Dust Storm- Opportunity EOM, the end of the beginning of a new era in robotic spaceflight Options

[marsophile]

In my many winters' experience with snow, and three recent experiences with forest fire ash, the deposition of a windborne, granular substance does not cover all surfaces equally. Maybe Oppy's solar panels accumulate half as much as nearby surface units, maybe twice as much. I don't know how we could know – unless and until Opportunity wakes up and sends us pictures.

The law of averages: an interval around the mean carries the most probability mass. It is true we cannot know in any absolute sense but we can maybe get a likely estimate that could inform the recovery strategy going forward.

With regard to CRISM on Winnemucca:
http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-top...nce-valley.html

Instead, the scientists are examining Winnemucca with ground imagery, remote sensing, and an orbital mineralogical detector.

I assumed the orbital mineralogical detector was CRISM. In any case, it can be imaged by HIRISE, and I think the bright backdrop might provide a convenient "canvas" for viewing the new dust deposit.

[James Sorenson]

unless and until Opportunity wakes up and sends us pictures.

I think if that happens, a gust would have blown a vast majority of any fallout off of the panels since Oppy would have woken up and phoned home. We will never really know at leased for sure how much accumulation was really on them in that case or any case.

Oppy did take a pancam color panorama in the weeks on up to the end of science ops. So if the rover does wake up and starts taking pics around the area, change detection could be interesting. Not sure if even that would give an accurate fallout estimate, since winds could have also cleared the area.

[marsophile]

https://spacenews.com/nasa-to-soon-end-acti...th-opportunity/

[akuo]

After a review of the progress of the listening campaign, NASA will continue its current strategy for attempting to make contact with the Opportunity rover for the foreseeable future. Winds could increase in the next few months at Opportunity's location on Mars, resulting in dust being blown off the rover's solar panels. The agency will reassess the situation in the January 2019 time frame.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7227

Cheers to Nasa for continuing the effort!

[marsophile]

Are false locks less likely when COMM sessions are scheduled on a dedicated antenna, rather than in an MSPA group?

[djellison]

There's no difference.

[marsophile]

https://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status.html#opportunity

Estimated tau now at 0.8

[xflare]

Is this thread about to get busy?

[Fran Ontanaya]

There's a tweet from Chris G from NASASpaceflight about a 11b/s downlink, but there's been false alarms before from orbiter signals.

[marsophile]

Probably a misidentified lock, re-identified later as on Maven.

https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/1063171515208945664
https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/1063175195492601857

https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/1063183283754844161
https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/1063181601453031427

[djellison]

"Today http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html showed what looked like a signal from @MarsRovers Opportunity. As much as we'd like to say this was an #OppyPhoneHome moment, further investigation shows these signals were not an Opportunity transmission."

https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1063204394596937728

I'd also refer people back to this : http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=241237

[marsophile]

I suspect the Insight spacecraft is close enough to Mars now for its signal to be confused with that of Opportunity. The frequency is not so different. It will be landing soon.

[djellison]

Not really....

From https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsndocs/810-005/302/302C.pdf the half power beam width for Xband on the 70M antennas is 0.034 degrees

Using Eyes on the Solar System - currently the InSight-Earth-Mars angle is around 0.56 degrees.

It will drop to 0.1 degrees at about 30 hrs before landing, 0.034 degrees about 10 1/2 hrs before landing,

[marsophile]

http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-top...son-begins.html

New MER Update from TPS. It mentions a new hirise image that however has not been released yet. Also a discussion of the MER extension proposal. Apparently there are certain commonalities between the Endeavour and Gale craters.

[marsophile]

https://www.space.com/42691-mars-rover-oppo...-team-hope.html

"Still holding onto a sliver of hope...."