Cape Tribulation, Sol 3744 (6Aug'14) - Sol 4077 (15Jul'15) Options

[jamescanvin]

The ~85m drive on sol 3744 was uphill, starting the long climb of Cape Tribulation.

The sol 3744 Drive:



Puts Opportunity about here on a plot with colour for elevation:



The view ahead:

[Burmese]

I never heard that Spirit flash memory has been disabled, And I understand they are re formatting Oppy's not disabling

That was temporary:

"While this bug was being fixed, Spirit was switched to a mode where it did not use flash memory to store data."

[RoverDriver]

If command sequences are stored in different flash memory to that used to store data then I suppose that a 20m blind drive would be possible each day followed by each camera taking one picture at the end of the drive. These 8 pictures could then be transmitted to Earth at the end of the day's 20m drive without ever being stored in data flash memory.

I imagine that it is also possible to instruct Opportunity to do something immediately over its direct Earth link without sending this instruction as part of a command sequence. It therefore might be possible to tell Opportunity to drive a few meters without making this command part of a sequence.

When the rover is in crippled mode we use part of the RAM as a file system and am not sure that the remaining RAM would support driving with the additional buffers we need for imaging and all that. And driving in real time? No way! The OWLT (One Way Light Time) varies from 5 to 20 minutes, communications take a LOT of power and takes time to switch between driving and communicating. We sometimes have very lengthy discussions on where to drive, how, what safety parameters to set.

Just think yourself driving in a foreign country, no maps, with your mother-in-law providing "suggestions". How long would you last at the wheel?

Paolo

[MarsInMyLifetime]

Just think yourself driving in a foreign country, no maps, with your mother-in-law providing "suggestions". How long would you last at the wheel?

You, sir, are a driver of great patience and a master of diplomacy.

[fredk]

From the new PS update:

The team will present its plan to a review board, scheduled for Wednesday, September 3rd, at JPL. If the plan passes the board's review – general consensus is it will – the reformatting could begin as early as the next day, September 4th, confirmed Callas.

Let's hope for the best...

[Phil Stooke]

Just a thought... should we rename this place Cape Defibrillation?

Phil

[climber]

No no no, I'm sure they know how to do it... by heart

[Burmese]

I would image that after this procedure the formatting process will identify and mark off some bad sectors in the flash memory but is there any information yet on how many flash memory cells have already been marked as bad (both before launch, and as well since arriving at Mars). Also, how much got marked bad when Spirit did the procedure?

[climber]

Follow Fred's link...

[Burmese]

Ok, so Spirit lost 7% of total flash capacity when it reformatted, amounting to about 1/2 a bank. Worst case for Oppy could be about double that if they have to stop accessing bank 7 altogether.

[Gerald]

If I understood the article correctly, the flash memory consists of 8 banks, each bank of 4 packages, each package of 32 sectors of 64 kBytes. The finest granularity for marking as bad is a sector. Total number of sectors is 8 * 4 * 32 = 1024. Hence the memory is marked in 1/1024 steps as bad.
The actual number of bad sectors of these 1024 sectors is known after reformatting. One bank (128 sectors) is excluded from the reformatting, since it contains the operating system, and is not exposed to frequent rewriting cycles.
Whether the reformatting resolves the root cause of the reboots, is known afterwards, too.

[Astro0]

Today on Mars
Sol 3775 - Navcam



NB: Two LH images with partial RH image stitched in to cover a data drop. Artificial sky added for effect.

[Astro0]

A few more quick stitches.
Pancam


Navcam


Wider pan of the post above using RH Navcams but with the drop-out image from the LH Navcam, so the reason for the mismatch.

[James Sorenson]

Today on Mars
Sol 3775 - Navcam

Great work!
And my take to.

[jvandriel]

Here is the complete Navcam panoramic view on Sol 3775.

Jan van Driel

[atomoid]

thanks for the great stitches! its great to be Oppy-rational again. greats sights on sol3775 from the parting view going up around the bend and look up to Wdowiak with Klingon face etched atop the rock garden variety slab.