Opportunity has taken its first, albeit short, drive since December, as Mars’ winter draws to an end and the rover’s solar panels start producing more electricity.
The jaunt earlier this week saw the rover move around 3.67 metres; shifting from its winter base of Greeley Haven outcrop onto the sand just below it.
Surviving its fifth winter on Mars, Opportunity will now take a few shots with its panoramic camera to further examine surface targets it studied on Greeley Haven. While the rover may not have moved during the winter, it remained active; using equipment on its robotic arm to inspect targets within reach on the outcrop.
In February, we published a photo of the Rover’s dust-caked solar cells. The rover operations team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says unless wind removes some dust from Opportunity’s solar array, the rover will be confined to working at locations with no southward slope for the next few weeks.
“We’ll head south as soon as power levels are adequate to handle the slopes where we’ll go,” said Mars Exploration Rover Deputy Project Scientist Diana Blaney of JPL.
Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, completed what was only meant to be a three-month mission on Mars 8 years ago. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010 and NASA abandoned recovery efforts in May last year.
Opportunity won’t be alone for much longer though as NASA launched its next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, on Nov. 26 last year. Curiosity is scheduled to arrive at the planet’s Gale Crater in August this year.
Curiosity carries the most advanced payload of scientific equipment ever used on Mars’ surface, ten times the weight of that on board Opportunity. Unlike the solar-powered Opportunity, Curiosity’s electrical power will be provided by a radioisotope power generator, which produces electricity from the heat of plutonium-238’s radioactive decay.
Source: NASA
