Dust storm on Mars threatens NASA's rover: Know how
New Delhi : NASA's Opportunity rover is in danger as heavy dust storm sweep the landscape on Mars. The golf-cart-size vehicle was launched toward Mars in June 2003 and landed in January 2004. On August 26, the rover has completed 15 years on the Red Planet.
NASA's rover has travelled hundreds of miles across Mars using solar power. But now, it is in trouble due to continuous dust storm going on since two months now. Reports claim that the Opportunity has fallen asleep on June 10 and has not sent any signal back home.
Generally, dust storms are fairly common on Mars and are known to cover the planet in a dull-red haze, but NASA said that this was “one of the most intense” “This is the worst storm Opportunity has ever seen, and we’re doing what we can, crossing our fingers, and hoping for the best,” Steve Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University and leader of the rover mission, said in blog post for the Planetary Society.
Earlier on June 13, it was reported that Opportunity was going through certain problems after a storm, which engulfed a quarter of the planet, swept over the rover. The storm blocked the Sun’s light, due to which Opportunity was unable to charge its batteries. The rover had therefore gone into a shutdown mode and all of its systems went offline.
Scientists are now worried if rover doesn’t find sufficient energy in its batteries, its systems will shut back again. If the systems stay off, the batteries could freeze and shut the rover down forever.
Conversely, it is believed that rover will soon wake up by itself once the dust storm on Mars stops. “When the skies clear and the rover begins to power up, it should be able to communicate with us,” John Callas, Opportunity’s project manager, said.
For now, NASA engineers are continuously trying to get in touch with the rover using deep space network. They are afraid that even though the robot wakes up, its batteries could be too weak to support operations.
