On the Opportunity rover on Mars dust blown off "wind"

In general, if we were talking about the earth device, the header would look very strange. Well, blown dust, and blew away, the business somehow.

But for the rover Opportunity is - an incredible success, literally a second life. The thing is that during the operation of the rover on Mars, it hid the dense Martian dust that closed and solar panel. As a result, the rover began to receive a "living wage" of energy.

And it means - reducing the room for maneuver, the number of scientific experiments. Now the panel rover cleaner than any of the Martian winters, starting in 2005, that means getting a lot more than before, the amount of energy. Dust blown from the rover back in March of this year, when there was a high activity of air masses on Mars. Perhaps the rover was in the zone of "dust devil».



Пыльный whirlwind on Mars , photographed rover "Spirit". Counter in the lower left corner shows the number of seconds elapsed since the first frame. On the last frame can be seen that the vortex left a mark on the Martian surface. Also visible are three more of the vortex in the background. I>

This means an extension of the work of the rover, more scientific programs, there is no need for the rover team permanently save battery power.

PS Earlier this has already happened repeatedly (thanks kbtsiberkin ), but this time the cleaning went well, very good. Here's more material on the same "Wikipedia": "March 12, 2005 a dusty vortex cleared solar panels rover" Spirit ", after which the level of the resulting robot energy increased and he was able to do more work. A similar incident (cleaning solar panels on the accumulated dust) has been observed previously with the rover "Opportunity", which is also associated with dust devils ».

Via nasa

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/220281/