NASA has announced that its surviving Mars rover will be unable
to receive commands from Earth for much of the week, as the red
planet is about to pass behind the Sun. The plan is for rover
Opportunity to spend the blackout period sitting stationary,
(gently) blasting a rock with a cobalt-powered radiation beam.
The Santa Maria … Considering the cost of shipping a Humvee to
Mars, planning for 2 years fuel seems a little short-sighted. Is
there any reason why they didn't plan on, say, 5 years? Or is
this just assuming NASA's usual success rate, where the folow-up
to something that was astonishingly successful is 10x more
complex, and breaks down after a month? It's a trade-off between
power and instruments, if you up the "fuel" load you have to
leave something else off. *Rust in Peace. Very, very slowly
Given the lack of airborne water & oxygen, methinks rusting will
take a while. That and the fact the rover is probably mostly
made of fancier, non-rusting metals. But I shared the
sentiment...RIP, poor rover. E