The Mars rover Opportunity is sleeping, not dead, NASA says
The craft may be able to hibernate through a dust storm that could last months
The veteran Opportunity rover isn’t dead yet. Currently, the craft is in a deep sleep to ride out a massive Martian dust storm, NASA officials said in a briefing on June 13. The rover may wake itself up when the storm ends.
Opportunity is enveloped in a vast dust storm that grew from a small patch spotted on May 30 to cover a quarter of the planet by June 12 (SN Online: 6/11/18). Too little sunlight is reaching the rover’s solar panels, so Opportunity is in low-power mode — just barely enough to run the rover’s internal clock — until its batteries can charge again. The team hasn’t heard from Opportunity since June 10, and no transmissions are expected until the storm clears.