Can The Opportunity Rover Be Repaired

Why Tin can't NASA's Marvel Rover Rescue Opportunity?

The Mars rover Opportunity has died, NASA appear Midweek (Feb. thirteen). A layer of dust likely coated its solar panels, preventing it from juicing itself up after a 2022 heaven-blackening dust tempest on the Cherry Planet.

But why couldn't NASA launch a rescue mission to become information technology working again? After all, Opportunity wasn't the first rover to get to Mars, and it won't exist the last. Information technology's only been the hardiest. In its stunning 14-plus years of travel, enabled by Martian winds that periodically cleaned off its solar panels, it has covered an impressive 28 miles (40 kilometers) on the planet.

The most obvious candidate to rescue Opportunity is the Marvel rover, Opportunity's bigger, nuclear-powered younger sibling. Why non take some time out of Curiosity'southward work, and ship it to see what's wrong with Opportunity and if it might be fixed? [Voyager to Mars Rover: NASA'southward x Greatest Innovations]

Tracks from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity on the Martian surface — **NASA'due south Opportunity Mars rover took this prototype of its own tracks on the rim of Endeavor Crater in June 2022.** (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.)

The start problem, unfortunately, is altitude. According to NASA'due south Mars map, the Curiosity and Opportunity sites are about 5,200 miles (8,400 km) autonomously from ane some other. Curiosity'southward a bit swifter-footed than Opportunity, but even and then, the young sprite would only have fashion too long to embrace that terrain. To navigate the Martian terrain, these rovers crave constant guidance from Earth Combined with the long delay between message manual and receipt, even a expedition of a few anxiety tin take days.

The 2d problem is that Curiosity is an explorer, not a repair bot. It would be a monumental claiming to repurpose its onboard instruments to fifty-fifty articulate dust off of Opportunity's solar panels. And there'due south no guarantee that's all that'southward gone incorrect with the rover sitting silently in the Martian common cold and darkness.

A selfie of the Mars Curiosity rover. Unfortunately, Opportunity's buddy tin can't come up to its rescue. (Prototype credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

The terminal problem is time. Even if Curiosity could take some limited train to Opportunity's location, Martian winter is setting in, and the conditions will probable compound whatever harm to Opportunity now that it's no longer able to continue itself warm.

So Opportunity is toast. But who knows, possibly humans on Mars will find information technology anytime and manage to switch information technology back on.

Originally published on Live Science .

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Rafi wrote for Live Science from 2022 until 2022, when he became a technical writer for IBM Quantum. He has a bachelor'southward caste in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of journalism. You can discover his past science reporting at Inverse, Business concern Insider and Popular Scientific discipline, and his past photojournalism on the Flash90 wire service and in the pages of The Courier Post of southern New Jersey.