Opportunity On An Ice-Cream-Cone Outcrop

MARSDAILY

illustration only

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 10, 2005
Opportunity continues to make progress south toward "Erebus" crater. The rover planners are doing an excellent job keeping Opportunity safely within the confines of the ripple troughs and determining where the rover can cross from one ripple trough into another.

The rover team tries to keep Opportunity inside the ripple troughs, and plans to follow the troughs south until Opportunity can safely move into a "better" trough.

This week (July 29 to August 3), Opportunity has driven an additional 80 meters (262 feet). Opportunity's odometer now reads 5,696 meters (3.54 miles). As Opportunity continues a southward trek, team members are seeing more and more outcrop.

Opportunity is still about about 50 meters (164 feet) north of the "Erebus highway" - an area the team suspects to be highly populated with outcrop and perhaps easier to navigate. Opportunity is roughly 185 to 200 meters (607 to 656 feet) north of Erebus crater, the next large crater Opportunity will encounter.

The team has been watching Opportunity's power very carefully. It seems that Opportunity is losing some of the power boost it received during the last cleaning event. The solar array wake up time has been getting later each day and is currently 9:48 Mars Local Solar Time. The team has been planning accordingly, taking steps to preserve power where appropriate.

Sol-by-sol summaries

Sol 538 (July 29, 2005) to Sol 540 (July 31, 2005): Opportunity took pictures of the solar arrays and magnets with the microscopic imager, then did an overnight integration with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer. On sol 539, Opportunity drove. On sol 540, it performed remote sensing.

Sol 541: The rover drove 25 meters (82 feet).

Sol 542: The rover drove 23 meters (75 feet).

Sol 543 (August 3, 2005): Opportunity executed a very impressive 8-meter (26-foot) approach drive. Scott Maxwell and Jeng Yen were given the task to drive about 8 meters (26 feet) and place the rover on top of an ice-cream-cone-shaped plot of outcrop.

Normally this would be a two-sol endeavor: an approach sol and a final bump to the robotic-arm target. But this single-sol drive worked perfectly. They managed to send Opportunity across a ripple and place the rover in exactly the location specified by the science team!

To paraphrase Scott Maxwell while describing the drive: "We will cross over 'fudge ripple,' move along the 'Rocky Road,' and park right at the scoop." This is exactly what happened.

MARSDAILY

Spirit Wraps Up Work In Voltaire Region

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 08, 2005
It'll have to be a quick one this week. Spirit is just wrapping up work in the Voltaire region. We gave Voltaire the full treatment with all of the arm instruments at Bourgeoisie, and then we took a bunch of MI images of a rock right next door named Hausmann.

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