Opportunity is continuing her winter exploration of "Perseverance Valley" on the west rim of Endeavour Crater.
The rover is positioned upstream of a fork in the flow channels. Over the holiday period Opportunity stayed in place collecting extensive Panoramic Camera (Pancam) color stereo imagery of the surroundings. Over 70 frames of Pancam imagery were collected.
With the robotic arm positioning the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on a surface target, long elemental integrations were collected on Sols 4943, 4945 and 4947 (Dec. 19, 21 and 23, 2017). Only a single sol, Sol 4956 (Jan. 1, 2018), was a recharge sol.
As of Sol 4957 (Jan. 2, 2018), the solar array energy production was 420 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.483 and a solar array dust factor of 0.663.
Total odometry is 28.01 miles (45.08 kilometers).
Opportunity takes extensive imagery to decide where to go next
Opportunity is continuing her winter exploration of "Perseverance Valley" on the west rim of Endeavour Crater.
The rover is positioned upstream of a fork in the flow channels. The team is collecting imagery to decide which fork, the north fork or the south fork, to explore next. To support that decision, extensive imagery is being collected on almost every sol.
On Sol 4941 (Dec. 17, … read more
