Ho Does The Mars Rover Clean Its Solar Panel

Airflow cleaning of its mars rovers.

Ho does the mars rover clean its solar panel.

Mars exploration rovers spirit and opportunity exploring the planet mars facts information videos and pictures. This has been identified as an enabling technology for crewed missions to mars. Intergalactic as nasa investigates. A self portrait of nasa s mars exploration rover opportunity taken in late march 2014 right shows that much of the dust on the rover s solar arrays has been removed since a similar portrait from.

Nasa is looking into technologies that can clean a solar panel. Cydonia cleaning a solar panel using compressed air at urc 2012. In its sixth martian winter nasa s mars exploration rover opportunity now has cleaner solar arrays than in any martian winter since its first on the red planet in 2005. Much remains to be discovered but it s an established fact that the atmosphere on mars gradually coats solar panels in dust and reduces efficiency just as happens here on earth.

The idea of life on mars has mesmerized mankind for centuries. Evidently nasa does not see this as a necessity for robotic missions up to and including insight. A self portrait of nasa s mars exploration rover opportunity taken in late march 2014 right shows that much of the dust on the rover s solar arrays has been removed since a similar portrait from january 2014 left. This leverages the static charge of dust particles.

These 2 options are being explored. Nasa jpl caltech cornell univ arizona state univ.