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MARSDAILY
Mars Rover Opportunity Positioned at Candidate Site for Winter
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 31, 2011

Hopefully by remaining in the one place for a few months, Opportunity will get lucky and get a good dust down from a passing dust devil. The current state of the MER-B solarcells can be seen clearly in this image taken on Sol 2814.

Opportunity is positioned at a candidate site for Mars' southern hemisphere winter. The rover is at the north end of 'Cape York' on the rim of Endeavour Crater, tilted about 15 degrees to the north for favorable solar energy production.

Opportunity experienced anomalously high current in the right-front wheel on Sol 2808 (Dec. 17, 2011).

Diagnostics on Sols 2810 and 2812 (Dec. 20 and 22, 2011) indicated a nominal wheel and drive actuator with the terrain being the indicated explanation for the high current.

On Sol 2816 (Dec. 26, 2011), the rover performed an 8-inch (0.2-meter) diagnostic backward drive.

The drive completed successfully with Opportunity maintaining its 15-degree northerly tilt, sufficient for the winter period.

The plan ahead is to conduct some contact measurements with the instruments on the robotic arm to see if this location offers substantive in-situ science opportunities during the winter months.

Opportunity will also begin a radio Doppler tracking campaign at the start of the new year.

As of Sol 2817 (Dec. 27, 2011), solar array energy production was 290 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.685 and a solar array dust factor of 0.475.

Total odometry as of Sol 2816 (Dec. 26, 2011) is 21.35 miles (34,361.37 meters).

Related Links
Mars Rovers at JPL
Mars Rovers at Cornell
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more




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MARSDAILY
Wheel Passes Checkup After Stalled Drive
Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 27, 2011
This period began with a campaign of using the Microscopic Imager (MI) and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) to examine a target called "Komati" on the "Saddleback" outcrop. After two days of collecting APXS data, a drive was planned for Sol 2808 (Dec. 17, 2011) to rotate the rover in a way that would bring a different target into range of the robotic arm (instrument deployment devi ... read more


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