Mars rover: The end of an Opportunity?

The Opportunity rover is a grizzled veteran of Mars exploration. It landed on January 25, 2004 with a 90-day mission ahead and kept going for over 14 years. That’s about twice as long as its twin, the Spirit rover, and much longer than the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which endured a mere 85 days in 1997. But Mars rovers, like people, are dust in the wind. Opportunity has been incommunicado since June 10, when it [“hunkered down”]( because of a storm. Ten days later that storm went “global,” encircling the planet in a cloud of dust. Opportunity runs on solar power, so it’s gone into a sleep mode where only its mission clock is running. It’s supposed to check its battery charge periodically; if it’s not high enough, it goes back to sleep. Now scientists are in a waiting game, checking for fairer skies on Mars and trying to [wake Opportunity up with a song]( if there’s life left in her. Let’s check in. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( [Quartz Obsession] Mars rover August 30, 2018 Opportunity lost? --------------------------------------------------------------- The Opportunity rover is a grizzled veteran of Mars exploration. It landed on January 25, 2004 with a 90-day mission ahead and kept going for over 14 years. That’s about twice as long as its twin, the Spirit rover, and much longer than the first Mars rover, Sojourner, which endured a mere 85 days in 1997. But Mars rovers, like people, are dust in the wind. Opportunity has been incommunicado since June 10, when it [“hunkered down”]( because of a storm. Ten days later that storm went “global,” encircling the planet in a cloud of dust. Opportunity runs on solar power, so it’s gone into a sleep mode where only its mission clock is running. It’s supposed to check its battery charge periodically; if it’s not high enough, it goes back to sleep. Now scientists are in a waiting game, checking for fairer skies on Mars and trying to [wake Opportunity up with a song]( if there’s life left in her. Let’s check in. 🐦 [Tweet this!]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( NASA By the digits [5.2 Mb:]( Amount of data returned by Mariner 4, the first successful Mars flyby, in 1965 [2 Mbps:]( Maximum data transfer rate from Opportunity to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [64 Mbps:]( Average broadband speed in the US [225,000:]( Images transmitted by Opportunity [0.1 mph:]( Top speed of Opportunity [0.02 mph:]( Average speed of Opportunity [28.06 miles:]( Distance traveled by Opportunity in over 14 years [$800 million:]( Cost of the Opportunity and Spirit rovers [$2.5 billion:]( Cost of the Curiosity rover, planned for 2020 Brief history Roving the Red Planet --------------------------------------------------------------- [1960:]( The Soviet spacecraft Mars 1M No. 1, the first attempt at a Mars flyby, launches and blows up over Siberia. [1965:]( Seven and a half months after launch, Mariner 4 completes the first successful flyby of Mars. [1967:]( Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 fly by Mars within a week of each other. [1971:]( The Soviet spacecraft Mars 2 and Mars 3, and the American spacecraft Mariner 9, all go into orbit around the planet. Mars 2’s lander becomes the first manmade object to travel to another planet, but it stops working within 14 seconds. Mars 3’s lander works just long enough to partially transmit the first picture from Mars. Its [rover]( fails to deploy. [1975:]( Viking 1 lands on Mars and continues to work for six years, the first successful mission on the planet, and the longest-lasting until Opportunity broke its record in 2010. [1997:]( On July 4, the Sojourner becomes the first rover to successfully explore Mars. [2004:]( The rovers Spirit and Opportunity begin their travels on the planet’s surface. [2010:]( NASA ends Spirit’s mission. Explain it like I’m 5! How do you get a “global dust storm”? --------------------------------------------------------------- Easy! Or at least [easier on Mars](. To start with, there’s no liquid water or vegetation, so there’s a lot of dust. Mars is smaller, so there’s not only less ground to cover, but the force of gravity is lower and the atmosphere is thinner, so the dust can go higher and spread further. Scientists don’t fully understand why some Mars dust storms are worse than others, but [the basic process is straightforward]( sun warms the planet, the changing temperatures create wind, and the carbon dioxide in the polar ice caps evaporates, helping suspend the dust in the planet’s atmosphere. Global dust storms aren’t frequent, but they’re not uncommon, occurring every few years. NASA Pop quiz When does SpaceX think it can take people to Mars? 2020In the year 2525, if mankind is still alive20222050 Correct. Incorrect. If your inbox doesn’t support this quiz, find the solution at bottom of email. Science lesson What have we learned from Opportunity? --------------------------------------------------------------- The rover hit the ground running. To the delight of NASA scientists, it landed in an impact crater, and in a couple weeks Opportunity [sent evidence]( that its rock outcroppings could have been formed by water. After using its robotic arm to drill into the rock, scientists saw evidence of erosion, further suggesting the former presence of liquid water. Opportunity also came across a mineral called jarosite, which only forms in acidic water of the kind that microbes can thrive in. It was proof not only that liquid water once existed on Mars, but that there was [a substantial amount of it]( that it flowed, and that it could have supported life. Over the years, its evidence got better. In 2011, Opportunity photographed a tiny, thumb’s-width [vein of gypsum]( that told “a slam-dunk story that water flowed through underground fractures in the rock.” It was also evidence that more neutral-pH water—friendlier to life than its first discovery—existed on Mars. The next year, following up on a promising lead by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, it [confirmed]( the presence of a clay mineral called smectite, evidence of neutral water from four billion years ago. 🚀Check out a 3D augmented reality model of the rover [on the Quartz app for iOS](. Watch this! The Opportunity rover moves slow, which made it possible for NASA to do an eleven-year time lapse animation of its journey, using photographs it took from 2004 through 2015. NASA/JPL-Caltech Million-dollar question How do you kill a Mars rover? --------------------------------------------------------------- Four rovers have successfully explored the planet’s surface. Two are dead, and maybe a third, because they reached the limits of solar and battery technology. Opportunity’s problem is that the dust storm has taken away its fuel source, so all it’s doing is keeping its internal clock running. When the sun comes out again, there’s a possibility that going so long without a recharge could have permanently damaged its batteries. NASA [describes]( the process of Opportunity waking up “like a patient coming out of a coma: It takes time to fully recover.” The rover is supposed to [wake up at solar noon]( but if its internal clock is off it could wake up in the dark. Then it has to use environmental cues—like “wait, it’s supposed to be light now”—to try again at a better time. If that goes well, it will communicate its vitals back to earth, test its joints, and even send pictures of its condition back to NASA. Its twin, Spirit, died after getting stuck in sandy soil. When it couldn’t move, it couldn’t reposition its solar array for the Martian winter. That meant it didn’t have the power to keep its electronics warm, which are supposed to stay above [-40℉](. Some combination of the solar array, the dust on it, and the cold meant it didn’t survive the winter. And Mars dust is pretty bad. As the Spirit mission manager [explained]( on Quora, wipers for the solar panel aren’t a possibility, in part because the dust is very fine and adheres to the solar panels by electrostatic force. So to ensure enough solar absorption for Opportunity and Spirit, they just made the panels bigger. And Opportunity has been just a bit [luckier:]( It’s avoided the worst of the planet’s dust storms until now, and [Martian dust devils]( have cleaned off some of the dust from its solar array. Listen to this! Wake-up tunes --------------------------------------------------------------- On August 4, NASA engineers played Wham!’s “[Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go]( in an attempt to wake up Opportunity, a rover on Mars that has been [radio silent for months](. But even the lively spirits of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley failed to stir the rover, and NASA has been playing a different song each day ever since, in the hopes that Opportunity will soon say something back. “We’ll just keep playing until she talks to us,” Michael Staab, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who helped jump-start the initiative, [told Space.com](. The website then compiled a [Spotify playlist]( of the songs that have or will be played to Opportunity. AP/NASA DIY Make your own Mars rover! --------------------------------------------------------------- NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab has plans for an [Open Source Rover]( that can be built for under $2,500, a scaled-down model of the Curiosity. Take me down this 🐰 hole! Look back at its life with [15 years of stunning Mars panoramas from NASA’s Opportunity rover](. Why the sudden interest in colonizing Mars? “It’s clear humankind has a [better chance of survival]( if we split up.” NASA Illustration/Dennis Calaba This one weird trick! Where we’re going we don’t need rovers --------------------------------------------------------------- If you like rovers, you’re gonna love a [giant Mars boomerang drone](. NASA/JPL-Caltech Poll Will humans make it to Mars? [Click here to vote]( Of course, we’re cleverNo, we’re hubristicDo we have any choice? 💬Let’s talk! In yesterday’s poll, 40% of you said [hyperinflation]( makes you deflated—and another 40% said it makes you depressed. 😓 📧Juan wrote: “I’m one of the many Venezuelans that left because we were unable to find a decent foothold in our country. I am one of the lucky ones, I guess—I speak fluent English and, most important, am also an American citizen—but your Obsession truly hit home. 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