NASA spots silent Opportunity rover on Mars
Washington, Sep 26 : A NASA Mars orbiter has spotted the agency's Opportunity rover on the Red Planet for the first time since it went into hibernation after a dust storm swept over the region a little more than 100 days ago and blocked sunlight from reaching the rover.
A high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the image of the rover on the slopes of the Red Planet's Perseverance Valley, NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.
But the future of Opportunity is still in limbo as NASA has still not heard from the 14-year-old solar-powered rover. The image of the rover, taken on September 20, was produced from about 267 kilometres above the Martian surface.
The image showed that the dust storm over Perseverance Valley has substantially cleared.
NASA scientists estimated that the tau -- a measurement of how much sunlight reaches the surface -- over Opportunity to be a little higher than 10 during some points during the dust storm.
The higher the tau, the less sunlight is available.
The tau has steadily fallen in the last several months. On September 20, tau was estimated to be about 1.3 by MRO's Mars Color Imager camera.
According to scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, Opportunity will need a tau of less than 2.0 before the solar-powered rover will be able to recharge its batteries.
No signal from Opportunity has been heard since june 10.
In an attempt to talk to the rover, the Opportunity team is increasing the frequency of commands it beams to the rover via the dishes of NASA's Deep Space Network from three times a week to multiple times per day.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
RJD surprise element in J’khand polls, party candidates leading in 5 of 6 assembly seats
Ranchi(PTI): The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has emerged as a surprise element in the Jharkhand assembly elections with its candidates leading in five of the six seats where the party is contesting, according to trends available on the Election Commission's website on Saturday.
RJD candidates in five assembly seats were leading over sitting BJP legislators.
In 2019, RJD had secured only the Chatra seat where its nominee Satyanand Bhokta won.
In Deoghar, RJD’s Suresh Paswan was leading by 19,581 votes over his nearest rival and BJP's sitting MLA Narayan Das after the third round of counting.
RJD’s Sanjay Prasad Yadav was ahead by 19,867 votes in Godda over BJP MLA Amit Kumar Mandal after the sixth round of counting.
In Koderma, RJD nominee Subhash Prasad Yadav, who was out on bail, was leading by a margin of 3,471 votes over BJP’s sitting legislator Neera Yadav.
Subhas Prasad Yadav, considered to be one of the close aides of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, was recently granted bail by the Supreme Court in a money laundering case.
Party’s Naresh Prasad Singh was leading by 5,159 votes after the fourth round of counting over BJP’s Bishrampur MLA Ramchandra Chandravanshi.
RJD's Sanjay Kumar Singh Yadav was also leading from Hussainabad by 8,213 votes after the fourth round of counting over BJP MLA Kamlesh Kumar Singh.
Party’s candidate Rashmi Prakash, however, was trailing from Chatra by 3,776 votes.
Bhokta did not contest the elections this time, and his daughter-in-law Prakash was given a ticket.
