I am really happy to see Oppy free at last!!!

It is wonderfull to think that such a dramatic situation was repaired only from remote control, at millions of kms... Already Spirit was mended from a software problem some days after arrival. Fantastic!

It is even better than is science fiction. In scifi, there is a super-heroe who uses his superpower to fix problems in some seconds. In reality it is hard work of teams of hundred of ordinary people who do the job, with long hours of work, thorough thinking, long tests, complex calculations. Whoooo!


Spirit and Opportunity are not just machines or money, they are our eyes and nose and fingers (robotic arm and instruments) on a distant world, something that I could even not imagine when I was a child (not so long ago, we knew of mars only a red ball with Shiaparelli's channels). So losing them would be really a love drama and philosophical loss.


More pragmatically, missions in space are so long and so costy, than it is far better to spend money and time for ongoing missions rather than to launch new ones at the cost of ongoing ones. Think to the Voyage probes, now entering the heliopause and in the interstellar space in some years: would we launch a mission to this place, it would not be there before 30 years.

I fully agree with this quote of Steve Squires. Of course, they will be cautious, they will first examine the trap, understand how it happened. Then they will start to move again, slowly and cautiously, but they will go.


This page of Mars Geology's site shows (among other things) a large image of the further path to Victoria (Larger image, 2Mb download).

The etched terrain looks very tricky, with larger dunes, rocks, rock pits, perhaps the rock-only version of Anatolia. Especially Erebus looks like a profound sand trap. It will be difficult and slow, but here are intersting things.

Hi all,

I was planning to periodically update this panorama (here), but the final movement was so "big" (at least based on last week's drives) that I couldn't stitch sol 484's pancam image to the previous ones.

So I made a new one, from pancam images taken on sol 447, overlayed with the overall progress since sol 461 until 484.



Tesheiner

Wow, I go away for a weekend and look what I missed! Add my belated congrats and Mars Bars to Oppy's team for a job well done.

Since nearly everthing significant the rovers encounter gets a name, is there an "official" name for the offending dune? I'll bet the MER team have several non-family friendly ones the've used

Last image of the left rear wheel before becoming unstuck

I wonder what caused the parallel grooves in the soil stuck to the wheel.

Maybe the other five wheels were supporting the rover, and this one was just spinning, brushing against the soil surface.

"The Great Escape" the movie

http://www.upitfree.dk/upload/files/front_left.wmv

http://www.upitfree.dk/upload/files/front_right.wmv

Fantastic, dot.dk! The movies really give an idea of the struggle and timescale. Too bad there's no audio, I'd love to hear the sound of the wheels catching firm ground at the end

Excellent movies dot.dk and no Jar Jar Binks. bonus

Reckless

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8119808/

NASA plots Mars rover’s next moves
After freeing Opportunity, team plans for safer driving

Team members gathered at a Sunday barbecue to celebrate the breakthrough, and were back in their offices on Monday to plot out the next moves.

Boy, they deserve it

I'm no geologist but as I look at this shot of Erebus:

http://www.marsgeo.com/Photos/Opportunity/Etched.jpg

It looks like there is a circumferential ring around the obvious center of the crater and that this ring crosses Opie's course right about where she got stuck! Could this be the origional outer edge of the crater which is much larger than supposed and has now been filled with dust? If one uses a lot of imagination one can see parts of a corresponding arc continuing around the southern side of the center. Could it be that Opie started to approach the original rim of the Erebus crater? I have a real bad feeling about going any closer to Erebus center from the north. Better to go around it and approach from the south if it looks more solid in the etched area?

This "bad feeling" hit me too, when answering to and interesting question from Vladimorka in the other active thread (http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=947&view=findpost&p=11968)...
My fear is that, based on bottom of rover tracks profile, Opportunity is entering in a completely new terrain, were hard soil became deeper and is covered by thicker sand layer... extention of this new terrain is clearly visible in this elaborated version of your image (I highlighted upper border):

In the "route map" thread, someone theorized that this terrain (called "Terra Nova") could be an ancient, buried crater, eventually overlapping Erebus north Rim.
If this is true, they should avoid moving directly to South direction and try to circumnavigate the hidden crated going to east!

odave:
I'd really love to know that name, too.


dot.dk: Nice work, as usual. Those are two animations I really wanted to see. Thanks. I'm on the road and was really hoping someone would do them.

Parallel grooves on the wheel may be caused by a chunk of stone or something buried. It may be related to the fact that Oppy regained traction, if Trader is right.