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Nasa is trying to save its Opportunity rover, a robot that is feared dead on Mars .
Engineers have been trying for months to revive the struggling rover, which hasn't been heard from since June. Nasa thinks it was knocked offline by a huge dust storm that engulfed the entire planet and covered Opportunity.
Now the agency is sending it a host of new commands in an attempt to force the 15-year rover to get back in touch with Earth.
"We have and will continue to use multiple techniques in our attempts to contact the rover," said John Callas, project manager for Opportunity at JPL. "These new command strategies are in addition to the 'sweep and beep' commands we have been transmitting up to the rover since September."
Sweep and beep refers to technology that allows Nasa to shoot signals towards Opportunity telling it to respond with a simple beep.
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The new messages will last for a number of weeks. They will deal with a whole host of scenarios, each of which is relatively unlikely and so it is probable the rover will stay out of touch on Mars.
Nasa engineers are trying to see if the radios Opportunity uses to talk with Earth are broken, or if the internal clock inside the rover is offset. Engineers will tell the rover to switch onto its backup rover and to try and reset its internal clock – just two of a range of different potential solutions that have been tried.
"Over the past seven months we have attempted to contact Opportunity over 600 times," said Callas. "While we have not heard back from the rover and the probability that we ever will is decreasing each day, we plan to continue to pursue every logical solution that could put us back in touch."
Engineers need to try and get in touch with the rover before the current dust-clearing season, which will allow the winds to push the dust off Opportunity's solar panels, comes to a close. It will soon be winter on Mars, which will bring a cold climate that could forever destroy important parts of the rover.
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