Posted on 01/25/2014 3:09:37 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Explanation: On January 25 (UT) 2004, the Opportunity rover fell to Mars, making today the 10th anniversary of its landing. After more than 3,500 sols (Mars solar days) the golf cart-sized robot from Earth is still actively exploring the Red Planet, though its original mission plan was for three months. This self-portrait was made with Opportunity's panoramic camera earlier this month. The camera's supporting mast has been edited out of the image mosaic but its shadow is visible on the dusty solar panels arrayed across the rover's deck. For comparison, a similar self-portrait from late 2004 is shown in the inset. Having driven some 39 kilometers (24 miles) from its landing site, Opportunity now rests at Solander Point at the rim of Endeavour Crater.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State U.]
They need to drive it to a car wash.
I can’t believe I have followed this for ten years.
Or... Martians cleaned off the panels during the nightly power down?
Marvin says keep you hands off my Dunkin Donut!
The RAD6000 mostly runs at less than 20mhz for power conservation...lots of time in sleep modes.
The rovers run a VxWorks embedded operating system on a radiation-hardened 20 MHz RAD6000 CPU with 128 MB of DRAM with error detection and correction and 3 MB of EEPROM. Each rover also has 256 MB of flash memory.
The rover has an X-Band low-gain and an X-Band high-gain antenna for communications to and from the Earth, as well as a UHF monopole antenna for relay communications. The low-gain antenna is omnidirectional, and transmits data at a low rate to Deep Space Network dish antennas on Earth
The data from the low-gain omni antenna can be picked up on Earth even if the power drops to only a small fraction of a watt...you can hear almost anything with a good LNA and a 300ft dish.
Free Republic 1st Quarter Fundraising Target: $85,000 | Receipts & Pledges to-date: $23,047 | |||
|
||||
Woo hoo!! And the first 27% is in!! Thank you all very much!! |
I don’t see any mountain lions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.