Things have been changing a lot on the Red Planet. Now, it has been 3 Weeks since the enormous dust tempest on Mars has engulfed the aging Opportunity rover of NASA and researchers have completely no thought when the rover will rouse again or what state it will be in when it lastly does.
The bot has caught in the most horrible of this planet-wide tempest and as it is positioned in a region that was among the foremost to be cloaked in the intense dust clouds, thus for a while now, its solar panels have been incapable of harvesting energy-providing light. Hence the bot sits in stillness, incapable of communicating to its controllers back home and devoid of sufficient energy to do any actual task.
Dr. James Rice, geology team leader and co-investigator on the NASA project that comprises Opportunity, talking about the rover’s state said:
“We went from producing a well 645 Wh on June 1 to an unprecedented, critical, low merely around 1 Week later. On June 10, our final power reading was only 22 Wh, the lowest ever been observed. The main worry is that we’ll not have sufficient power to maintain us warm enough to circumvent any harm to the electronics of the vehicle. Nevertheless, our thermal experts believe that we’ll remain over those low critical temperatures as we have a WEB (Warm Electronics Box) that is well insulated. Thus, we aren’t anticipating any thermal harm to the computer systems or batteries.”
On the other end, for a couple of years now, Juno spacecraft of NASA has been hovering around Jupiter and it’s made a custom of providing dazzling pictures of the gas giant. The image, which displays the southern end of Jupiter, divulges the astonishing bands that drape around the planet together with the whirling tempests that have become so iconic.
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