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Photo pre-launch of NASA Mars Rover Opportunity at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
(NASA)
NASA opportunity Mars rover remains silent as a giant dust storm continues to swirl on the red planet
The storm began on May 30 and has developed to encircle the entire planet a few weeks later. With so much dust in the air, the Solar Energy Opportunity could not recharge its batteries and went into a kind of hibernation.
"We have not heard from the rover for a few weeks," Ray said. Arvidson from the University of Washington in St. Louis. Arvidson is an badistant principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, which originally consisted of Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. The duo landed at various locations on Mars a few weeks apart in January 2004.
Opportunity continued to roll, long after Spirit's death. But the dust storm has put aside the golf-cart rover: Opportunity has not sent a photo back to Earth since June 10, NASA officials said. The mind has long been silent, mired in the sand at the end of 2009. His last communication with Earth was sent on March 22, 2010.
The opportunity is now likely in a low-power mode, "in which the rover wakes up," Arvidson told Inside Outer Space
"At a time when the storm soothes, Opportunity should wake up, decide that it has enough of power to transmit a low-gain antenna signal, saying, "I'm awake and OK, but I'm going back to sleep," he added. "This should happen to every floor until He decides to return in full operation. "
(A soil is a Martian day, which lasts about 40 minutes longer than one day from Earth.)
" We listened, but not yet low-gain communications, and the storm continues in full force "Arvidson said," The storm has become global and continuous to rage, "said Jim Rice, head of the Mars Exploration Rover Project's geology team at the University of Arizona's Mars State Flight University.
But, he added, "I am always confident that we will get there."
This version of the story was posted on Space.com.
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