What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! A HUGE dust storm on Mars has shut down NASA's 15 years on Mars Rover Opportunity due to lack of solar power. This series of images shows simulated views of a darkening Martian sky blotting out the Sun from NASA’s Opportunity rover’s point of view, with the right side simulating Opportunity’s current view in the global dust storm (June 2018). The left starts with a blindingly bright mid-afternoon sky, with the sun appearing bigger because of brightness. The right shows the Sun so obscured by dust it looks like a pinprick. Each frame corresponds to a tau value, or measure of opacity: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about Opportunity, visit  http://www.nasa.gov/rovers  and  http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov .  Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/T...

Hey Space Placers!  Today NASA will end its attempt to re-establish radio contact with Mars Rover Spirit. The intrepid rover was last heard from on March 22, 2010 and it is almost certain that the "little rover that could" did not survive the Martian winter. NASA has been sending a variety of commands to Spirit for the past 10 months but has received no response or signals from her. Spirit has been on Mars since January 4, 2003 and was rated for a 90-day mission lifetime. Spirit's  7+ years on Mars has been matched and exceeded by her still operating twin rover Opportunity. I will miss Spirit as she has provided us with many pictures, discoveries and a persona of a close friend. Opportunity will be our only Martian rover until "Curiosity", NASA's newest and most capable rover arrives. Lauch is scheduled between November and December of this year. Read More About It: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-156&cid=release_2011-156 , ...

Hey Space Placers! Check out the latest pic from Opportunity:  Opportunity and her twin (and stuck) rover Spirit mark their 7th year on Mars this week - not bad considering their original mission length was 90days! We can see detail in the layers of the crater which acts like a time machine to look deeper into the history of the Red Planet. I ALWAYS love the colored pics from Mars as the planet is so alien and beautiful. See the Rover page at  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/index.html Sky Guy in VA