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Opportunity Rover Gets Power Boost from Wind Event on Mars
A nearly dust-free solar panel for the Opportunity rover following a dust cleaning wind event sometime during the last week of March 2014 (on Earth). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State University.
The Opportunity rover on Mars has gotten a 70% boost in power over the past few weeks. A good portion of that comes from the fact that its springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere where Oppy now sits along the western rim of Endeavour Crater and so the Sun is now shining longer and higher in the sky. But also, several recent gusts of wind – or perhaps small dust devils – have cleaned much of the dust off the rover’s solar panels.
The rover team reported that between Sols 3605 and 3606 (March 15 and March 16, 2014), there was a dust cleaning event that resulted in about a 10% improvement in power production to 574 watt-hours, and then another cleaning event this week has put the power output to 615 watt-hours.
See a self-portrait that Opportunity took of its solar panels back in January to compare with the image above of how much cleaner the solar panels are now.
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Read the rest of Opportunity Rover Gets Power Boost from Wind Event on Mars (173 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: Mars Rovers, MER, Opportunity Rover
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/110800/opportunity-rover-gets-power-boost-from-wind-event-on-mars/
