Gone rovin’ NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ

Time is running out for NASA’s Opportunity rover. A dust storm that has been raging on Mars since early June is starting to subside, potentially giving the rover enough sunlight to charge its batteries, but NASA has set a 45-day deadline before it gives up trying to wake it.

The Opportunity rover is run entirely on solar power, so a dust storm like this one, which has blocked out upwards of 99 per cent of sunlight on the surface, can be catastrophic. The last signal received from Opportunity was on 10 June. Since …