> Within days, Opportunity saw sunlight dimming as atmospheric opacity — a measure of how much dust is in the air — soared. The rover’s energy production dropped by half over the course of 2 days, and then half again in a single day, Callas said during a media briefing on 13 June.
Aside from nuclear, some reasonable mitigations for this kind of thing might include substantial over-provisioning of panels, some kind of battery, or some kind of temporary measures to consume very little energy in an emergency.
I think over-provisioning might actually be the most practical solution, particularly if any Martian settlement needs a massive solar farm anyways in order to produce electricity to convert water and carbon dioxide into methane and liquid oxygen. Making rocket fuel is important, but not so important that it can't be curtailed for a few weeks if that energy is needed elsewhere.
> An optimized system of this design massing 50 kg "is projected to produce 1 kg/day of O2:CH4 propellant ... with a methane purity of 98+% while consuming 700 Watts of electrical power." Overall unit conversion rate expected from the optimized system is one tonne of propellant per 17 MWh energy input.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Manufacturin...
Burning rocket fuel to generate electricity might also be an option if there's a temporary shortage.
edit - batteries might be the better option for overnight, but would have serious mass penalty to use for long term backup power. Using fuel as storage is simple solution.
But like with O2, it's all dangerous to contain as it easily burns without much options to extinguish (esp. Flourine Compounds are nasty and some will burn up sand, fireblankets, water and your fire extinguisher)
The power drop isn't 75% it's nearly 100%. The last image transmitted is pitch black only the camera's sensor introducing some noise during the long exposure to be visible.
The mitigation is either "lots of batteries" or "have a (nuclear) generator and power down" because solar will not produce anything under the currently present conditions.
(Well not "nothing", it's generating a couple milliwatts, enough to drive the rover's internal timer so it can periodically check if it's charging batteries)
I guess burning rocket fuel for electricity/heat is probably the most practical mitigation. I expect it would be tremendously inefficient, but better than freezing due to a once-a-decade dust storm.
Lots of batteries or nuclear could also work if it's available.
From what I've read around the web, it actually would be possible. The efficiency would be around 10% of an equivalent wind turbine on Earth, but it has one thing in its favor: you could construct them with mostly local resources even at early stages of a Mars colony. PV cells are too high-tech for that, they would have to be shipped from Earth.
A test reactor has been constructed, called KRUSTY or Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology. It is designed to produce up to 1 kilowatt of electric power and is about 6.5 feet tall (1.9 meters).[12] The goal of the KRUSTY experiment is to closely match the operational parameters that would be required in NASA deep space missions[13]. The prototype Kilopower uses a solid, cast uranium-235 reactor core, about the size of a paper towel roll. Reactor heat is transferred via passive sodium heat pipes, with the heat being converted to electricity by Stirling engines.
Sounds neat, I'd like one at home. Electricity is always handy, and the waste heat can be used to keep my house and cars warm.
1. https://www.space.com/37348-nasa-fission-power-mars-colony.h...