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Jun 4 2005, 06:21 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
This event deserves its own thread.
To quote the illustrious Dr. King -- "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we're free at last! So, how much y'all want to bet we'll stay here for a few sols, looking very carefully at the tracks and waiting for the MER Team to figure out how to proceed from here? -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Jun 11 2005, 11:52 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2842 Joined: 22-April 05 From: Ridderkerk, Netherlands Member No.: 353 |
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Jun 11 2005, 01:56 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 477 Joined: 2-March 05 Member No.: 180 |
Just a little musing here. I've attached a picture, a little snip from the nice panorama.
The circles are where it looks like Opportunity broke through the crust. It looks almost like there was just thick dust before that, but then it really plowed in hard. The arrows point to a small crest, or some slight change in the dune. Boundry area perhaps between safe and unsafe terrain? I'll have to see if I can find this in old hazcam pics, before the rover drove back over that area. After a quick look at some of the first hazcam pics when Opportunity was stuck, it looks like the area in question is directly beneath the rover, almost immediately below the view of the hazcam. Also, the two "lumps" of material beside the tracks are where the front wheels were after the rover stopped moving when it was initially stuck. (On the left side, outside of the track, near the circle. And on the right side, inside of the track, slightly below and to the left of the circle.) So if none of my musings makes any sense, at least that can give some idea of where the rover was sitting a month ago. |
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Jun 11 2005, 04:20 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
Interesting observations, Jeff. The small crest you highlight fall exactly in the front wheel position at the moment of rover stuck. ; see contrast enhancement in the left insert of this image:
However, it could be a coincidence, because there are also other trasversal "sub-dunes" visible in farther in the image and especially because rear and mid wheels smoothly traversed this feature before got stuck. The dipping you observed in this point could simply arise from the drilling action of the front wheels immediately after stuck, when rover executed many rotations before to stop electric motors... I think we should search main stall cause in the region where rear (most advanced) wheels stuck, near the end of tracks. Now, looking to these NavCam images, this happened where main dune crest is broken; in this discontinuity region, my attention was hit from the bright patch, probably made of very fine sand with lower blueberries density (see top/right insert taken from a previous hazcam image). Probably, this region exhibit lower grip and this, joined to deeper sand layer of the dune and the sub-dune you noticed, caused the stall. Do not rimember if someone already gived this explaination but, if it is right, in the future should be easy to avoid this kind of surface features. -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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