.
There’s no telling when the storm would end, and NASA says it would continue to monitor the rover’s power levels in the weeks to come.
The Opportunity Rover reached the Red Planet in 2004. The agency did not expect it to survive the low-light winter conditions, but 14 years later the rover still pushes on.
Opportunity is a six-wheeler vehicle that weighs 180 kg and stands at 1.5 m high, 2.3 m wide and 1.6 m long. It uses a rocker-bogie suspension system that allows each of the rover's wheels to remain attached to the ground, regardless of the type of terrain.
Top speed of the vehicle is 50 mm/second (0.18 km/h), and in the time it spent on Mars in managed to travel only 45 kilometers (28 miles), unofficially becoming the single slowest, most expensive self-propelled vehicle.
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