NASA Mars Exploration Opportunity Rover Update: October 3-7, 2008
OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Preparing for the Road Trip of a Lifetime - sol 1669-1673, October 03-07, 2008:
Like a motorist preparing for a road trip, NASA's Opportunity rover is studying a "road atlas" of Mars, using details provided by a powerful camera in orbit above the red planet. Opportunity's road crew is poring over every detail of the landscape in images from the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Team members will use the data to select a route to "Endeavour Crater" 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away.
Meanwhile, Opportunity continues traveling south around the rim of "Victoria Crater," stopping for photo shoots at selected locations along the way. During the past week, Opportunity drove a distance of 143 meters -- more than twice the wingspan of two Boeing 747's parked side by side. The rover acquired images of a promontory inside the crater known as "Cape Pillar" and began driving to another vantage point for taking images of a promontory known as "Cape Victory." Opportunity also studied the atmosphere, searched for Martian clouds, and scanned the rover's external dust-collection magnets.
Opportunity is healthy, with all subsystems performing as expected as of Martian day, or sol, 1673 (Oct. 7, 2008). Power has been superb, averaging 652 watt-hours during the past week (100 watt-hours is the amount of energy needed to light a 100-watt bulb for one hour.)
Sol-by-sol summary:
Besides measuring daily, dust-related changes in atmospheric clarity with the panoramic camera, Opportunity completed the following activities:
Sol 1669 (Oct. 3, 2008): Opportunity surveyed the sky at high Sun and worked on a systematic survey of the rover's surroundings using all 13 filters of the panoramic camera. The rover acquired a six-frame, time-lapse movie in search of clouds with the navigation camera. Before relaying data to NASA's Odyssey orbiter for transmission to Earth, Opportunity measured atmospheric dust with both the panoramic and navigation cameras.
Sol 1670: Opportunity searched for morning clouds by acquiring a six-frame, time-lapse movie with the navigation camera. The rover took thumbnail images of the morning sky for calibration purposes with the panoramic camera. Before starting the day's drive, Opportunity acquired a 4-by-1 panel of images with the panoramic camera. After the drive, the rover acquired a 2-by-1 and a 3-by-1 panel of images with the navigation camera.
Sol 1671: In the morning, Opportunity acquired a 6-by-1 tier of images of the terrain, overlapping the frames to compensate for dust on the lens of the panoramic camera. Using all 13 colour filters of the panoramic camera, the rover conducted a systematic survey and acquired images of particles on the external magnets. After sending data to Odyssey, Opportunity measured atmospheric argon with the alpha- particle X-ray spectrometer.
Sol 1672: Opportunity acquired thumbnail images of the sky for calibration purposes with the panoramic camera and searched for morning clouds by acquiring six, time-lapse movie frames with the navigation camera. Opportunity surveyed the sky at high Sun with the panoramic camera, made another six-frame movie in search of clouds with the panoramic camera, and took more thumbnail images of the sky with the panoramic camera.
Sol 1673 (Oct. 7, 2008): Opportunity took thumbnail images of the morning sky for calibration purposes with the panoramic camera and produced a six-frame movie in search of clouds with the navigation camera. Opportunity continued driving south and completed a "get fine attitude" procedure to determine the rover's exact position relative to the Sun. After the drive and before sending data to Odyssey, Opportunity took a 2-by-1 and 5-by-1 panel of forward-looking images with the navigation camera, a 4-by-1 panel of images with the panoramic camera, and a rearward-looking, 5-by-1 mosaic of images with the navigation camera. Opportunity acquired a 3-by-1 and a 7-by-1 post-drive tier of images with the navigation camera as well as a 4-by-1 panel of images with the panoramic camera. Plans for the following day called for the rover to take thumbnail images of the sky with the panoramic camera and look for clouds with the navigation camera.
Odometry:
As of sol 1673 (Oct. 7, 2008), Opportunity's total odometry was 12,292.15 meters (7.64 miles).
