I wondered if the atmosphere was thick enough to use a small wind powered generator to augment solar power, and if a blower/fan could have been added to clean off the solar panels...... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Bauman" <josephmbauman@yahoo.com> To: "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 10:35 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Controllers Cheer as Data Arrive from NASA'sSpirit Rover

With all the drills and cameras on that thing, I wonder why they didn't stick on a skinny little roboarm with a whisk broom at the end, to get the dust off the solar cells. -- jb

--- On Thu, 11/13/08, Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> wrote:

From: Patrick Wiggins <paw@wirelessbeehive.com> Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Controllers Cheer as Data Arrive from NASA's Spirit Rover To: "utah astronomy listserve utah astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Date: Thursday, November 13, 2008, 10:26 PM

Controllers Cheer as Data Arrive from NASA's Spirit Rover

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20081113a.html

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated

-M. Twain

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On 13 Nov 2008, at 22:35, Joe Bauman wrote:

With all the drills and cameras on that thing, I wonder why they didn't stick on a skinny little roboarm with a whisk broom at the end, to get the dust off the solar cells. -- jb

Hi Joe, That was brought up in one of the first training sessions I had on the MERs. The explanation was that the MERs were only expected to last a few months and it would take far longer than that for enough dust to accumulate to cause problems. So to save weight and expense "wipers" were not included. Happily, the current Mars surface missions may be the last to rely on solar power. The next lander (Mars Science Laborator / MSL) will use Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generators (say that 3 times fast <g>). That means more power day or night. More here: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/index.html patrick