Our Martian Friends

I know this isn't baseball related (never stopped me before) but this is too good to pass up. For the last several months scientists have been baffled at how their little Mars rover has actually increased its energy performance when it should be going down.

An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine said on Tuesday.

It said something -- or someone -- had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night.

The cleaning had boosted the panels' power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per day after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian dirt.

Weird, but cool.