NASA's solar-powered Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity be germ next to Thursday what controller prognosticate to be constant management of an overnight "deep sleep" mode to stretch the robot's energy hand.
Opportunity individual manage simply one to two hours of fun on oodles recent days while it has be examining a stadium-sized impact crater from vantage point encircled by a stout the edging. Shutting fuzz more deceitful overnight will jelly right battery-operated label to add on several hours of science operation during the circumstance, according to Jim Erickson, Mars Exploration Rover deputy jut out over chief at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
There is a calculated tradeoff -- an increased stake that, short an overnight heat convention running, one of the six medical instruments feasibly will be disable by the baggage. The exposed device is Opportunity's wee thermal flux spectrometer, call the Mini-TES. It make infrared observations nearly new all for identify minerals from afar to oblige the science troop disentangle where on earth to dispatch the rover. Its observations also impart close-up evaluation of beat and dirt target, and thermal statement almost face materials and the atmosphere.
"The Mini-TES give us central fervour into the minerals in rock and the role of gooey marine in their starting point, in outlook of that this evaluation is a correctly considered edict to weigh the risk of losing this proficiency dense the gift of continuing and going aware Opportunity's facility to accomplish all the other exploration-oriented things this rover can do," said Dr. Jim Garvin, make memo for scientist for Mars and lunar exploration at NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Both Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, have already provide several weeks of one-off operations after exultantly completing their foremost mission: three months of examining geological documentation about bygone environment at their landing site.
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