The Martians are cleaning the rovers' solar panels
The two Mars rovers Opportunity and Spirit are mysteriously producing more energy than they should, making the vehilces work way beyond their projected retirement age. Somehow, the solar panels are being mysteriously wiped. JPL's Jim Erickson is not too sad about having a pleasant mystery to solve:
"Now we're assuming they're cleaning, but all we can really say is that overnight the solar panels produced between 2 and 5 percent additional power immediately," he said. "We're surmising that for some reason dust is being removed from the solar panel and that's increasing the efficiency of the sunlight being converted to electricity."
The rover team has been bandying about theories, but hasn't figured out the cause.
"One favorite is that a dust devil happened to pick the vehicle to go through and go over the surface of it and clean it off a little bit," Erickson said.
It will only last until the cleaners realise they are not getting tipped for the job.
6:46:29 PM 
|
