NASA Mars Exploration Rover Status Report, updated at 4:30 p.m. PDT on June 10, 2018
NASA engineers received a transmission from Opportunity on Sunday morning – a positive sign despite the worsening dust storm. Data from the transmission let engineers know the rover still has enough battery charge to communicate with ground controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Science operations remain suspended.
Sunday’s transmission was especially good news considering the dust storm has intensified in the past several days. A dark, perpetual night has settled over the rover’s location in Mars’ Perseverance Valley. The storm’s atmospheric opacity – the veil of dust blowing around, which can blot out sunlight — is now much worse than a 2007 storm that Opportunity weathered. The previous storm had an opacity level, or tau, somewhere above 5.5; this new storm had an estimated tau of 10.8 as of Sunday morning… [More at links; atmospheric opacity tracked here]