Mars Rover Spirit Reaches Winter Tilt

An anonymous reader writes "The Mars rover Spirit has been inching carefully down the north slope of the feature 'Home Plate' to tilt its solar panels into the sun to survive the long Martian winter. On Friday, it reached a tilt of 29.9 degrees, probably the final tilt it will reach for the winter. Although it's used the tilt strategy to increase power over the Martian winter twice before, this year it's especially critical, since a global dust storm last summer has left the solar-powered rover covered with dust and starved for power. Geoffrey Landis, one of the MER scientists, commemorated Spirit's trek to the winter haven with a sonnet on his blog. (The second of the two rovers, Opportunity, is at a landing site that's not as far into the southern hemisphere, and hence has less need to find a tilted surface.) OSU has a website explaining some of the software used to visualize the terrain to optimize the tilt, and for the latest news, the ongoing log of the rover status is updated weekly."

Stupid but obvious

[Goalie_Ca]

If dust is a problem why don't they attach a brush to it or something.

Re:Stupid but obvious

[Eddi3]

Yeah, because they can do that from 36-250 million miles away.

Re:Stupid but obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

They could carry it with a swallow.

Re:Stupid but obvious

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

I've always wondered why they didn't build them with a brush or something to clean the panels off with. Seems like a pretty obvious thing that someone should have brought up in the design stages.

Rover III

[sakdoctor]

Bag-less rover with duel cyclone technology.
Sponsored by Dyson.

Re:Stupid but obvious

[RuBLed]

Wait a minute! Supposing two swallows carried it together?

Re:Stupid but obvious

[Celeritas]

Are those African or European Swallows?

Re:Stupid but obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Towelie says, "Do you wanna get high?"

nah, its no problem.

[apodyopsis]

nah, its no problem - a good martian winter downpour will wash the dust off. and, voila, the problem is eliminated.

they'll need to get close to one of the canals if they want to wash of some of the sand clogging the treads as well.

:)