[email protected] said: >> What stops working when things get cold? > >> On Mars, the solar cells are pointed in the right direction. Why doesn't it >> recover when the sun comes back in the Spring?
> They run out of power for running the battery heaters, then the battery > freezes and fails. The batteries get to such a low temperature that they > are unable to be charged. The rover was never designed so that it could > move and operate under solar power. It is really battery powered and uses > the panel for charging. We are talking about running computers and radio gear rather than motors. I can see running motors in bursts from batteries, but computers and radios generally run continuously so they shouldn't need a battery when the sun is up. Am I missing something? Can't the computers and radios run off solar power when the batteries are dead? Does the receiver take more than (ballpark) peak solar-cell output under nasty conditions? [email protected] said: > That 10-20 degrees makes a big difference because of the cosine (angle) > problem/ I understand that it could make the critical difference, but COS 20 is still close to 1. It's probably lost in the noise of how much dirt is on the solar cells. -- These are my opinions. I hate spam. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
