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]

For the MERs you might look at this:

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

The first two items give you locations by sol which would allow you to extract distances and sum them.

But they are always about 6 months behind for Opportunity (updated at three month intervals), and Curiosity data are not yet available in this form.

You would have to keep up with current rover activities via each mission's updates if you wanted to be right up to date - it's quite a time-intensive thing.


Phil

[Astro0]

There's a lot of on UMSF itself.
The thread that has been maintained for about 5 years called "Some Statistics for Spirit & Oppy" has this kind of information.
I'm sure you could draw on that information. Those members might also be happy to share their resources if you were to ask in a direct PM.

Reports on the MER site gives total odometry and some individual drive info.
James Canvin tweets regular oppy updates that often include drive distances.

The Spirit and Opportunity map threads are your ideal guide as they map the journey out quite accurately and already produce Google Mars maps.

Spend a bit of time looking around and see what's already on offer.
Good luck.

[RoverDriver]

While on MSL FSW there is a built-in odometer (and no, you cannot roll it back and sell the vehicle for a higher profit ;-) MER odometry is computed on the ground and is a best estimate of the true vehicle motion. MSL actually has five odometers, but at least on this mission we have an "official" established odometry. I'm not sure I can release the numbers but I think they are all published in the press releases. For MER, I can give you the total for MERA: 7730.50 meters and for MERB as of Sol 3136 is 35429.63 meters. In order for me to extract the "official" drive meters per Sol, that would take quite a bit of time. If you tell me what your goal is maybe I can find an easier route (no pun intended).

Paolo

[climber]

I've to reconstruct info since April this year (stolen computer!) which is not too much work to do, but I had quite some weekly odo infos I can share. I'll post my .xlsx file on the Statistics topic for all to have a look

[Matt Sidor]

Thanks to everyone for these helpful pointers! I will poke around this forum a little more and check the Statistics thread.

Paolo -- if press releases contain odometry, that is probably accurate enough for what I want. I'm sure I can find a way to comb through archived press releases and extract the odometry figures.

What I'm trying to do, ultimately, is create an interactive data visualization so that a user can select a Sol number and see exactly how far each rover was at that point in their missions, probably with dynamic bar graphs. (I also want to include Sojourner even though I know it didn't get very far!) I want the user to see just how far MERA and MERB have gotten compared to MSL, but also how much more quickly MSL is catching up to their distances and maybe a good estimate of when MSL will beat their records. Also I would want the user to see the latest figures, as close to real-time as possible.

Going back and recalculating distances for each individual Sol may be too painstaking, but maybe I can make a good estimate if I know which Sols the rovers actually moved and which ones they were stationary? (Or maybe that's even more painstaking...)

Also, if there's a bunch of raw data sitting somewhere that contains this data, I would be happy to process it myself in my own free time, if there's a way I could access it.

[RoverDriver]

...
Paolo -- if press releases contain odometry, that is probably accurate enough for what I want. I'm sure I can find a way to comb through archived press releases and extract the odometry figures.
...
Also, if there's a bunch of raw data sitting somewhere that contains this data, I would be happy to process it myself in my own free time, if there's a way I could access it.

Matt, I meant to say that MSL press releases should have odometry. I'm not sure about MER. On some occasions this was reported but I believe most of the time it was not.

Another source of info is the Mission Manager reports which I know are available but I do not know where since I get them by email. I don't think there is a publicly available source that lists all drive/IDD Sols for MER and drive/ARM/SSS Sols for MSL.

Note for Admins: if this is not already included in the FAQs, Mission Manager Reports might be a good source of info as includes details of the daily (solly?) activities.

Paolo

[climber]

This is incomplete information specialy at the begining of the mission.
As I told here, yesterday, last year infos will be easy to reconstruct and I'll do it ASAP.
All infos come form weekly status.
I hope it'll help.
 Statistics_Spirit___Opportunity.xls ( 945.5K ) Number of downloads: 1003

[Matt Sidor]

This is incomplete information specialy at the begining of the mission.
As I told here, yesterday, last year infos will be easy to reconstruct and I'll do it ASAP.
All infos come form weekly status.
I hope it'll help.
 Statistics_Spirit___Opportunity.xls ( 945.5K ) Number of downloads: 1003

WOW, Climber, this is great! Thank you so much! Where did you get this information from? Can I credit you if/when I get this project up and running?

[climber]

That's mainly from weekly updates here: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity
There's some personal weekly work you can credit me for if you feel so but I'm already happy if this could help you in your project.
As I said, I'll update the file ASAP since this version is from my last available backup in April...(I was up to date but my computer as been stolen)

[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.

----------------
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.

----------------

(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

[Matt Sidor]

Wonderful, thank you Phil, and thanks to everyone for your pointers! I think I have enough to get started. I'll keep you all posted on my (gradual) progress on this...I'll probably start working on it over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Kudos to this awesome community of smart space probe enthusiasts!!