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A satellite in orbit around Mars took a remarkable but potentially dark photo of NASA's longest robot on the red planet.
This robot is the rover Mars Opportunity, which has the size of a golf cart, landed in January 2004 and was expected to last 90 days. However, Opportunity has been exploring Mars for more than 15 years and has traveled more than 28 miles around the planet using solar energy.
His days may be numbered, however.
When a global dust storm began to envelop Mars about 100 days ago, Opportunity stopped providing enough sunlight to its solar panels. This has prompted him to fall asleep on June 10 and save battery power, as the rover needs to operate the heaters that protect his circuits from the Martian cold.
"The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has not heard of the rover since," wrote Andrew Good, a laboratory representative, in a press release.
Although a new satellite image gives mission controllers hope that Opportunity will wake up, the mission is nearing its end.
What's a new satellite image of Opportunity shows
Opportunity was coming down to a place called Perseverance Valley when the storm hit early June. This blocked the satellite views of the ground.
As dust levels have dropped over the past two weeks, NASA has been able to clearly photograph Opportunity's location on September 20 using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
This satellite image, shown above, was taken by an MRO instrument called HiRISE. In the photo, there is a clear spot, though almost indistinguishable, on the slopes of a hill: the Opportunity rover.
A before-after image created by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech shows more clearly where the rover stopped. It also shows how the environment has changed as a result of the storm.
"A key unknown is the amount of dust that has fallen on solar panels," Good said. "The HiRISE image shows some redness in the surrounding area, suggesting dust fallout, but it's not possible to determine how much dust is on the bays themselves."
The comparison of images contains good news: there does not seem to be an "optically thick layer of dust" that has covered this place, Good writes. This can mean that there is enough sun to reach Opportunity's solar panels in order to slowly charge its batteries.
However, no one can be sure of the amount of dust that covers Opportunity's solar panels, or when a dusty devil (a current weather phenomenon on Mars) could blow on the robot and sweep it away.
What does the final place of rest of Opportunity look like?
Aerial images of NASA's Opportunity are revealing, but it's hard to get an idea of the actual situation of this place.
Fortunately, Seán Doran, a graphic designer who lives in the UK, has taken the habit of taking satellite images, maps and other data from NASA and turning them into realistic surface views of spacecraft on Mars. (Doran is also known for his visualizations of the Earth using satellite data and for processing Juno spacecraft data in colorful images of Jupiter.)
On June 14, just days after Opportunity fell asleep, Doran released a realistic illustration of Perseverance Valley and the robot to show its exact location on Mars. The picture above, which Doran tweeted wednesday, renders the scene in color and 3D with the help of HiRISE image and elevation data.
Doran has also created black and white views of the opportunity, one of which is illustrated below. It gives an overview of the robot (represented by a small white form in the center) on the ridge of the valley.
The artistic representations give an impression of scale to Opportunity, and also give an insight into the sorry place where the mobile could rest forever.
In mid-September, as the dust storm cleared and sunlight resumed, NASA began a 45-day countdown to recover Opportunity.
"If we do not hear an answer after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the dust blocking the sun and the cold Martian have caused a kind of fault which the rover will probably not be able to recover," he said. said John Callas. , NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory rover project leader, said in a press release on Aug. 30.
The deadline falls at the end of October and, if it is not respected, marks the end of an "active" campaign to listen to and try to contact Opportunity on a daily basis. But Callas noted that the agency will still try "several months" of passive listening to see if the robot wakes up somehow after the deadline.
Still, the rover has more than 15 years warranty and the dust storm has resulted in one of the longest periods a solar powered robot has ever hibernated on Mars. This could easily create a situation where some of the robot's battery or other systems have been damaged by the cold Martian and low power levels.
"Even if engineers hear about Opportunity, there is a real possibility that the mobile is not the same," NASA said in a press release in August. "Nobody will know how the rover does until he speaks."
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