Sunday, August 19, 2018

NASA's Spotify Playlist to Wake Up Opportunity

When the NASA rover Opportunity first landed on Mars in January 2004, there was a "wake up" call made every morning. It was a way to make sure the rover was talking to earth and working correctly. The mission was designed to last just 90 days, and explore an area about the size of someone's back yard. Fourteen years later, Opportunity has traveled over 28 miles and performed incredible experiments. There have been some problem. The rover Spirit got stuck in a sand dune, and has died. There are some memory issues that Opportunity has been experiencing. The daily ritual of playing a song to ping the rover has long since faded. Until now.

Recently there was a tremendous dust storm on Mars. Opportunity was not able to recharge it's batteries, and entered "sleep" mode to protect itself. The storms are lessening, but it will take time for the batteries to recharge. NASA is concerned that the solar arrays have too much dust on them to allow the suns rays to recharge. To see if the rover is waking up, NASA has returned to the tradition of sending music. They created a Spotify playlist of the songs called "Opportunity Wake Up!"



Click here for the video

Credits:
http://www.itv.com/news/2018-08-17/nasa-spotify-playlist-opportunity-rover/

No comments:

Post a Comment