NASA starts 45-day clock to contact Mars Rover Opportunity

Tracks from NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars are visible on the Martian surface in this image taken in June 2017. After months of silence from a dust storm on March, NASA has begun a 45-day campaign to reestablish contact with the rover.
                                    
                                        (NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell / Arizona State University)

The planet-enveloping dust storm on Mars has been established for NASA to start a 45-day active-listening period in which the agency hopes to make contact with the rover NASA announced yesterday (Sept. 11).

So, for the next 45 days, NASA engineers will have several times a day, rather than the three times that had been the procedure. That schedule is based on the expectation that the rover is now harvesting enough solar power to receive and respond to commands. In this "active-listening" procedure, NASA will send instructions that force the rover to create a signal at a specific frequency if it is powered up and not seriously damaged.

If the rover has not yet made contact with those days, NASA will have to determine how to proceed. In a statement released Aug. 30, the agency said it would continue to be heard until the end of January. [Mars Dust Storm 2018: What It Means for Opportunity Rover]

NASA made two consecutive measurements of atmospheric opacity, called tau, of less than 1.5. When the first time, the first time the world is over, it will be more effective than ever before. .

When the plan was announced, some scientists expressed concern about the fact that pegging this active-listening period to the atmospheric opacity would start the clock on Opportunity too soon.

That's because it's all about falling down, which means there's nothing to stop it from falling onto the rover's solar panels. And if the problem is one of the two or more of them, it does not matter whether it is in the air or resting on the panels. Mars has seasonal patterns called dust devils that could clear that dust away, but those will not begin until November – by which point, the 45 days of active outreach will have ended.

The rover has been exploring the surface of Mars since 2004, far outlasting its original mission timeline of 90 Martian days (a Martian day is about 40 minutes longer than a terrestrial one). But the engineers and scientists who control the rover have not heard from you.

They hope the robot is merely hibernating, waiting for the dust to settle. Either way, the next 45 days may be the best chance Opportunity has left.

Original article on Space.com.