Exploring Southward In Search Of New Opportunities

MARSDAILY

The way south across a sea of dunes.

Mars (SPX) Aug 02, 2005
Opportunity continued its trek south toward "Erebus Crater," making 61 meters (200 feet) of progress over two sols of driving. The rover is approaching greater quantities of outcrop as it heads south, and the team is excited at the possibility of using the robotic arm before reaching Erebus.

This week, restricted sols allowed the team to drive only every other sol. Next week, however, there will be a shift back to an early planning cycle that will allow driving every sol if desired.

Sol-by-sol summaries:

Sol 531 (July 22, 2005): Opportunity pointed its navigation camera rearward to shoot images for a seven-frame by one-frame mosaic. The miniature thermal emission spectrometer systematically observed the foreground. The panoramic camera took thumbnail images of the sky.

Sol 532: This sol's remote-sensing work included a pre-sunset observation.

Sol 533: The rover completed a successful drive of 34 meters (112 feet), including an attitude update.

Sol 534: Opportunity looked rearward with its navigation camera from the new location and made observations with its miniature thermal emission spectrometer.

Sol 535: The rover used the miniature thermal emission spectrometer for a large set of observations, jokingly referred to at the "Uberraster" because of its size.

Sol 536: Opportunity drove 27 meters (89 feet), with approximately 10 percent slip. The drive duration was two hours, with a final heading of 155 degrees.

Sol 537 (July 28, 2005): Planned work for this sol included another large raster by the miniature thermal emission spectrometer.

Opportunity's total odometry after the sol 536 drive is 5,617 meters (3.49 miles).

MARSDAILY

Rocks And Cobbles On The Way To Erebus

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 26, 2005
The Opportunity team's current strategy for driving alternates segments of using visual odometry to check for slippage with segments of blind driving for less than 5 meters (16 feet). The strategy and hard work designing and commanding drives through troughs between ripples contributed to the rover making 89 meters (292 feet) of progress over three drive plans.

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