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

[fredk]

Will Opportunity climb any higher than the brown elevation

All we've heard is the proposed route map on Crumpler's blog. It shows the route climbing pretty much to the highest point ("summit lithology"). I seriously hope we make it there...

[vikingmars]

Totally agree with you Fredk.
People and EPO people like me would not understand if a 360° pan is not made from the very summit of Endeavour Crater's rim.
This would mark a big step and will be seen as a major event in the history of the exploration of Mars !

[fredk]

It's now a week since we've received new pictures - the last were from 3758. It's not just that jpl/exploratorium aren't updating, since Lemmon's tau page also hasn't been updated since 3758.

We have been seeing previously unseen old images appear, though, which sounds like a good sign.

[Phil Stooke]

The JPL status report says there have been several flash memory faults in a row - typically these result from trying to write data to a bad area. Spirit went through this as well. The long-term fix is a reformatting, but that carries its own risks so it's only done when really necessary. That point might be approaching.

Phil

[marsophile]

Is there risk in waiting too long to reformat flash? That is, could continuing flash anomalies prevent reformatting falsh? Or is the reformatting process itself independent of flash?

[MahFL]

Or is the reformatting process itself independent of flash?

The Rover also has 128 MB of DRAM, which is where the formatting program would run from, so it's independent.

[Greenish]

It is a ground problem, not a rover issue causing delay in images: https://twitter.com/nivnac/status/504757927954362368

[fredk]

I'm curious how James has learnt this - has the tracking database provided clues?

[Astro0]

I guess while we wait for news and images, here's a pan from Sol 3749 using images that appeared on Exploratorium in the last few days.



Uses both left and right hand pancam images, plus some artificial sky.

[jamescanvin]

I'm curious how James has learnt this - has the tracking database provided clues?

I don't know for sure. If I comment that there is no data on Twitter I get a bunch of worried replies, so i was really heading that off as there is no reason to be concerned.

Circumstantial evidence that Oppy is OK:
1) We've seen data/images drop out many times before.
2) Recent comments on Twitter from insiders have sounded routine and unconcerned.
3) There are old images/data downlinked on recent sols.
4) New sequences are appearing in the tracking database (all be it just tau obs)
5) There are a bunch of 'Unexpected sequences' in the on board data list (which implies that the rover has sent data that the database had not been told about, i.e. ground data is missing, rover data fine)

[djellison]

It is a ground problem, not a rover issue

It's a rover issue.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-292
An increasing frequency of computer resets on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has prompted the rover team to make plans to reformat the rover's flash memory.

The resets, including a dozen this month, interfere with the rover's planned science activities, even though recovery from each incident is completed within a day or two.

[PaulM]

When Spirit first landed its software crashed when its flash became more than 50% full. While this bug was being fixed, Spirit was switched to a mode where it did not use flash memory to store data. The picture in the link below was taken during this time:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press.../20040128a.html

This shows that Opportunity would be perfectly usable with flash memory disabled, although it would be able to do far less work each day.

[eoincampbell]

With flash memory disabled, is driving possible?
I recall those tense Spirit flash days when Peter Theisinger
was calming us all down...quite rightly...

[PaulM]

With flash memory disabled, is driving possible?
I recall those tense Spirit flash days when Peter Theisinger
was calming us all down...quite rightly...

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.

[climber]

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