The NASA Space Agency Opportunity rover is still "silent" because the dust storm that covered the entire planet Mars does not even think of ending. Recall that the storm began on May 30. A few weeks later, the storm covered almost the entire planet. The air of Mars now contains so much dust that the sunlight that powers Opportunity cannot reach its solar panels. The rover itself is in hibernation mode.
“We have not received any signals from the rover for several weeks,” said Ray Arvidson of the University of Washington in St. Louis. Arvidson is the first deputy scientific director of the Mars Exploration Rover mission, under the auspices of which two twin rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, operate. Both rovers landed in different regions of the Red Planet with a break of several weeks.
After a long silence, Spirit contacted in 2009, reporting that it was stuck in a sand dune. On March 22, 2010, he was completely out of order. His twin brother "Opportunity" was still in working order and continued to carry out scientific tasks. The rover last sent a photo from the surface of Mars on June 10. Since then, there has been no rumor or spirit about him.
The rover is most likely in a low power mode at this time. His computer wakes up from time to time, checks the energy supply from solar panels, and if it is low, it goes into hibernation again, Arvidson told Inside Outer Space.
The graph shows the ratio of the amount of energy available for operation of the Opportunity rover (in watts / hour, marked in yellow) and the level of transparency / opacity of the planet's atmosphere (the parameter is indicated in tau, marked in blue).
“At some point, when the storm recedes, Opportunity has to wake up and decide if it has enough energy to transmit the signal through the low gain antenna. This will continue over several solas (a Martian day lasting about 40 minutes longer than Earth's) until he ultimately decides to reach full operational levels,”Arvidson added.
“We continue to listen, but so far there is no news from the transmitter of the rover. Moreover, this storm continues to rage with all its might."
“The storm has covered the entire planet, and its strength continues to grow. But I'm still confident that we can survive it,”added Jim Rice of Arizona State University, head of the astrogeology group for the Mars Exploration Rover project.
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