my nasa deep thought

So, all the talk is that this heater problem on the Opportunity Martian rover will eventually cause problems because the solar panels onboard will become sufficiently dusty that they won't generate enough power to keep up with the drain of this malfunctioning 15W heater.

My question: This rover is golf-cart sized, can rove around, take amazing pictures, has an arm that can drill into rock and analyze what the rock is made of… How difficult would it have been to put a feather duster on this arm to clean off the solar panels? Or maybe a fan blowing the little bit of martian atmosphere over the panels… If the dust is being blown there, can't it just be blown off?


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One response to “my nasa deep thought”

  1. nasa responds (not directly, but, well)

    Back in February I posted my nasa deep thought about why they didn’t put blowers/wipers on the mars rovers… I got to ask one of the NASA scientists during a talk recently at Texas A&M, and then this morning I pull up CNN. There’s an article about…