NASA's Opportunity Rover Is In The Worst Storm On Mars & Almost Dead, But Hope Isn't Lost Yet

On Mars, NASA¡¯s Opportunity rover scours the land, constantly exploring and analysing its surroundings. Well, at least it was until a couple of days ago when it literally fell asleep on the job.

It¡¯s not dead yet though, merely in a sort of induced coma.

Images courtesy: NASA

The thing is, Opportunity encountered a massive dust storm on Mars a few days ago. They¡¯re fairly frequent on the Red Planet but this one¡¯s a doozy, blanketing over 36 million square kilometres, or at least a quarter of the planet. As such, the rover hunkered down to wait it out. Unfortunately, it also ran out of charge in the process.

NASA engineers say Opportunity didn¡¯t respond to a contact attempt a couple of days ago. They¡¯re now operating under the assumption the 15-year-old rover simply ran out of juice, seeing as there¡¯s too much dust in the air for any significant amount of sunlight to reach its solar panels. Once its battery levels drop below 24 volts, it goes into a low power fault mode, where all subsystems except the mission clock are turned off. Aside from occasionally waking up to check power levels, it remains this way until it¡¯s able to recharge.

Images showing the darkening sky above Opportunity as the storm approached

It¡¯s not the end for Opportunity though, it should be up and about just fine once its batteries have bounced back, assuming it hasn¡¯t sustained any damage in the dust storm. It¡¯s a resilient little thing though, having survived a bad dust storm previously in 2007. In addition, Opportunity has also lived to 15 years, despite being designed for a 90-day mission, so engineers are confident they¡¯ll be able to properly re-establish contact soon.