Monday, August 2, 2010

Don't give up hope so soon

Pessimistic article out about how the Spirit rover might not ever wake up and start communicating with Earth again:

NASA's hibernating Mars Rovers may not call home again

"The earliest date the rover could generate enough power to send a beep to Earth was calculated to be around July 23. However, mission managers don't anticipate the batteries will charge adequately until late September to mid-October. It may be even later if the rover is in a mission-clock fault mode. If Spirit does wake up, mission managers will do a complete health check on the rover's instruments and electronics.

Based on previous Martian winters, the rover team anticipates the increasing haziness in the sky over Spirit will offset longer daylight for the next two months. The amount of solar energy available to Spirit then will increase until the southern Mars summer solstice in March 2011. If we haven't heard from it by March, it is unlikely that we will ever hear from it."

But still, even as they note, it's too soon by a long shot to give up on it yet.

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