Rained Again On Mars
Aging Mars Rover Gets a Power Boost
"NASA's aging Mars rover Spirit has a bit more power under its hood thanks to some Martian winds that cleaned dust from its vital solar panels.
The handy cleaning occurred earlier this month and was discovered by engineers scanning data from Spirit's power subsystem.
"We will be able to use this energy to do significantly more driving," said Colette Lohr, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Our drives have been averaging about 50 minutes, and energy has usually been the limiting factor. We may be able to increase that to drives of an hour and a half."
The last time winds scoured Spirit's solar array clean was in June 2007, but a massive dust storm on Mars later that year piled new grit atop the rover, mission managers said."
"NASA's aging Mars rover Spirit has a bit more power under its hood thanks to some Martian winds that cleaned dust from its vital solar panels.
The handy cleaning occurred earlier this month and was discovered by engineers scanning data from Spirit's power subsystem.
"We will be able to use this energy to do significantly more driving," said Colette Lohr, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "Our drives have been averaging about 50 minutes, and energy has usually been the limiting factor. We may be able to increase that to drives of an hour and a half."
The last time winds scoured Spirit's solar array clean was in June 2007, but a massive dust storm on Mars later that year piled new grit atop the rover, mission managers said."
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