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Getting Dark
Featured on June 13, 2018
Things are getting hazy for the Opportunity rover on Mars. The rover snapped this sequence of pictures of the Sun in June, showing the increasing thickness of a dust storm that has covered roughly a quarter of the planet (the panel at far right, showing no Sun at all, is a simulation). The solar-powered rover has gone into sleep mode to conserve its precious battery power. Engineers were not able to contact the rover on June 12, and are unsure if it will be able to survive a prolonged period of darkness. [NASA/JPL/TAMU]
