Opportunity is just outside the rim of Endeavour Crater, heading to the gully, named 'Perseverance Valley.' The large regional dust storm to the west of the rover's site has started to abate, although there is still a lot of dust in the atmosphere and rover energy levels are affected.
On Sol 4672 (March 16, 2017), Opportunity drove over 141 feet (43 meters) to the south. Owning to the elevated atmospheric dust, the next sol had to be a recharge sol for the rover to restore charge in the batteries. The tight energy constraints persisted through the 3-sol weekend plan for the rover with only the first sol active with remote sensing and the last two sols used for recharging the batteries.
Subsequently, a subtlety in the ground tool power modeling shed some light on the restricted power levels. The ground tool was not properly accounting for the rover's quiet time instead thinking the rover was active and consuming more energy than it really was. This has now been corrected in the tool.
On Sol 4677 (March 21, 2017), Opportunity drove again to the south covering over 62 feet (19 meters) with the usual post-drive Panoramic Camera (Pancam) and Navigation Camera (Navcam) panoramas. The plan ahead is more driving and remote sensing as Opportunity heads towards 'Perseverance Valley.'
As of Sol 4677 (March 21, 2017), the solar array energy production was 423 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.181 and a solar array dust factor of 0.615.
Total odometry is 27.48 miles (44.23 kilometers).
Opportunity Driving South to Gully
Opportunity is located just outside the rim of Endeavour Crater, less than half a mile (700 meters) away from the next big science objective, a gully.
The rover completed the last in-situ science measurements inside Endeavour Crater on Sol 4657 (Feb. 28, 2017).
Because of constrained data volume, Sol 4658 (March 1, 2017), was a dedicated 'atmospheres' day, a sol of just low-data volu … read more
