NASA Is Really Worried About Its Mars Rover
Will Opportunity survive a massive dust storm?
Millions of miles from Earth, tucked inside a rust-colored, rocky valley, a space robot is sleeping.
NASA’s Opportunity rover is currently hunkered down on Mars as a dust storm of unprecedented size swirls around the planet. As of this week, the tempest spans 14 million square miles, about one quarter of the entire planet, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The storm blocked sunlight from reaching the surface of continent-sized regions, including the valley where Opportunity resides. And it could last for weeks.
Warning: the rest of this story features detailed descriptions of a small, hard-working space robot, which some people call “Oppy”. But .
