{"id":13632,"date":"2018-08-22T22:47:09","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/engineers-still-hopeful-mars-rover-will-wake-up-after-dust-storm\/"},"modified":"2018-08-22T22:47:09","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T14:47:09","slug":"engineers-still-hopeful-mars-rover-will-wake-up-after-dust-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/engineers-still-hopeful-mars-rover-will-wake-up-after-dust-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineers still hopeful Mars rover will wake up after dust storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view Mars, with its surface partially hidden under a veil of dust, last month as the planet reached the closest point in its orbit to Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Flight controllers have not heard from NASA\u2019s Opportunity Mars rover since June 10 when an increasingly severe global dust storm blocked out the sun, preventing its solar arrays from recharging the robot\u2019s batteries. But the dust storm is finally abating and engineers are hopeful the long-lived rover will wake up and phone home in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weather\u2019s been improving on Mars,\u201d said Project Manager John Callas at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. \u201cSo the atmospheric opacity over the rover site is decreasing.\u201d<\/p>\n

That opacity, a measure of how effectively suspended dust blocks out sunlight, climbed to record levels as the storm developed in June. A major 2007 dust storm had an opacity level, or tau, above 5.5 while the current storm had an estimated tau of nearly 11 as of June 6.<\/p>\n

It is now back down to a tau of around 2, \u201cstarting to approach a range where there should be energy being generated by the solar arrays,\u201d Callas said in an interview with CBS News. \u201cSo we\u2019re starting to get close to the time frame where the vehicle should start to charge. We\u2019re looking every day. People are making bets as to when they think we\u2019ll hear from it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it is not a sure thing.<\/p>\n

Mars is now past its point of closest approach to the sun in its two-year orbit, and the dust storm, which has been keeping the atmosphere warmer than usual, is abating. As time passes, temperatures at Opportunity location will drop, posing a threat to the rover\u2019s electronics and other temperature-sensitive systems in the absence of power to run its heaters.<\/p>\n

Even so, Callas said a detailed analysis of the rover\u2019s systems shows it should have survived its trial by dust. It\u2019s just a matter of building up enough of a charge to wake up, run through its fault programming and attempt to contact Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everyone is staying closer to their email and their cell phones right now because we think now\u2019s about when we\u2019ll start to hear something,\u201d Callas said.<\/p>\n

Opportunity\u2019s story is an improbable tale of exploration and scientific success by a spacecraft designed to last just 90 days and yet surviving, albeit with a variety of age-related ailments, for more than 14 years since it bounced to an airbag-cushioned landing in January 2004.<\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s concept of the Opportunity rover on Mars. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Given the bounty of data already collected during its extended mission, a failure to wake up, while disappointing to its legions of fans, would not be considered a failure in any traditional sense. Few space missions have chalked up a greater record of success, and scientists are hopeful the rover will be able to continue its trail-blazing exploration.<\/p>\n

Even though sunlight is believed to be falling once again on Opportunity\u2019s solar arrays, it could take several more weeks to establish contact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is, there are still parasitic loads on the electronics,\u201d Callas said. \u201cIt\u2019s just like your TV at home. Even though you have your TV turned off, it\u2019s still drawing energy from the outlet. So even though the rover\u2019s powered off, the electronics will still waste energy at a low level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those parasitic loads account for about 40 watt hours of energy. Another 220 watt hours could be going to waste because of an external heater that became stuck on full time early in Opportunity\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

Flight controllers dealt with that problem by putting the rover into \u201cdeep sleep\u201d every night to make sure the heater was turned off. Opportunity then woke up each morning thanks to its fully charged batteries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like you have a light switch stuck on in your home, so every night you go outside and turn off the master breaker for your house,\u201d Callas said. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of like deep sleep on the rover. We turn everything off so that heater goes off.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if Opportunity initially lost enough power to trigger a clock fault, \u201cthe rover will lose track of time and so it won\u2019t know when to properly deep sleep,\u201d Callas added. \u201cAnd so it may not be deep sleeping when this heater is stuck on, and so it may be wasting energy that we\u2019re trying to charge the batteries with.\u201d<\/p>\n

A clock fault likely developed in the wake of the extended power outage. If so, whenever it wakes up, Opportunity\u2019s computer will reset its clocks to a time in the future and then set timers to trigger communications attempts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rover won\u2019t wake up in the middle of the night, it\u2019ll only wake up during the day, but we won\u2019t know when during the day,\u201d Callas said. \u201cIt could be a game of whack-a-mole. It could wake up at one time of day and then we may not hear from it for three days and then wake up at a different time of day.\u201d<\/p>\n

To cover those scenarios, NASA\u2019s Deep Space Network, made up of giant antennas used to relay data and commands to spacecraft spread out across the solar system, is \u201clistening\u201d for Opportunity\u2019s call multiple times each weak and at various times of day, covering a broader range of frequencies just to be on the safe side.<\/p>\n

Asked how confident he was about Opportunity\u2019s eventual wakeup, Callas said the odds were better than 50-50.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless we got a whole bunch of dust dumped on the arrays, if we have at least a 50 percent clean array, this vehicle should be charging about now,\u201d he said. \u201cAs long as the batteries haven\u2019t gone kaput, and we don\u2019t think they have, this thing should wake up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we haven\u2019t heard (from it) in a couple of months, yeah, then I\u2019m really worried. But I think in the next few weeks, four or five weeks, we should hear something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The Hubble Space Telescope captured this view Mars, with its surface partially hidden under a veil of dust, last month as the planet reached the closest point in its orbit to Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and STScI Flight controllers have not heard from NASA\u2019s Opportunity Mars rover since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2889,1183,367,1714,190,2721,1561,1563],"class_list":["post-13632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-dust-storm","tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","tag-mars","tag-mars-rover","tag-nasa","tag-opportunity","tag-planetary-science","tag-solar-system"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}