Opportunity is continuing her winter exploration of Perseverance Valley on the west rim of Endeavour crater.
The cold, low-light winter conditions continue to limit activity. Sols 4866 and 4867 (October 1, 2017 and October 2, 2017) were recharge sols with little activity.
Opportunity has been conducting surface chemistry surveys with Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). On Sol 4863, (September 28, 2017) the robotic arm placed the APXS on a new surface target.
Integrations were conducted over several sols. Using the robotic arm on Sol 4868, (October 2, 2017) the Microscopic Imager (MI) collected a finder frame of the APXS target location of the surface.
When not recharging, the rover has been continuing to collect extensive Pancam and Navcam stereo panoramas of the surrounding area.
As of Sol 4868, the solar array energy production was 284 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.544 and a solar array dust factor of 0.522.
Total odometry is 27.97 miles (45.02 kilometers).
Exploring 'Perseverance Valley' During Winter
Opportunity is continuing the winter exploration of "Perseverance Valley" on the west rim of Endeavour Crater.
Winter is constraining the available energy, so the project has to rover hop (drive) from one energy-favorable "lily pad" to the next. (These lily pads are locations where the terrain is tilted sufficiently to the north to maximize the Sun's illumination on the rover's solar panel … read more
