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TOPIC: The Opportunity rover
Blobrana


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Erebus Crater
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The Opportunity Rover has recently been exploring along the rim of Erebus crater.


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Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientist Timothy Parker and the JPL rover engineers determined where the rover was located within a MOC image acquired back in January 2004 by using sightlines to features within the crater.


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The Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) acquired a cPROTO (compensated Pitch and ROll Targeted) image of Erebus crater and its surroundings on the 5 October 2005 . The image has a spatial resolution of about 0.5 meters per pixel.

The rover, approximately 1.5 by 2.5 meters in size, can be seen as a small, dark feature in the 5 October image. It was located exactly where the JPL rover engineers had indicated, based on sightlines to features seen by the rover's cameras.
The tracks the rover made in driving south to reach Erebus Crater are not visible because the surface is dark and the disturbed location of the tracks is not sufficiently darker to be seen.

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RE: The Opportunity rover
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OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Opportunity Backs Out of Potentially Sticky Situation - sol 599-605, Oct 11, 2005:

Opportunity is healthy and travelling westward around 'Erebus Crater.' The rover is running in restricted sols, so the team is able to drive it only every other sol and has been doing so. On sol 601, Opportunity drove 34 meters. On sol 603, the team planned a 45-meter drive. However, after the first 5-meter segment, the onboard slip check reported 44.5 percent slip. Because slip limits had been set to 40 percent, the drive was successfully stopped. On sol 605, the rover drove 5.3 meters back to outcrop material.
Note: The onboard slip check uses visual odometry to compare nearby features and determine the actual distance travelled. Software computes the amount of slip based on the difference between the actual distance travelled versus commanded wheel rotations. The team has defined a maximum allowable percentage of slip, and if the computed slippage exceeds the maximum allowable, further driving is precluded.

Sol-by-sol summaries:

Sols 599 and 600 (Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 2005): The team planned two sols of remote sensing, including coordinated observations by the panoramic camera and miniature thermal emission spectrometer and use of the navigation camera to complete a 360-degree panorama.
Sols 601 and 602: Opportunity drove 34 meters on sol 601, heading northwest, to have a better view of the westward path. The drive was successful, and the maximum slip was reported at 2.5 percent. For sol 602, the team planned remote sensing.
Sols 603 and 604: On sol 603, the team scheduled a 45-meter drive. The first portion of the drive was blind for 35 meters with slip checks every 5 meters, followed by 10 meters of autonomous navigation. However, after the first 5-meter segment, the onboard slip check detected slippage higher than the limit that had been set as a precaution, and the rover properly stopped. Wheel sinkage was approximately 5 centimetres for the left front wheel and 4 centimetres for the right front wheel. On Sol 604 the rover performed untargeted remote sensing.
Sol 605 (Oct. 6, 2005): The team analyzed the rover's position and the terrain and decided to back up Opportunity about 5 meters onto outcrop, the starting point of sol 603's drive. The sol 605 drive included slip checks and hazard-avoidance-camera movies of the wheels. Pre-drive, mid-drive, and post-drive imaging was acquired. The 5.3-meter drive was successful, and Opportunity reached the outcrop. Slippage during the drive ranged from 3 to 12 percent.

Opportunity's total odometry as of sol 605 was 6,009.88 meters.


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OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Slight Hiccup Before Getting to 'Erebus Crater' - sol 592-598, Oct 03, 2005:

Opportunity suffered a warm reboot last week. After the flight computer rebooted, the spacecraft went into 'safe mode'. This error caused the team to miss two Odyssey passes. The evening pass was missed because the reboot occurred during the Odyssey pass. The morning pass was missed because safe mode enforces the deep sleep behaviour.

Real-time commands were sent on sol 597 in order to access the state of the vehicle. Opportunity was healthy and the team regained control of the vehicle. A "lite" master sequence was loaded and sol 597 became a stand down day. On sol 598, the initial system recovery steps were taken and subsystems were tested. All subsystems look good.

This week Opportunity will continue with nominal operations. The rover will continue to move west around Erebus Crater.

Sol-by-sol summaries:
Sol 592: Drove 1.75 meter (convert) and approached target 'Deception' On the feature 'South Shetland'
Sol 593: Unstowed the robotic arm, used rock abrasion tool brush, took a stereo microscopic image and then placed the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.
Sol 594: Continued the robotic arm campaign. Placed the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, then changed tool to the Moessbauer spectrometer.
Sol 595: Continued the robotic arm campaign. Placed alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on new target then change tool to the Moessbauer spectrometer on the next sol.
Sol 596: Anomaly - warm reboot day
Sol 597: Stand Down Day
Sol 598: Recovery day, subsystem testing

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OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Approaching 'Erebus' - sol 586-591, Sept 22, 2005:

Opportunity is healthy and continuing its drive toward "Erebus Crater." Images taken this week show the interior of the crater. Plans for the next few sols are to get closer to the crater's edge and do extensive imaging. The team is also planning to use the tools on the robotic arm to examine a dark area of outcrop located on the way to the edge of the crater.

Sol-by-sol summaries:
Sol 586 (Sept. 16, 2005): Opportunity conducted remote sensing.
Sol 587: More remote sensing.
Sol 588: Drove about 20 meters at 208 degrees.
Sol 589: Drove about 22 meters.
Sol 590: Drove 35 meters.
Sol 591 (Sept. 22, 2005): Drove about 17.5 meters, turned for weekend work with robotic arm. As of sol 591, Opportunity has travelled 5,933.69 meters.

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Opportunity Update, September 19, 2005: Erebus Bound - sol 580-585.

Opportunity has resumed normal operations this week. The rover is healthy and making progress towards "Erebus Crater." The rover team has been commanding Opportunity to drive every chance it gets. The last two sols this week have been remote sensing only, due to a lack of critical data.

Sol-by sol summaries:

Sols 580 and 581 (Sept. 10 and 11, 2005): The weekend included a 26.3-meter drive with observations before and after the drive.
Sol 582: A 30-meter drive this sol brought the rover to the "Erebus Highway?" an outcrop-rich area that extends south toward the crater.
Sol 583: The previous sol's drive appears to have completed successfully, however no data was received due to an issue at the Deep Space Network station where the data is received from space and transmitted to JPL.
Sol 584: Remote sensing was performed, which included as systematic foreground survey using the panoramic camera and miniature thermal emission spectrometer. The plan included commands for the rover to re-transmit the critical post-drive data to Earth, but these were not received due to a sequencing error.
Sol 585 (Sept. 15, 2005): This sol's plan included commands for remote sensing and for re-transmission of the post-drive imaging.

Total odometry as of sol 584 (Sept. 14, 2005): 5,874.32 meters.

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Opportunity route map on Sol 583


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In its first 562 Martian days, after landing in Mars Meridiani Planum region, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity drove a total of 5.74 kilometres.
On August 23, 2005, the rover was nearing "Erebus" Crater, a landmark and target of interest on the route toward a possible destination of the larger "Victoria" Crater farther south.


This traverse map is overlaid on a mosaic of images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters and from Opportunity's descent camera.
The scale bar at lower left is 1.4 kilometres long.


After months spent crossing a sea of rippled sands, Opportunity reached an outcrop in August 2005 and began investigating exposures of sedimentary rocks, intriguing rind-like features that appear to cap the rocks, and cobbles that dot the Martian surface locally. Opportunity spent several Martian days, or sols, analyzing a feature called "Lemon Rind," a thin surface layer covering portions of outcrop rocks poking through the sand north of "Erebus Crater."



In images from the panoramic camera, Lemon Rind appears slightly different in colour than surrounding rocks. It also appears to be slightly more resistant to wind erosion than the outcrop's interior. This is an approximately true-colour composite produced from frames taken during Opportunity's 552nd Martian day, or sol (Aug. 13, 2005).
Medium Image (75 kB) | Large (631 kB)
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

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Opportunity completed a study of the cobble area by taking a close look at the cobble "Arkansas" and a nearby soil target named "Reiner Gamma" with the instruments on the robotic arm.
A 3-meter drive took the rover to an outcrop dubbed "Fruit Basket" for an intensive investigation of targets there.


Strawberry

So far Opportunity has studied "Lemon Rind" with its complete suite of robotic arm instruments, and begun an inspection of "Strawberry."
The plan is to drive east to the "Erebus Highway" after finishing work at Fruit Basket.


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Opportunity traverse map up to Sol 563


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