Now Oppy is struggling to move over the dunes of Meridiani Planum. Its power solar is somewhat above than critical and not as good as ones of Spirit.

Not everyday, Oppy can rover. Now, she is nearing to Erebus and its rim has taller dunes.

I tought it would be a good place for Oppy to stay for some days close to any rim or between big dunes in order to catch better wind to clean its solar arrays. This will also apply when Oppy is standing by the rim of Victoria crater.

Now Spirit is clean thanks to the strong wind on the Columbia Hill. The above lands is usually have greater winds than the lowers surfaces. But the Meridiani Planum has no hills and the best places would be around the rims or between tall dunes....

Will that idea work for Oppy

Rodolfo

If they could speed Oppy up (as much as possible) and suddenly stop it, would that dislodge some of the dust, as momentum would take it forward and presumably spill off the front of the rover?

Can the rover be tilted at all, either mechanically or by angling up the side of a taller dune perhaps?

Maybe they should have installed a dust sweeper after all.

.....thats assuming they get it moving again lol

The absolute top speed of a Mars Rover is 5 cm/second, or 0.1 mph. So there's not a whole lot of momentum to be built up.

The reason they're not driving every day right now is two fold

1) Restricted Sols
2) Harsh terrain that requires planning to navigate thru

Imagine if you had dust on your car and did 0.1 mph, and then stopped suddenly Nothing would happen

There are three things you can do to improve power for Opportunity

1) Pray, do a wind-dance or any other luck-bringing activity

2) Find, where possible - sun facing slopes ( which at summer, is flat terrain )

3) Do driving. It's possible that the small shocks of driving over terrain might 'rattle' dust a little - again, unlikely, but it might have a contributing factor.

Doug

According to the Earth experience, I know where there are more winds. The Meridiani Planum is not like a sea but close to Erebus rim and some dunes of more than 1 meter height... Then, the places where you can feel a stronger winds are :

1) between two rocks, bottom of a valley. It explain to a physics principle: The narrower is the tunnel, the greater speed goes the gas or water.

2) Close to the rims in the lowest point. In the basin, the wind are put together in the lowest point to escape from the basin. A recent picture post of Endurance and Victoria craters, this has shown a wind streak from a point, north side of Victoria crater. The start point of wind streak might be the lowest point of Victoria crater.

About mechanical movements (rattling, tilt, sharp start or stop) won't help as everybody know of the watch speed of MER-x ladies.

Rodolfo

Opportunity N -2,0°
Subsolar Point N -20,4° (14 october 2005)

Drive as much as possible over the outcrops roads....rattling...it is what Oppy is traveling.

Rodolfo

"Cleaning events" seems to be more effective when the rovers are tilted. Opportunity was cleaned when at 20deg tilt in Endurance and Spirit on the slopes of Husband Hill.

That might very well be true, but I would still not recommend that they parked Opportunity in one such position and waiting for a gust of wind to clean the solar panels.