Washington, June 14: NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity is facing hindrance in its work because of a gigantic dust storm that is enveloping the red planet and blotting out the sun. For now, Mars’ oldest working rover is stuck in the middle of the raging storm, in round-the-clock darkness.
The storm is one of the most intense ever observed on the Red Planet. As of June 10, it covered more than 15.8 million square miles (41 million square kilometers) -- about the area of North America and Russia combined. It has blocked out so much sunlight, it has effectively turned day into night for Opportunity, which is located near the center of the storm, inside Mars' Perseverance Valley.
John Callas, the Opportunity project manager at Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California said, “This storm is threatening, and we don’t know how long it will last, and we don’t know what the environment will be like once it clears.”
NASA launched the twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit in 2003 to study Martian rocks and soil. They landed in 2004. Spirit hasn’t worked for several years. Opportunity, however, has kept exploring well past its expected mission lifetime.
The Opportunity rover resides in Mars’s southern hemisphere, which is entering the planet’s summer season, a time when dust storms are common. During summer, sunlight warms the air closest to the Martian surface and leaves the upper layers of the atmosphere cooler. This mismatch causes warm air to rise, taking surface dust with it, and winds scatter the tiny particles around the planet. Scientists and engineers weren’t surprised when they spotted one such storm brewing on May 30. But within days, the storm had grown to record-breaking proportions.