'Something' Cleaning Mars Rover 355
bluenirve writes "'Something' has been cleaning the solar panels of the Mars rover Opportunity. "NASA's Mars rover Opportunity seems to have stumbled into something akin to a carwash that has left its solar panels much cleaner than those of its twin rover, Spirit. A Martian carwash would account for a series of unexpected boosts in the electrical power produced by Opportunity's solar panels.""
Yesterday's News. (Score:5, Informative)
would wind work (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hmmm... (Score:3, Informative)
The engineers decided not to build something to shake off the solar panels, because that would make the darn thing heavier -- which woule mean they would have had to leave something else off.
Politics had nothing to do with it.
Re:They looked for the dirt (Score:1, Informative)
An old South Park Reference.
An occassional error in Slash code.
A tired old joke.
watt-hours per day (Score:3, Informative)
power * time / time = power
900 Watts * hours / day * (1 day / 24 hours) = 37.5 Watts.
Why not just say that to start?
Re:watt-hours per day (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Nitrogen (Score:4, Informative)
Or maybe not [cnn.com]:
Steve Squyres, the Mars rovers principal investigator, said the rovers' designers deemed the additional weight of adding wipers or blowers to the solar panels was not worthwhile. Instead they increased the size of the panels to maximize the power input.
Didn't We Already Do This Yesterday? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Design (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
I work for Steve Squyres (the Principle Investigator) and he said that they considered this option as well, and it was prone to failure.
Looks like they made the right call after all!
Cheers,
Justin
Re:watt-hours per day (Score:3, Informative)
I may be an American, but at least I understand the difference between power and energy.