For the second time in its career, NASA\u2019s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is hunkering down on the Red Planet and foregoing scientific operations as a dust storm whirls around the intrepid little rover. Opportunity weathered \u2013 with some difficulty \u2013 a massive, global dust storm in 2007, remarkably surviving despite extremely low power levels generated by its solar panels during the event. NASA announced last night that the current dust storm is now worse \u2013 in terms of total sunlight blocked \u2013 than the 2007 storm.<\/p>\n
The Situation:<\/b><\/p>\n
Dust storms were always a potential hazard for Opportunity due to the fact that it gathers and generates its power via sunlight reaching its critical solar panels that cover the majority of the \u201ctop\u201d of the rover.<\/p>\n
As has been seen throughout Opportunity\u2019s lifetime, dust routinely collects on the surface of its solar panels and is, somewhat surprisingly, routinely cleaned by Mars\u2019 wind and dust devil events, thus allowing greater power generation on the rover than would otherwise be possible if total accumulation built up over time without these cleaning events. <\/p>\n
A major cleaning event for Opportunity\u2019s solar panels occurred in early 2007 and greatly aided the rover in what became its worst \u2013 at the time \u2013 chances of survival when a massive, global dust storm enveloped Mars and dropped sunlight levels reaching the rover\u2019s solar panels to critical levels.<\/p>\n
Now, in a late-evening\/night update yesterday at 16:30 PDT (2330 UTC) 10 June 2018, NASA announced that the current dust storm surrounding Opportunity at Perseverance Valley near the Endeavour Crater has grown to be worse than the 2007 dust storm, blocking even more sunlight than the global event did 11 years ago.<\/p>\n