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NASA has been pinging the Opportunity rover for the final several months, simply the plucky fiddling robot is yet sleeping afterward its run-in with a massive Martian dust storm. There may still exist promise for the mission, too. NASA engineers say that Opportunity has ane last risk to salvage itself from oblivion thanks to an upcoming windy season on Mars.

The Opportunity rover landed on Mars along with its sibling Spirit near 15 years ago. NASA designed the rovers to terminal at to the lowest degree 90 days on the red planet, and they've lasted much longer. Spirit went offline several years ago after getting stuck in soft soil, which prevented it from directing its solar panels at the sun. Opportunity may suffer a similar fate every bit information technology loses power, but the cause is much more dramatic.

Last spring, Mars experienced a global dust tempest. These monster storms form every few years, blotting out the sunday for months at a time. This storm was peculiarly heavy, besides. According to NASA, the opacity level or "tau" of the storm reached a value of more than 10. On average, the Martian atmosphere has a tau of nearly 1.5. With and so niggling light, NASA placed Opportunity into hibernation manner, but fifty-fifty that wasn't plenty to proceed the rover powered.

It's impossible to know how much dust has covered the rover'southward solar panels — the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spotted Opportunity from orbit, but the image resolution isn't sufficient to make out details. Withal, we're approaching a time every year when Mars gets very windy between November and January (on Globe). The Opportunity team calls this "dust-immigration season" because it has cleared backlog grit off the rover'due south solar panels in the past. They hope grit-clearing season could uncover enough of the panels to power the rover up again.

Opportunity, as seen from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Opportunity last communicated with Earth on June tenth. NASA recently increased its communication rate with Opportunity in case it should come up back online of a sudden. If it does wake up, NASA will piece of work to assess its condition and return the rover to full operation. However, the internal heaters haven't been operational for months now. It's possible the batteries have suffered permanent damage from the cold, and clear solar panels won't exist enough to bring Opportunity back to life. NASA will reevaluate the future of the mission if Opportunity doesn't wake up by the end of grit-clearing flavour.

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