Heading south from Cape York, Opportunity's post-conjunction adventures / Sol 3291 - 3387 Options

[mhoward]

And, per the more immediate plan, Opportunity bumped slightly to the right today (3296). Lots of good info in the Update, as usual.

[fredk]

Tau has jumped a lot in the past week or so, from around the 0.7 level where it's been for a long time up to 1.5 on 3301, as Lemmon's page shows. This is the highest it's been this Martian year, although as you can see from the chart, we've had very similar jumps at the same solar longitude in previous years. So hopefully it will drop back down quickly (within a couple of weeks), as it has in the past.

The increased dust is very obvious in both the lightness of the shadows and the haziness of the far rim of Endeavour by comparing these views from 3296 and 3301:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3296
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3301

[Tesheiner]

I was reading again the current PS update this morning. If the plan is still the same, the above FHAZ image may be one of the last ones from this site.

The idea is to bump to this new Esperance target, to offset a little bit, RAT it if we can, take some MI pictures and look at it with the APXS, and then get moving towards Solander Point as quickly as possible.

[fredk]

From the MRO forecast:

...a large regional dust storm developed along the Acidalia-Chryse storm-track last week... Although the dust storm passed well to the west of the Opportunity rover in Meridiani, elevated levels of atmospheric dust are expected over the rover site in the coming week as suspended residual particulates in the atmosphere are transported eastward by the southern tropical circulation... skies above the Curiousity rover site in Gale crater remained relatively clear and storm-free.

[Tesheiner]

Here's an MI mosaic from the images taken during sol 3301.


Now I understand Squyres' comment to TPS: Esperance, however, is a difficult target to say the least. "This vein is just about as nasty a RAT target as you can imagine," said Squyres. "It's irregular, tiny, and has newberries surrounding it which complicate the task."

[atomoid]

thanks for the nice mosaic, for a second it carried me back to the other thread looking at an orbital view of Gale..!

[fredk]

It looks like we're on our way:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3308

[Tesheiner]

Yeah!!

Looking at the "telemetry" I read something like 24m due south. A proper map update will have to wait 'til tomorrow when I'm back home.

[climber]

We hit the road, Jake!
(thanks for everything)

[jamescanvin]

And a further 80m tosol (3309)

[climber]

So, we're now about 140 mere meters from Apollo 17th rover record. I'll expect Oppy will be n°2 quite soon, still 1.1 km short to pass Lunakhod 2. GoOppy, go

[marsophile]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunokhod_2

The Lunokhod 2 achieved its distance record in about 6 months.

Contributing to this, the top speed of the rover was about 1.2 MPH compared to the MER and MSL rover speeds of about 0.1 MPH.

Opportunity may break the distance record, but I think it will be some time before the speed record is broken!

[Ant103]

The beginning of a new journey is for me the occasion to going back to some imagery That was a long time not stitching and coloring these picture from our old little girl .

Sol 3303 - Dusty atmosphere this sol :



And a last Navcam pan before the move :



(And also, a new gallery with a timeline, just like Curiosity http://www.db-prods.net/marsroversimages/o...unity-2013.html )

[Ron Hobbs]

So, we're now about 140 mere meters from Apollo 17th rover record. I'll expect Oppy will be n°2 quite soon, still 1.1 km short to pass Lunakhod 2. GoOppy, go

JPL has made it official:

"The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity received confirmation in a transmission from Mars today that the rover drove 263 feet (80 meters) on Thursday, bringing Opportunity's total odometry since landing on Mars in January 2004 to 22.220 statute miles (35.760 kilometers)."

Nine-Year-Old Mars Rover Passes 40-Year-Old Record

Hey, I think it so cool that Gene Cernan is talking to the MER Team about this.

And it looks like the Lunakhod 2 record is not far from being broken. Go Oppy!

Ron

[jamescanvin]

And ~95m more tosol (3310)