Up-To-Date Odometers?, How far have MSL/Opportunity traveled... Options

[Matt Sidor]

Hi, I am starting a project to compare the distances traveled by the MSL, Opportunity, and Spirit rovers at various phases of their respective missions. Does anyone know where on the internet I might be able to find this information? Or, the person at JPL I should contact to ask about this? I am looking for an always up-to-date source of these measurements.

My project idea is to create a web-based odometer for each rover showing how far they've traveled in real time, or to compare these measurements based on XX Sols into their missions. (i.e., how far has Curiosity traveled up until now, and how far did Spirit and Opportunity get on this Sol of their missions?)

An expansion of this idea would be to show their routes on a Google Mars map, with tick marks for distances traveled.

Thanks for your help!

[Phil Stooke]

Looking back at my original response to this, I see that the URL I gave does not go to the correct page - because that page's URL does not change as you go from link to link within it. I didn't notice that before. So let me be more specific this time:

go to:

http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/bro...=res&m=MERB

And link to the "Additional Data Sets" and then to the "Traverse and Crater DTMs"

(the link is not just to DTMs).

The first two items on THAT page are ASCII tables of rover position.

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MERA_Traverse_Sol 1-2169.txt (24 KB)

ASCII text table with columns for sol #, site #, position #, and x (east), y (north), z (up) coordinates. These traverse points are bundle adjusted incrementally.

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(and the same for MER-B )

You could put that in a spreadsheet, strip out the columns you don't need, and just have the x and y position for every sol of movement. The tables only list sols where a move has occurred. Pythagoras gives you the distance, assuming it was a straight line move. Admittedly that is a simplification, but in fact most drives are straight lines, especially the longer ones. And you could use the weekly updates to adjust the results a bit from time to time.

Phil