[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: April 25-30, 2014

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 9 May 2014 15:48:09 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201405092248.s49Mm9x3008078_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html#opportunity

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Reset and Recovery - sols 3645-3649, April 25,
2014-April 30, 2014:

Opportunity is exploring south of "Solander Point" on the west rim of
Endeavour Crater. The rover is headed to a region of aluminum-hydroxyl
clay minerals detected from orbit.

On Sol 3645 (April 25, 2014), Opportunity experienced a reset caused by
write errors in flash (non-volatile) memory. As a result, the rover
halted the sol's planned activities and waited for instructions from the
ground. On Sol 3648 (April 29, 2014), the rover team sent commands to
Opportunity to clear the fault conditions, to initialize both the
high-gain antenna and the Pancam Mast Assembly, and to resume normal
sequence control. Flash-induced resets have been seen three times before
on Opportunity. Engineers are investigating the possible cause.

On Sol 3649 (April 30, 2014), the rover drove just over 230 feet (70
meters) southward. With backward driving, the rover's right-front wheel
currents have returned to lower levels, compared to elevated currents
experienced recently.

As of Sol 3649, solar-array energy production was 624 watt-hours, with
an uncalibrated atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.293 and a solar-array
dust factor of 0.832. Perfectly clean solar arrays would have a dust
factor of 1.0, so the larger the dust factor, the cleaner the arrays.

Total odometry is 24.37 miles (39.22 kilometers).
Received on Fri 09 May 2014 06:48:09 PM PDT