5000 Sols On Mars, Opportunity Rolls Into History Options

[nprev]

As you may have noticed, we have installed a new banner in celebration of this important milestone that Oppy has reached on this terrestrial day (15 Feb/1726 US Pacific Standard Time). Thanks to Emily for creating it, and apologies to all that I was not able to install it a bit better...will work on it some more when I get a chance, promise, first time doing this!

In any case, it's time to reflect on how far both she and we have come. Nobody--and I mean nobody--ever dreamed in their wildest that MER-B would be operating fourteen years after bouncing to the surface, into a hole-in-one filled with blueberries...it was magic, it's BEEN magic, the very best kind...the magic of discovery, the magic of yet another 'new Mars' unfolding before us every day.

Here's to the next five thousand!!!!

[djellison]

And just in case people forget....that 90 sols expectation was real. REALLY real. See this paper byJake Matijevic in 2002.




92 sols for MER A if sent to Gusev
100 sols for MER B if sent to Meridiani.

Tomorrow, we plan sols 5000 and 5001.

[nprev]

The MERs ultimately carried you to a new country and an incredible new career, Doug. They also were the very reason this Forum was founded.

It's hard to overstate their impact in a thousand different ways.

[climber]

And just in case people forget....that 90 sols expectation was real. REALLY real. See this paper byJake Matijevic in 2002.




92 sols for MER A if sent to Gusev
100 sols for MER B if sent to Meridiani.

Tomorrow, we plan sols 5000 and 5001.

What’s the mood within the team to get to this point? Steve stopped a long time ago saying that Oppy could brake any time and that you have to plan sol by sol. I feel like, knowing it for sure, you don’t plan a sol as he could be the last. Any fear about global dust storm? Go Oppy, go

[Explorer1]

5000 sols: No words.

I had turned 13 in January 2004... I am now 27. Oppy (and Spirit too!) have been there over half my life....

And new discoveries continue: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7062

[dolphin]

5000 sols: No words.

I had turned 13 in January 2004... I am now 27. Oppy (and Spirit too!) have been there over half my life....

And new discoveries continue: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7062

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

[RoverDriver]

What’s the mood within the team to get to this point? Steve stopped a long time ago saying that Oppy could brake any time and that you have to plan sol by sol....

The mood in the room yesterday was quite giggly. I'll let Doug tell that story.

Regarding Oppy dying any minute, when I joined the team in 2004 I told myself I wanted to be the last person to leave the sequencing room after she stopped working. Now I'm getting worried she will outlast me! In 2004 we had flip phones, TV was analog, standard def, and displayed on a CRT (ahem, MER still uses CRT monitors but are finally been phased out). We do keep in mind she's an old lady but in general we do not operate as if she's dying any minute now. We are careful, we deal with her arthritic wheels and arm but science is still our goal. Mars will surely win, but Oppy is definitely a tough cookie.

Paolo

[Deimos]

Cleanish solar panels and an approaching round number make people do crazy things: https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/21503/

[fredk]

Sol 5000 MI self portrait!

http://merpublic.s3.amazonaws.com/oss/merb...B3P2910M2M_.JPG

Can't wait to see that stitched...

Happy soliversary, and many more!

[Stu]

To mark Sol 5000, the MER team asked Oppy to take a self-portrait... here's a VERY crudely- and hastily-assembled version of that self portrait... there'll be a much better version released by the MER team later! Huge congratulations to Doug and the whole team. A dream come true mate... a dream come true...

[Sean]

Incredible. Congrats all round!

[James Sorenson]

My version of the selfie.

[James Sorenson]

And a version with added color, Many thanks to Don Davis for doing this.

[nprev]

Thank you for these beautiful renderings, Stu, James, and Don.

Thank you for making these images happen in the first place, Doug.

Thanks most of all to the entire MER team, some of whom are our members (RoverDriver & Deimos among them in addition to Doug) for giving us a new Mars every day for fourteen years. We've become accustomed to that marvel, which for those of us old enough to remember was an inconceivable dream back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and it may seem sometimes that your efforts are taken for granted, even ignored.

Far, far, far from it. We cannot ever express enough thanks to you all.

[djellison]

What an adventure.

I've been thinking of an MER Selfie for ten years. Fortunately, Keri (TUL) and Ashley (RP1) who were also on shift on Thursday liked the idea.

The SOWG Chair for planning liked the idea. Infact, Aileen is the godmother of selfies - having advocated for the MSL MAHLI selfies from the beginning of MSL's mission at Gale.

Then the Mission Manager, Matt, went to Project Management, John....who got a final OK from Ray

We were actually going to f'ing do this.

So - I went hunting....had we ever downsampled MI images in flight? Ever? Turns out we have - ONCE - a long LONG time ago. And it looked awful. The compression parameters for the MI are different to those for the Nav/Hazcams. So I had to take a mild stab in the dark. I wasn't entirely sure how big the final data products would actually be - but I was fairly sure they would compress well, being so fuzzy. Hence - the 4x4 binning down to 256x256.

THEN we had the SOWG meeting....and the science team went from "Huh?" to "What?" to "Well if you're gonna do it - at least prioritize the images well enough so we don't have to do it again!"

Ashley got the arm sequence drafted pretty quickly - and we found that the RP planning tools don't actually model the MI field of view very well....infact, it's WAY off. So we were planning the motion between frames using an estimated MI field of view, and holding a piece of paper up to the screen. Ashley also had to battle the software stop on one end of the turret (hence we don't see the right end of the solar arrays).

Paolo quite rightly told us to add Navcam Frame to document it the other way.

John W as RP2 had to finish up and deliver the arm sequence. John realized we need to do that Navcam frame AFTER pointing the MI for the first selfie image, but BEFORE we actually took it - so that 1... the MI was looking at the mast and 2...The mast didn't move during the selfie sequence!

We went for 16 images, as 4x4 downsampled is 1/16th of an image - so the thought was were acquiring the equivalent of one MI image. Don't tell anyone, but we added an extra frame in the 4th row to get the end of the left front solar array.

We got word that MRO was in safe mode half way through the planning day. That always makes people nervous.

And then we waited. Friday, most of us were supposed to have the day off....but most of us went in anyway. Hallie was due to be an RP, but was released. Mike fired up a terminal window to watch the packets hit the ground. We gathered around his cube to watch it. Engineering data. Then thumbnails. No warning EVRs so everything SHOULD have gone well. Then lots of MI packets.

"What are you doing over there - we've got images" Hallie shouted.

I hit refresh in Maestro to see the images - and it filled up with tiny images. Unmistakable.....the top of the PMA right there in the thumbnails.



I'll confess....I had something in my eye. Hugs all round.

And before we even had time to realize what we had done - Hallie had them roughly mosaicked - and there it was - the whole thing.



Some of you might have seen me comment about this on twitter yesterday.... the idea that

1 Opportunity would eventually do it.
2 On sol 5000.
and 3-I would be on shift to write the MI sequence to take the images.

NONE of that makes any sense.

The good news is that everyone seems to be happy and pleased with our little, fuzzy, hazy, black and white selfie. Who knows....maybe we'll get to try it again on Sol 6000

[Explorer1]

Amazing story Doug, for an amazing selfie!
Obviously Curiosity is better with the raw number of pixels (and doing these arm manouevres more often)... but there is still something very poignant about Oppy doing this, just because it was so unusual/difficult to pull off, and is the first of its kind.

[RoverDriver]

...
Who knows....maybe we'll get to try it again on Sol 6000

What do you mean MAYBE?

Paolo

[djellison]

Well - I figure we'll do it so often now that by Sol 6000 we might not want another one

[lyford]

Delurking to say #$#&(@#($(!@#^$^@#(*(@# [swear jar]

Thank you, thank you, thank you - what a wonderful way to celebrate a 5k.

[MoreInput]

Also from me, Happy Sol 5000 for Opportunity. And thanks to the many who made this journey possible. See you at sol 10000 in the year 2032 at the Iazu crater ...

[stevesliva]

Wow. I'm finding this image affecting in a way that's hard to describe. It's one thing, to know in the abstract what these buggers look like, and know that they're dusty, and know that, amazingly, it's still plugging along all these years later.

But this... it adds fidelity to the sense of being there. That is, the images ticking by on the screen get more and more abstract without some sort of anchor. Which is to say, "you still? really?"

[vikingmars]

And a version with added color, Many thanks to Don Davis for doing this.

Thank you very much James, Don and Stu for this very nice work of yours
Here is my interpretation : I realized that they was a big sun glare due to the imaging constraints, so I did just a small processing to keep the original fuzziness from the original pictures (to keep the ambiance of this historic moment), while pasting them into a mosaic, and then I added some sky dynamics.
Here is the scene integrated into its context. Enjoy

And CONGRATULATIONS to the MER Team for this incredible feat of roving past 5,000 Sols (and to Doug for the idea of the self-portrait)

[jamescanvin]

More 'selfie' images planned for 5006? Maybe filling in the missing bits on the left and bottom?

CODE

05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25
05006::p2910::01::1::0::1::0::1::3::mi_open_mloss5_4x4_bin25

[djellison]

IDD not being what it used to be is restricting us some-what - certainly can't pull off the complete 360 of a MAHLI selfie, but we're trying a few extra frames.

[James Sorenson]

Well what ever extra frames that come down, I'll add them to my version of the selfie. The colorized version though, that is up to Don if he wants to redo the work that he did or not. If he does, I'll send him off the extended version when I can get it mosaiced.

[djellison]

We've also learned some interesting stuff about our planning tools and the MI just by doing this.....so next time, we'll do a better job

[James Sorenson]

The extended selfie. Enjoy!



Full Resolution
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/...955530/sizes/o/



Full Resolution
https://www.flickr.com/photos/43581439@N08/...697997/sizes/o/

[JRehling]

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I want to see Opportunity roll up to Olympus Mons.

[RoverDriver]

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I want to see Opportunity roll up to Olympus Mons.

I'm not sure what the slopes are like, but the routing to there will be my descendents problem. For the moment I'm setting the following sequence as a more realistic goal:

SET_ROVER_PLANNER_IN_CONTROL
SET_GOAL_LAT_LONG 2/deg 39' South 5/deg 12' West
GO_TO_GOAL


Paolo

[fredk]

Iazu!

[djellison]

SET_ROVER_PLANNER_IN_CONTROL
SET_GOAL_LAT_LONG 2/deg 39' South 5/deg 12' West
GO_TO_GOAL

DUDE.... ITAR.....

[James Sorenson]

DUDE.... ITAR.....

Now I know the commands...All I need now is a 70 meter dish to make them work.

[RoverDriver]

Now I know the commands...All I need now is a 70 meter dish to make them work.

I wish we had these commands. Unfortunately these are not par of our set.

Paolo

[Habukaz]

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I want to see Opportunity roll up to Olympus Mons.

If only Spirit had still been alive and mobile, it could have gone to Apollinaris Mons..

[marsophile]

If Mars2020 arrives at HomePlate, maybe it can drag Spirit out of the trap, recondition its battery, and send it on its way!

[djellison]

Somehow it got featured in the February Mars Report - so here's my version.

The JPGing on the raw image page really hurt the quality this time - I hope some of you will revisit this in a few months when that data hits the PDS!

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[elakdawalla]

James and others, I've been a little confused about the proper credit on MI images so I just asked Ken Herkenhoff. He said:

The correct credit line is NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS because that's the way the money flows to us.

So the correct credit line for James's version colorized by Don is then NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS/James Sorenson/Don Davis. I'm updating the versions in my image library accordingly.

[James Sorenson]

Oops.

Thank you Emily, I will get that fixed on all version's ASAP.

[elakdawalla]

No worries, it's very unclear and Ken's not bothered. And now I have to go through my website and change a whole lot of credits. I always associated "Cornell" with Pancam and Jim Bell and so thought that MI only needed USGS for Ken. But neither Ken nor Jim is a PI -- only Steve is the PI. So technically Cornell needs to be on everything that is a science instrument, and then you add any other institutions (ASU for Jim Bell for Pancam, USGS for Ken Herkenhoff for MI) depending on the instrument. (Navcam and Hazcam, being engineering instruments, are credit only to NASA / JPL)

[PaulH51]

....change a whole lot of credits...

Looks like the Photojournal Selfie Post is also a little confused, as it credits NASA/JPL-Caltech

[hendric]

Just amazing Opportunity has endured this long! To another 5000 Sols



Just think, in another 4ish years, an intern working on the Opportunity team would not even have been born when she launched!

d: (Dang, it looks like the DD emoji is broken now?)

[pospa]

Doug's article about how to make a first selfie of somewhat arthritic 14-year-old robot, 4010 sols past warranty. You did a great job! :-)
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs...elfie-5000.html

[djellison]

Apologies to Emily et.al. for this taking me so long to write....but....I became a Dad for the first time just under 4 months ago, so time to get it down on paper has been a little scarce!

Hope you all enjoy it. And yeah....Ashley and I have since gone back and figured out what a 2.0 Selfie sequence might be like. We'll do it again at some point.

[nprev]

Great article, Doug. I'm sure it will be less than 5000 sols until your terrestrial baby takes HER own selfies. (And congratulations!)

[vikingmars]

Spirit and Opportunity raw images and day-to-day reports have disappeared too!
Here is the link to the raw images now:
https://science.nasa.gov/mars/resources/?ty...ntent_list=true