Opportunity General Health Options

[Doug M.]

I've been clicking around for a general health status for Opportunity, but haven't been able to find one.


Power -- The solar panels seem to be showing signs of degradation over time but it's not clear how much. NASA reports regularly on power output, tau/opacity and dust levels, but not on the status of the panels themselves. They did clock well over 500 watt-hours as recently as May, so it doesn't look like their performance is a serious issue. As for non-solar power, the radioisotope heaters seem to be fine; they're Pu-238, so they would only have lost about 10% of their power since launch. So the WEB is still toasty.

Motors and joints -- I know we've got one bad wheel motor (which means we spend a lot of time driving backwards) and the bad arm azimuth joint and the separate issue with the arm potentiometer.

Electronics -- There was the flash memory issue earlier this year but I don't know if that was a one-off or a sign of age.

Instruments -- The Mossbauer spectrometer is done because its radioactive cobalt source ran out. MiniTES got dust on its mirror after the big 2007 dust storm and stopped working. AFAICT the other instruments are okay? Pancam, Navcam, Hazcams, and the APXS all seem to be working fine. There was a NASA press release last month that said "Opportunity imaged the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) bit to assess remaining bit life", but it didn't say anything about what they saw and I haven't been able to find any more information. Clearly the RAT is still working, at least for now.

What else?


Doug M.