Yes - I know the sort of issue you're talking about. But I don't think it's ever been discussed as a potential mission-ending scenario for MER.

I don't ever remember battery life being mentioned as a limiting factor. The JPL tech report server has a paper that looks at the battery life, and whilst it is showing a drop off, it's not massive.

Doug

800m marks? Nahh - that would just be added noise to the maps. 100m boxes is enough. Maybe adding a scale of how many metres south and east of Eagle we are would be good however.

I'm fairly sure that's auto.

It's a route-driven-vs-crow-flies issue.

Just like the Tyrone area, which was mostly sandy.....errr....hmm.

What happened? Nothing in nearly a month.

Has done 13k, asking for another 18k, so a total ask of 31km

Cobalt-57 in the Mossbauer - it has dropped - significantly. That bit I agree with. The APXS, however, is a different story.

It's Curium 244 and Plutonium 240 in an APXS. 18.11 years and 6561 years respectively.

(further googling shows that the MER APXS design just included Curium. The Plutonium part was dropped during the derivation from the Sojourner design)

I found a simple half-life calculator that suggests the Curium would be at about 82% of what it was at landing.

The Mossbauer, however, is down to about 1%.

Doug

Isn't that something of an oxymoron?

Mossbauer, yes. APXS, no. MUCH longer half life for its two sources - 18 years for one source, 6500 for the other.

Stating the APXS is faded significantly is entirely untrue - so I thought it worth correcting.

Some people need to step away from the keyboard from time to time, seriously. I thought I'd post a link to a fun poll we could vote on.

Next time, I wont bother.

Phil makes a good point. For some reason - I've seen (and held) the assumption that we head west, down the west side of HP, toward VB and G. We don't need to - we can still cross home-plate if we just go East a bit to where we last got on to it with 5 wheel drive.

Doug

Yup - you do. Unless someone has installed street lighting......

I would echo UG's comment. Any inference of 'colour' from Hazcam (or indeed Navcam) is pure fiction.

No - they're intentionally just doing tiny steps - to keep the best angle for the sun.

Doug

The wind has made it POSSIBLE for them to live this long. However - that's only an enabling factor. The rovers have still been using that power for barely short of 20x what they were asked to. 20x more wheel revolutions. 20x more camera mast movements. 20x radio transmissions. 20x charge cycles. 20x thermal cycles on all the electronics. 20x more arm movements.

Yeah - they're getting arthritis - but to say it's all down to luck that they're still around is grossly unfair and inaccurate. It's down to damn good engineering and a lot of hard work - designing them, building them, and keeping them alive on Mars.

That shot of the top of Husband Hill, panning around to see Spirit on top , with home plate in the distance - that was a 'near unmanly moment'

Doug

Looks like some STUNNING work by Dan Maas once again.

Doug

There are several drives between your first and second place distances there.

Yes. I think they might be 410 ( 220m ), a couple of sols ago (about 200 ), and probably either another drive from a few days previous to that, or one of the drives shortly before 410.

Thread title wrong ( you said HiRISE, not CRISM - I've edited it for you).

Wrong forum ( Mars Express for some reason, not MRO - I've moved it for you)

Well - we've put the UMSF 'founding sisters' at the top - good work team

Thanks for the heads up on that Mike - I was waiting to see what the end result of the 'issues' that happened last year were.

Getting full Pans in an hour is mentioned - is that using onboard intelligence to produce one data product for downlink ( in the way that MAHLI generates a single focused image and a DEM ) or is it just a symptom of faster between-frame imaging than previous instruments.

To put those res numbers into some sort of perspective - the wider Mastcam will produce 360 degree pans of about 28,000 pixels wide. The narrow Mastcam 84,000 pixels wide.

Note to self : get more monitors.

Don't go there. Don't start with a number and multiply it by numbers of days.

It
Never
Works

By that maths, Endurance to Victoria should have been <6 months. It was nearly two years. Just take it as it comes, step by step.

Doug