[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: December 18, 2014 - January 6, 2015

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 17:27:17 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201501160127.t0G1RHhg005484_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Rover Reaches the Summit of 'Cape Tribulation'
After Several Drives this Week - sols 3875-3894, December 18, 2014
- January 6, 2015:

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater heading towards "Marathon
Valley," a putative location for abundant clay minerals now only about
1,969 feet (600 meters) to the south.

The Flash memory continues to degrade causing multiple resets of the rover
on each wake-up. To mitigate this, the project is operating the rover
without using the non-volatile Flash storage system, and instead relies
on the volatile random access memory (RAM) for temporary storage of telemetry.
This requires real-time commanding the rover on the first sol of each
plan. Meanwhile, the project is developing a strategy to mask off the
troubled sector of Flash and resume using the remainder of the Flash file
system in normal operations.

Using RAM storage, Opportunity drove on Sols 3875, 3881, 3893 and 3894
(Dec. 18, 24, 2014 and Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2015), totaling over 656 feet
(200 meters). With the drive on Sol 3894 (Jan. 6, 2015), Opportunity is
now on the summit of "Cape Tribulation," the highest point so far on the
western rim of Endeavour Crater. This point is 443 feet (135 meters) above
the plain of "Botany Bay" before the rover started climbing the rim.

As of Sol 3894 (Jan. 6, 2015), the solar array energy production was 438
watt-hours, an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.041 and a solar array dust
factor of 0.631.

Total odometry is 25.86 miles (41.62 kilometers).
Received on Thu 15 Jan 2015 08:27:17 PM PST