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.
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BJP accuses Sonia Gandhi of crying for terrorists after Batla House encounter
Madhubani: In a recent election rally in Bihar's Madhubani, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president JP Nadda made a startling claim, stating that senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi had shed tears for terrorists following the Batla House encounter in 2008. During the encounter, Delhi police inspector Mohan Sharma and two terrorists, Atif and Sajid, were killed.
Nadda's remark was in reference to a statement made by Congress leader Salman Khurshid in 2012, where he claimed that Sonia Gandhi had tears in her eyes after seeing images of the Batla House encounter. However, another Congress leader, Digvijaya Singh, refuted Khurshid's claim, stating that Sonia Gandhi did not cry.
Nadda accused the Congress of always standing in support of those who attempt to weaken India, questioning their sympathy towards terrorists. He labeled this alliance as the "arrogant alliance" and questioned whether the people would support them.
This accusation comes amidst a heated political atmosphere where the BJP and Congress are engaged in a war of words over various issues, including allegations of the Congress promising to redistribute wealth among Muslims and implementing religion-based reservations, which the BJP claims goes against the principles of the Indian Constitution.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also joined the fray, accusing the Congress of preparing to cut the reservation quota for Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) to implement reservations based on religion, which he deemed unconstitutional.
