 Oppy on a better day. |
The dust storm on Mars is continuing as a Planet-encircling Dust Event (PEDE) with no indication of receding at this time.
The storm has sustained high atmospheric opacity conditions over the Opportunity site for several weeks without any change. There is no indication at this time of the storm abating or clearing.
Since the last contact with the rover on Sol 5111 (June 10, 2018), it is likely that Opportunity has experienced a low-power fault, putting herself to sleep only to wake when the skies eventually clear.
If the atmospheric opacity or the solar array dust factor has gotten worse since the last contact, Opportunity could also experience a mission clock fault.
Furthermore, the rover uploss timer duration has expired. So, when the rover wakes it will also declare an uploss timer fault. It will be important for the science team to carefully unpack all these fault modes when they proceed with recovery efforts.
For now, the science team is listening every day for the rover during both the time of low-power and uploss fault communication windows and listening over a broader range of times under mission clock fault.
The science team is using the services of the Deep Space Network (DSN) Radio Science Receiver (RSR) to listen even when they do not have a schedule track and the RSR is now listening on both left- and right-hand circular polarizations (LCP and RCP) when possible.
Continuing for the near term, the science team is also sending a command to elicit a beep if the rover happens to be awake.
The team does not expect to hear anything from Opportunity until there has been a significant reduction in the storm and the associated atmospheric opacity over the rover site. However, they remain vigilant.
Total odometry is 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers).
Related Links
Opportunity Archive at JPL
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more
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