Below is a two-part image from The Planetary Society showing clean and dirty solar panels on MER-A (Spirit) on Mars. It is no wonder it is on the edge of survival. With luck, a small tornado will hit the rover and clean off the panels. It has happened before.
Dust cover on MER-A
An animation of how the next Mars Mission (MSL) will touch down. Note that the Mars Exploration Rovers are still going strong, a few days past their 90 day mission which began in late 2003 / early 2004
‘First you fall in love with Antarctica, and then it breaks your heart.’ - Kim Stanley Robinson
The day after getting my acceptance letter from ANDRILL I went to Strand (map) and bought Antarctica by Kim Stanly Robinson.
I was excited as Red Mars is one of my favorite books. If you like Red Mars or any of the Mars Trilogy I recommend this. It is a quicker read than any of the Mars books and it is very similar to Red Mars (survival) plus Blue Mars (politics), without the Green (terraforming).
I used to work for Honeybee Robotics. They design and build drills for Mars and other planets.
The RAT on the MER rovers drills 5mm deep and uses 11 watts of power. Think of 1/10th of a 110W light bulb (and then go change your light bulbs to CFLs).
The ANDRILL drill rig can go 1000m (1km) deep, and uses a 60KW diesel generator.
Mars and Antarctica are quite similar, except one is red and one is white and blue.
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