Opportunity Back To Normal Operations
Pasadena CA (SPX) Aug 02, 2010 Opportunity's activities were impacted by the Odyssey spacecraft safe-mode event. However, with the recovery of Odyssey, normal operations with the rover have resumed. Direct-to-Earth (DTE) X-band communications and some Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter relay passes were used by Opportunity, while Odyssey was unavailable to support data relay. On Sol 2309 (July 23, 2010), Opportunity collected remote sensing images along with an atmospheric argon measurement with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS). On Sol 2311 (July 25, 2010), driving resumed with a 20-meter (66 feet) east/southeast backward drive, followed by an 8-meter (26 feet) test of backwards-driving hazard avoidance. The hazard avoidance test was successful and supports the use of hazard avoidance for backward driving on longer drives. As of Sol 2313 (July 27, 2010), solar array energy production has improved to 533 watt-hours, atmospheric opacity (Tau) was re-calibrated and now reports a higher value of 0.558 with the solar array dust factor of 0.795. Total odometry is 21,860.62 meters (21.86 kilometers, or 13.58 miles).
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