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Amazing to me that this billion dollar plus mission (InSight) is now offline because of dust on solar panels. We’ve had solar panels more than four decades now.
by p5a0u9l 3y ago
Amazing to me that this billion dollar plus mission (InSight) is now offline because of dust on solar panels. We’ve had solar panels more than four decades now. I don’t assume the challenge is easy, and know that dust is endemic to Mars, but think of the impact from solving this problem on longevity of future missions! After establishing a habitat, Mars visitors need to revive all the offline experiments with a hanky.
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoThat’s why nuclear is the meta. They’re too scared to use it regularly but it’s perfect. No maintenance and guaranteed power for decades. The problem with solar is it’s really easy if you have a settler there, they just wipe it. But trying to get a robot to wipe itself means dealing with all kinds of edge cases. What if it’s windy and the wiper snaps off, what if the wiper gets jammed with dust, what if the wiper scratches up the panels.