posted 01-04-2005 05:36 AM            

Always wanting see 'what's over the hill'.

posted 01-04-2005 01:03 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:
Opportunity on the way to its heatshield!

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posted 01-14-2005 07:58 PM            

Now that would be something.

posted 02-10-2005 07:48 AM            

JPL'ers appear upbeatabout keeping the two MER's going past March 05 budgeted 'deadline'. The message seems to be that as long as the MER's are rolling they will try and keep them operating.

posted 03-11-2005 04:44 PM            

Incredible luck!

They have - in fact - spotted and imaged two seperate ones though the second is much much harder to spot in images.

And, in addition, the power output is now as good as when first landed since it appears that whirling winds have cleared the solar cells.

And, gets even better, the 'winds' have cleaned the hazcam lens - which was giving pretty spotty images of late.

posted 03-12-2005 10:10 AM            

It is to the upper left of image over the ridge on the plain. It kinda "leans" to the left as it sweeps along.

posted 03-29-2005 09:58 AM            

If - and only if - the ridges had been made by flowing water - like you see at the seaside on the sand after the sea has receded at low tide - could we deduce the height of water needed to make those ridges - taking account of the smaller gravitational attraction at Mars?

Any sedimentologists amongst us? Or oceanographers?

posted 03-29-2005 11:36 PM               

However if it can be definitely established that wave action is the progenitor of the ridges it may be possible to extrapolate the geomorphilogical conditions which triggered them... wave period and wave height are tricky to deduce however because the formation of the ridges would have a counter-effect of altering the water column and wave heights (wave height is partially a function of bottom topology and depth - as the bottom is modified, interaction with the ridges changes the wave pattern, period and heights).

R/Scott

posted 04-27-2005 09:46 AM               

This morning was different, the images from Opportunity shows that the robot could be in big trouble. It looks like it's well sink into soft sandy material. I've been following this mission since day one and this is the first time I felt like an obstacle got the better of a MER robot.

Look at these two pictures from the front and back Hazcam.

It looks like the last traverse was done backward and the last few meters were soft sandy material where the rover was slipping a lot. You can see in the Front-Hazcam picture the change in the rover's tracks. It goes from the normal pattern (little to no slippage and the wheels/lander interface marking at every wheel turn) to a slippage pattern with the disturbed loose dirt (the kind we see when the rover dig a trench). The front and back wheels are now 50% to 80% in the ground. The middle wheels can't be seen (unless they do some cool new move with the MicroImager) but I suspect they are a bad as the others. Even the threads on the wheels are completely packed with material making the wheels surface very slick (not a lot off gripping power there).

Do I worry for nothing or is this a potential showstopper?

posted 04-27-2005 11:32 AM               

I'm very disappointed with NASA (and other's like JPL) when looking for fresh news. The last update on NASA's MER website is almost always a week old. At least the RAW images pages are updated very often (within hours of the actual data dump from Mars, or so I looks). So the only "live" data is the RAWs.

Anyway, I'm still there every day getting the pictures and the news from last week.

Back to Opportunity. This is not good. I was looking forward for the Victoria Crater's pictures. Now is the time for those guys with bulletproof glasses working in the back rooms of JPL to come up with some crazy-cool idea to get that rover back on the road.

As far as I know Opportunity was the healthiest one of the two rovers, Spirit having problems with is front right wheel. So it would be a shame to loose Opportunity.

posted 04-27-2005 12:08 PM               

I'm one of those few that looks at the Mars site almost every day also. I think the general public has almost totally forgotten about the rovers up there.

posted 04-27-2005 01:23 PM               

Let's hope you're right and wait for the next report. Maybe they were just trying to test that steering motor. I'm still not confident that this is normal. I don't remember seeing all the wheels that deep in the ground before. What really makes me nervous about this situation is that this is on a relatively flat surface so there's no going downhill to help unstuck the rover.

Of course this is all hypothetical, since it may not be stuck at all.

posted 04-27-2005 02:11 PM               

I forgot to add this to my reply. The last report (26 of April) covers the sols 438 to 442. The picture I'm referring to was taken on sol 446.

posted 04-27-2005 04:52 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by MiliputMan:
I forgot to add this to my reply. The last report (26 of April) covers the sols 438 to 442. The picture I'm referring to was taken on sol 446.

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Fingers crossed that we're not stuck...

posted 04-28-2005 07:11 AM               

No movement since yesterday. The front and back Hazcams pictures on sol 447 shows the same situation has on sol 446.

A big clue about the being-stuck-theory is that yesterday (sol 447) NASA took very detailed pictures of the last meters traversed by the rover using the PanCam.

You can actually see a cool transition between normal rolling and increasing slippage.

My bet is that we wont see any big movement for a while. They will probably do small movements and wait for the results (pictures) between every command. The worst thing to do when you're stuck in sand is to spin the wheels.

posted 04-28-2005 08:59 AM               

April 26, 2005

Over on the other side of the planet, Opportunity is having a tougher time of it. Last week we got slowed down a little by some unexpected software issues. Those are cleared up now, and as of yesterday Opportunity was on the move again. But now we've got a new situation. After yestersol's drive, all six wheels we're dug pretty deeply into a large ripple. We've gotten dug in before and gotten out just fine, so this isn't cause for immediate concern. But we're likely to be here a little while, taking our time to get our wheels back on top of the soil again, and also taking some time to figure out what's different about this soil and how to keep this from happening again as we continue to work our way toward Erebus.

posted 04-28-2005 09:40 AM               

Thanks for the update. I'll be checking the "Mission Update by Steve Squyres" on athena more often.

posted 04-28-2005 11:48 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Philip:
Worth a look.

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