[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: January 7-13, 2015

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 17:31:02 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <201501160131.t0G1V2r8006961_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status.html#opportunity

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Team Working on Strategy to Fix Flash Memory Issue
- sols 3895-3901, January 7, 2015 - January 13, 2015:

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

The Flash memory degradation is 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 using instead the volatile
random access memory (RAM) for temporary storage of telemetry. This requires
real-time commanding the rover on the first day (sol) of each plan.

Meanwhile, the project has developed the strategy to mask off the troubled
sector of Flash and resume using the remainder of the Flash file system
in normal operations. The project plans to implement the masking after
an independent review is held later this week.

Using RAM storage, Opportunity drove on Sol 3895 (Jan. 7, 2015), to do
a small turn in place. Since arriving on the summit of "Cape Tribulation"
on Sol 3894 (Jan. 6, 2015), Opportunity has been collecting a full color,
360-degree Panoramic Camera (Pancam) panorama.

As of Sol 3901 (Jan. 13, 2015), the solar array energy production was
395 watt-hours, an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.056 and a solar array
dust factor of 0.606.

Total odometry is 25.86 miles (41.62 kilometers).
Received on Thu 15 Jan 2015 08:31:02 PM PST