Instrument and Mechanical Status Approaching Sol 2000 Options

[JayB]

I've just finished re-reading Roving Mars for the 3rd or 4th time and it's still a brilliant insight on to all the hard work and crazy things that went wrong and right to get the girls to Mars and then their story for the first sols on Mars. It's fun to read about the debate on how long to keep Oppy in Eagle (6 or 10 days... they chose 6 since 10 was 1/4 of the science mission available after standup and the worries about cracking the beam splitter on miniTES with deep sleep. How dust would kill them both by sol 200...

I thought is might be a good idea to take an inventory of the girls as Spirit approaches 2000 sols (1953 at time of post)

To take a quote from one of my favorite movies

"Let's look at this thing from a... um, from a standpoint of status. What do we got on the spacecraft that's good?" (Gene Kranz/Ed Harris Apollo 13)

(we have an amazing amount that IS)


MI - seems pretty good on both rovers. Little or no dust contamination
RAT - Main grinding tool unusable on both. Brushes?
APXS - ???
miniTES - OK on Spirit, unusable on Oppy due to dust contamination of mirror in periscope (currently trying to clear by leaving open to elements)
Mossbauer - Approaching half life of radiation source so sensing takes twice as long (?)
IDD - Spirit OK, Oppy has shoulder seizure, stuck heater switch
Pancam - Both OK
Navcam - Spirit OK, Oppy seems to have some dust
FHaz Cam - Both a bit dusty (?)
Rhaz Cam - Both a bit dusty (?)
Wheels - Spirit RF seized, Oppy RF elevated currents moderated by rest and backward driving.
Power- Spirit ~900whr Oppy ~450whr

Please correct mistakes and update as you can...

oh..btw as of this post Spirit is stuck at Troy. I'm betting we'll be roving again by 2000

[nprev]

One articulating component we don't hear much about is the HGA; I assume that no news is good news for both MERs!

[RoverDriver]

One articulating component we don't hear much about is the HGA; I assume that no news is good news for both MERs!

That is correct. I never heard of any issues with that. One problem we have on Spirit, is the IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). The IMU has gyros and accelerometers. There seems to be about 4 degrees difference between the gyros and the accelerometer data. It seems that the accelerometers are OK ut gyros are off.

Also, amazingly enough in spite of the loss of azimuth actuator on Opportunity we can still use all the instruments and do all the observations, including MI mosaics. The IDD can reach only a narrow strip in front of the rovers but we are getting good at positioning the rover accurately enough to get to the science targets.

Regarding the RAT:

Spirit: grinding bit are worn out, we can only do brushing
Opportunity: grinding bits are still OK, brush is bent and therefore it does not clean very well.

This is an excellent summary!

Paolo