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The dust tempest on Mars is over, just Opportunity has yet to wake back up. Earlier this summer, the rover was forced into hibernation mode by an extreme Martian dust storm that darkened the skies of the Scarlet Planet to a level we've literally never seen before. Nearly of the time, Mars has a tau — a scientific term that refers to the opacity of the Martian atmosphere — of i-2. During the largest major grit tempest we've previously seen, the tau was roughly 6. This time, the tau from the massive storm striking 10.8 — and Opportunity is solar powered.

NASA has now appear that the window of Opportunity is remarkably short. In 45 days, if NASA hasn't heard from the rover or been able to contact it, it'll pull the plug on the mission. And that time frame has many engineers and scientists upset, given the mechanics of how grit and grit storms practically work on Mars.

During the fourteen years its been on Mars, Opportunity'due south power levels have fluctuated enormously for two master reasons. First, the rover's reliance on solar power means that the amount of energy it receives is dependent on Mars' position from the Dominicus. Mars altitude from the Sun varies from 1.38 AU to ane.67 AU, and the long Martian winters provide significantly less power overall. Second, the same wind that occasionally covers the rover in dust has likewise been known to clean and polish the solar panels, in some cases bringing them upward to nearly full ability once once more. The graph below shows how Opportunity's power levels have fluctuated over 2022 – 2022.

On June iii, Opportunity produced 468 Whr of energy. By June half dozen, this had fallen to 133 Whr as the dust storm approached. On June 10, just 22 Whr of free energy were bachelor. Whether the rover tin can wake up at all volition depend in office on how clear the solar panels are. And squad members who work on Opportunity are pointing out that NASA's 45-twenty-four hour period limit appears to have come from nowhere. When Spirit went quiet in 2022, NASA spent ten months on actively attempting to communicate with the rover and five months passively listening for its advice. The 45-day clock won't offset until the tau above the rover is confirmed to be at or beneath 1.v, but as The Atlantic details, many on the NASA Opportunity team are unhappy at the idea of pulling the plug on the project without turning over every stone and making every effort to become the rover upwardly and running.

At that place are two ways to wait at this issue. On the one hand, sustaining an active mission around Opportunity costs coin and NASA doesn't exactly take a ton of it sitting around. Yous could make the argument that after xiv years, there are only different places to allocate those dollars. The other argument, however, is that it'south incredibly expensive to put a new rover on Mars. It makes the most sense to extract every last scientific observation from an available instrument because new instruments are an incredibly rare event. There'south also no guarantee that whatever attempt to put a new rover on Mars won't blow upwardly on the launch pad or fail en route. Which of these arguments is right will depend on where you experience NASA should exist prioritizing its spending, but the price of trying to wake Opportunity up is a fraction of the cost of replacing the rover. Y'all tin can make a denoting argument for a more aggressive contact attempt on those grounds lone.

Ane reason why engineers are calling for a longer active listening session is that the rover'south onboard clock may take failed and it may no longer know when to telephone home for instructions. When NASA is actively listening, that means it sends a periodic communication pulse to order the rover to telephone call home, if it happens to be alive and its radio is functional. Passive monitoring simply ways y'all listen on the frequencies you lot think the router may use (apparently these can drift) and promise information technology tries to contact you.

Hopefully, Opportunity will wake upwards on her ain, obviating the statement. For now, NASA's plan to pull the plug in 45 days isn't winning the organization any fans.

Now Read: NASA Loses Contact With Opportunity as Storm Rages On, Opportunity Remains Silent as Grit Storm Clears, Opportunity Has Now Operated For 5,000 Martian Days