Mars Rover Gone Quiet

[Fundoreen]

Despite all the utter bullst that we are going to send man to mars I can appreciate we need to develop the remote capability
to do missions.
Just be honest rather than get wrapped up in all the star trek nonsense.

[eharding]

Simpo Two said:

Dust on the panels was entirely predictable and so a very weak link. Poor choice of power source for a dusty planet.

Given that the Opportunity and Spirit missions were only planned to last 3 months the choice of solar panels seems fine - as it turns out, Spirit lasted 6 years, and Opportunity for 14 years, both very much well in excess of the design life. The design teams would have been well aware of the effect dust coverage would have power output, but if your design brief calls for a 90 day lifespan you'd be laughed out of the room trying to justify a solution which lasts 50 times longer 'just in case'.

Simpo Two said:

If you had a plutonium generator, then rather than use it to blow-dry the solar panels, skip the panels entirely and use the generator for electricity... Which is what I think they did before solar panels were invented. Sometimes newer is not always better.

I think you're muddling up your rovers. The latest rovers, Curiosity and Perseverance, with longer planned mission times and higher energy requirements, do indeed have radioisotope generators, which give a more predictable and reliable power supply than the older solar-powered designs, but interestingly they aren't expected to be operational for much more than the actual 14-year lifespan of Opportunity.

[Eric Mc]

NASA also has reservations about launching plutonium isotope (RTG - Radio Thermal Generator) powered space craft and will only use that technology if they think it is the only correct one for the mission.

The very first successful Mars landers, Vikings 1 and 2, both used plutonium as their power source but that was because back at the time they were being designed and developed (1970 to 1975) solar panels were not yet deemed efficient enough for use on the surface of Mars. Most of the later Mars landing probes were solar powered, apart from the two large rovers, as stated above, which do indeed use RTGs.

Solar power has come on a lot in the intervening decades and even the Juno probe and JUICE probes (both to Jupiter) are solar powered.

I think some sort of automatic panel cleaning system might be worthwhile installing on future solar powered Mars landers - such as a type of windscreen wiper or air blower. Often, the Martian winds are enough on their own to clear dusty panels.