With the long Martian winter closing in, the weakened NASA rover Spirit is searching for a haven to weather the planet's most severe season.
The rover, now exploring a geological feature known as Home Plate, has about two weeks to find a suitable winter hideout, scientists announced yesterday.
The giant dust storm that dimmed the Martian skies last summer did more than temporarily cut down the rover's supply of sunlight. It also deposited a thick film of dust on Spirit's solar panels.
"We are at 42 percent efficiency right now," John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said during a press briefing at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.
"The rover has so much dust on it, it's almost completely camouflaged," he added.
That makes it difficult for the robot to generate power for critical systems as the sun dips lower.
Scientists want to park the rover on a slope angling about 25 degrees toward the sun, but even that solution is risky.
"That will give us significantly lower daily energy than either rover has ever experienced before," Callas said.
NASA's other Mars rover, Opportunity, is currently exploring Victoria Crater.
Christmas Deadline
With a dangerously low amount of power, Spirit can only be driven every other day, with a rest day to recharge its batteries.
"We need to be in position by Christmas," Callas said. "[We] … have about seven more drive days left."
|
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES
|
