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by Staff Writers Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 07, 2015
Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater at the 'Spirit of St. Louis' crater near the entrance of 'Marathon Valley.' The Earth-Mars Solar Conjunction command moratorium and communication blackout is over and the rover has resumed normal operations and science planning. On Sol 4059 (June 25, 2015), the rover conducted targeted remote sensing including capturing a spectacular Phobos transit of the Sun. The next sol had the rover collecting change-detecting imagery to compare to imagery collected before solar conjunction. On Sol 4061 (June 27, 2015), Opportunity bumped just over a meter to reach some new surface targets just the other side of the 'Red Zone' unit that had been previously investigated. Post-dump targeted Panoramic Camera (Pancam) images and a 360-degree Navigation Camera (Navcam) panorama were collected. With the new position, the rover on Sol 4064 (June 30, 2015), used the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) to brush the surface target, named 'Ryan NYP.' This was followed with a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic and a placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an evening integration. The rover continues to operate in RAM-only mode while the on-board Flash storage system is being investigated. The rover is otherwise in good health. As of Sol 4064 (June 30, 2015), the solar array energy production was 465 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.725 and a solar array dust factor of 0.628. Total odometry is 26.33 miles (42.37 kilometers), more than a marathon.
Related Links Mars Rovers at JPL Mars Rovers at Cornell Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com Lunar Dreams and more
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