New fantastic rover panoramic view by Tman and me.

Sol 592: Oppy arrived the South Shetland Outcrop

http://xs47.xs.to/pics/05380/Sol_592_Oppor...y_Sol_590_1.jpg (425 KB)

I tried that too, and ended up with the download tool acting like it got the file, but the target directory being empty afterward.

I've had a similar problem for a while now, except I only get a broken image with no messages when the popup appears. At first I thought it was just me.

I turned off my firewall, but that didn't help either.

hmm wonder how Oppy's power situation is doing.

Guys I've started a thread in the Forum Management section for these issues:
here
Let's see if we can figure it out there.

Me too. I haven't seen an opportunity power update since Sol 526 when power rose to 650Watt hours following a cleaning event after Sol 524.

According to my last updated model she should be getting about 557 watt hours now assuming no change in Tau. I've almost finished a substantially more accurate model that yields a slightly lower number - 544 Watt hours.

Again assuming we've had no cleaning events or significant changes in Tau in the meantime.

Planetary Society's MER update has the power situation from a few days back in this update. Joy Crisp tells that Oppy is getting 630 Wh and Spirit 885 Wh.

Cool.

On Sol 526, TOA insolation was ~ 4381 watt hours (per m^2), Oppy generated 650 watt hours. This update means that on or about Sol 582 when TOA insolation was ~ 4230 watt hours Oppy generated 630 watt hours. My earlier estimates are based on a constant rate of dust deposition reducing the efficiency of the panels by 0.2% per sol - that's the rate that was seen at the start of the mission but it is clearly not happening at the moment. There is virtually no change in panel efficiency between Sol 526 and ~582.

The lack of a major\global dust storm during the past Martian SH Spring\Summer seems to be having a knock on bonus effect of almost eliminating dust deposition.

Excellent news for now - hopefully in the longer term the reduction in dust loading doesn't lead to significantly lower night time temperatures at the onset of the winter.

Steve Squyres Update: September 26, 2006(?)

--- The decision's made... we're going to go west, counterclockwise around Erebus Crater. ---

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

I remember that in the winter, when Oppy was inside the Endurance crater, was able to raise their power output after a cleaning by a mist frozen water in the early morning. Maybe, if the Oppy is inside in the Victoria crater, it will help to clean the Oppy's solar power panels during the winter 2006.

I wonder if it will be true or not.

Rodolfo

I think that section looks most interesting - wide sections of the cliff that might even be undercut by wave action? I'm glad they're not daring the dunes in the center... at least not yet.

There's an outcrop of pavement near the rim of Erebus just SW from Oppy... I expect the first full panorama will be there followed by proper route- and target-finding evaluation.

No way will the team risk stranding Oppy in Erebus, when Victoria is looking like a feasible target for her.

At this side of the crater? Where, where?

Imho, the first movements in the next days (after tomorrow?) will be heading NW, not SW.
Hint: On sol 596 they requested a set of images (for planning purposes, I guess) looking North.

The upcoming winter season will be very tough even if dust deposition were a non issue. Minimum insolation happens at around LS 81 (That would be around Opportunity Sol 883, 18 July 2006). Daily insolation will drop by ~ 33% by then so even with no degradation in the performance of the panels power is going to get very tight. We haven't had an update that told us what the Tau numbers have been like recently but it looks clear enough now and as I mentioned earlier I suspect that in the upcoming autumn\winter season Tau will drop below the 0.45 minimum of last year. That would give a small boost to the power power that can be generated but it also allows increased thermal cooling at night. I know that prior to landing at Meridiani some of the team were concerned that if Tau dropped below 0.2 that would lead to night time temperatures around spots with lower than average albedo (ie around 0.12) that would be low enough to cause Opportunity to fail.

Those concerns are a good few months away though - right now I suspect that the planners are much more concerned about navigating ripples and dunelets.

LONG BASELINE ANIMATED GIF OF EREBUS
SOL 590 - 593

This long baseline animation shows a 3D effect on far rim, and seems to bring out some new features.

Using the labeled panarama provided by Bil Harris, I am confident that the crater seen at the upper right of the animation, contains the Payson outcrop/cliff, that was mentioned by Steve Squyres

You may need to manually center this flicker in your browser window, because one of the images was very large, and I failed to crop it effectively.

The larger, SOL 590 image, is PIA06341, acquired from NASA's Planetary Journal.

File Size 1.3 MB

590-593-TIF-JPG-PAN-Erebus-longbase-flicker.gif

Jack

This post has been edited by stewjack: Sep 27 2005, 10:57 PM