Using OPUS...

https://tools.pds-rings.seti.org/opus/#/mis...s2=&detail=

FHAZ, RHAZ and NCAM images from the A Side cameras just made it to the ground - https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/

They've not been used in, basically, 2000 sols.

Not many really. Take more environmental observations to monitor the storm. Take more NavCam sky-flat observations to track dust deposition on the front of the optics ( like https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/ra...65M_&s=2160 ) Leave a little extra margin in the planned activities to allow for exposure times to run longer as it got darker during the storm.

It's surprising just how little it impacted ops on MSL.

See mcaplinger's comments above.

One is a lack of solar power. One is a flash memory problem.

Even with just publicly available information it's really quite obvious that they're unrelated.

No.

Checkmate scenarios are where the vehicles is getting 1.2A on the arrays - so it's 'solar groovy' - but for a duration that means - combined with the fault protection timing - it never actually opens up a fault window. It's pretty likely for short solar groovy periods- and then increasingly unlikely as the solar groovy duration gets longer with cleaning.

Was able to extract some 3D data from the three images from Hayabusa during MASCOT's decent

https://sketchfab.com/models/c7155bfcac774d...b4688709b9faca3

As a comparison - the camera on MASCOT ( MasCam ) is somewhat related to the CIVA cameras on Philae.

4 CIVA images were released to the public after Philae's landing

The full CIVA data was finally released to the ESA PSA in August of this year. That's 13.5 years after the first data was collected by CIVA and 3 years after the end of Philae's mission

Patience is going to be required. Lots of it.

We have been thoroughly spoiled by MER, MSL, Cassini and New Horizons. It is quite apparent that other agencies do not consider that kind of image release policy to be the new normal.

Sadly there's no HiRISE DTM's of the area.

Some HRSC Images do though.... -

http://viewer.mars.asu.edu/planetview/inst...000_DT4&T=2

There may be others according to HRSC View.

Well...early on in Cassini they kept putting out an image of Enceladus hovering over a MODIS image of the UK for scale.

I kept wondering....why do they want to crash it into Birmingham?

🤣

I see people are still trying to use DSN Now as some way of detecting an Opportunity recovery. Some of these points have been made earlier but just so people are clear....

https://twitter.com/dsn_status
This is an unofficial bot written by the awesome Russ Garrett. It says so right in the accounts profile. It is not a NASA account. It is simply a bot posting every time it detects a change to the XML file that drives the DSN Now website.

I get it - we all want to hear from Opportunity - but believe me, you've not going to figure it out with DSN Now. I worked on it for years, and it is a victim of many idiosyncrasies in how the DSN operates, how the network reports its status internally and - to be brutal - a lack of resources to engineer a level of robustness into its pipeline to avoid all those idiosyncrasies.

Seriously people - I know watching DSN Now like a hawk may feel like a way of getting ahead of an official press release, but you're largely wasting your time.

The way we're going to hear that Opportunity has been heard from is via a NASA and/or JPL press release. Not an overly enthusiastic fan reading too much into DSN Now.

Problem is - if you did that - it would collapse under terrestrial gravity into a conical rubble pile.

It is not.

This was not a 2kbps uplink to Opportunity.

It was some idiosyncrasy in the way the various antennas report data to the server that collates data into the form DSN Now uses.

I know it's tempting but please stop trying to infer something about recovery efforts via DSN Now. It's not what it was designed for. It's going to be wrong more than it's right.

Source : I work on Opportunity and worked on DSN Now.

Uplink rate in a fault mode to the LGA is 7.8125 bps

See https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archiv.../mars.rover.pdf

2 kbps is the sort of into-an-HGA nominal upilnk data rate one might expect for many spacecraft. Certainly not what was happening today for MERB.

Just a cloud casting a shadow. It's been seen before.

The Voyagers all transmit with large high gain antennas that are VERY directional and pointed at Earth. At X Band they have a beam width of half a degree and 48db of gain.

Opportunity will be using its low gain antenna that transmits to 180 degrees of the sky and has only 7 dB of gain

Physics is mean like that.

You would absolutely pre-program a long sequence of activities for them, including hops, imaging, temperature measurements and comm passes. Our situational awareness for them is poor. We don't know what way up they will land, if they'll get stuck under a boulder etc etc

Having an autonomous sequence of imaging and hopping would be the only rational way to execute a mission like this.

They're just a ground data system burp of data.

There may not be any new images for a while
https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission/mars-rove...we-want-to-help

"Besides transmitting data recorded in its memory, the rover can transmit "real-time" data when it links to a relay orbiter or Deep Space Network antenna. These real-time data are transmitting normally, and include various details about the rover's status. Engineers are expanding the details the rover transmits in these real-time data to better diagnose the issue. Because the amount of data coming down is limited, it might take some time for the engineering team to diagnose the problem."

-148dBm is FAR too strong for a MER LGA on the surface. That last DSN Now entry was a high gain antenna. Not the low gain that will be used now. Expect something more like -160 dBm.


Honestly - given the idiosyncrasies of how the DSN works - it is unlikely you're gonna be able to identify a successful vehicle recovery via DSN Now.

They are no longer used for routine DSN operations.

They would have been just as tough for the as-planned drilling techniques when the rover landed. ( I asked that very question of the engineer who has wrangled the FED stuff )

Best way to see the DSN Now history is to look at the timeline of DSN Status - https://twitter.com/dsn_status

It's not an official NASA thing - but does the job.

The exact pitch/roll/yaw are known.