(Bloomberg) -- A Martian dust storm covering a quarter of the planet threatens to end a 15-year exploration mission by NASA's Mars Opportunity rover.
Operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) attempted to contact the rover on Tuesday but did not receive a signal, which means the craft has likely entered a “low power fault mode” wherein all systems, save a mission clock, are shut down. The storm was detected on May 30 and now fully blocks the sun at the rover's location, leaving the craft in total darkness. Without sunlight, the rover cannot recharge its batteries, which it needs for operations.
“The project team is very concerned,” said John Callas, project manager for NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission at JPL. NASA ceased Opportunity's science operations on June 4 as engineers prepared to secure the craft against the storm, Callas said.
“At this point, we're in a waiting mode, listening every day for possible signals,” he said. “We're concerned but we're hopeful that the storm will clear and the rover will begin to communicate to us.”
The clock periodically wakes the rover computer to check power levels. If the batteries are insufficiently charged, the computer will again enter a sleep mode, the same mode used each night to power down the rover. Opportunity can sit in the low-power mode “for an extended period of time,” Callas said.
The immediate threat is that the rover, without power, could succumb to Mars' harsh overnight cold. The last temperature reading from Opportunity was -20F (-29C), NASA said Sunday. Engineers are hopeful that the storm will provide some atmospheric shielding against the planet's dramatic daily temperature swings, Callas said. The rover can withstand temperatures of -55C (-67F) and NASA expects the lowest temperature at this time of the year to reach -36C (-33F) at Opportunity's location.
