OPPORTUNITY mars rover silent due to dust storm | technology update

NASA's opportunity is still sits silent due to heavy dust storm on the red planet. This storm initiated on 30 of may and it become large day by day to cover the whole planet. NASA's rover which require solar energy to charge its battery was unable to get adequate amount of energy to fullfil its energy requirment. It become difficult for it to charge its battery and remain standby. It has entered  in the hibernation mode.

opportunity rover

Ray Arvidson the deputy principle investigator of mars exploration mission said that " we have not heard from Rover from a couple of weeks ". This Mars exploration mission consist of two rovers the SPIRIT and the OPPORTUNITY after the SPIRIT's death opportunity is the only rover which was left for this mission.

But now the huge dust storm has also retain the only rover form the exploration mission. This golf cart size rover hasn't send any pictures from past few weeks. The SPIRIT has also become silent since 2009 its last message was received on 22 march 2010.

OPPORTUNITY was now running in low power operation in which rover wake's up after some time and if finds power too low, it again goes back to sleep. At sometime it wake up and find enough power to transmit signal from its low gain antenna it says I AM AWAKE AND OK BUT I AM GOING SLEEP AGAIN. This should happen after sometime until it starts working on its operation.

"we have been listening but can't hear any low gain messages from the rover " says Ray Arvidson. But it will soon return on active mood he added.