Wiele wskazuje , że marne są szanse na odzyskanie kontaktu. Podjęte dodatkowe działania zakładają wystąpienie bardzo mało prawdopodobnych scenariuszy w dysfunkcjach łazika.
Teraz już bardziej można wyczekiwać na oficjalne zakończenie misji.
NASA making renewed efforts to contact Mars rover Opportunityby Jeff Foust — January 28, 2019
WASHINGTON — NASA is making a new, and perhaps final, attempt to restore contact with the Mars rover Opportunity, which has not communicated with the Earth for more than six months. (...)
The new commands address scenarios where the rover’s primary X-band radio has failed or both the primary and backup X-band radios have failed, as well as cases where Opportunity’s internal clock has an offset affecting its timing. The commands direct the rover to switch to the backup X-band radio or use its UHF transmitter to contact Earth, as well as resetting its clock.
Those scenarios could explain why the rover has failed to contact Earth, but project officials acknowledge that those scenarios are unlikely. “A series of unlikely events would need to have transpired for any one of these faults to occur,” JPL noted in the statement about the new campaign. (...)
Efforts to restore contact continued during the five-week partial government shutdown that ended Jan. 25. With the shutdown now over, some in the planetary science community expect that, if the new effort is not immediately successful, NASA could decide to end efforts to contact the rover by mid-February. NASA is currently funded only through Feb. 15 and runs the risk of another shutdown if a budget deal isn’t reached by then, which would delay a decision by NASA Headquarters on the rover’s future. (...)
Callas, in a separate statement about the anniversary, noted the “bittersweet” nature of the milestone given the lack of communications with the rover. “We are doing everything in our power to communicate with Opportunity,” he said,
“but as time goes on, the probability of a successful contact with the rover continues to diminish.”https://spacenews.com/nasa-making-renewed-efforts-to-contact-mars-rover-opportunity/Artykuły astronautyczne