The Rover team has successfully reformatted the flash memory: NASA Reformats Memory of Longest-Running Mars Rover

Very cool!

Welcome to the forum Fernando. As always, any new contributions are always welcome.
Keep it up! We will look forwards to having one more way to look at Mars.

So, do we know yet what route has been chosen to get to the "smectite valley"?
I think I saw something from L. Crumpler that indicates that Opportunity will be doing some hill climbing.

That was my thinking. The team was not taking any chances.

Wow!

These are not the 'droids you are looking for, move along...

Actually point 3 has been already discussed on the MER forum.

The problem with "tank tread" designs are the mass penalty and, more importantly, treads can get thrown or break.

When that happens then your rover becomes crippled. With the current design, even if one wheel fails you can still move.
Spirit was able to do this for years

Ooohhh!!! That is quite nice!

Thank-you Damia.

I second that!

Given your unique background, I would say, give it your best shot. You might surprise everyone.
At the very least you would have tried.

Congratulations! Damien

That is truly amazing!

Found an interesting article on Slashdot on how Nasa/JPL is able to deliver all of the cool images and data we use here on UMSF.

NASA achieves data goals for Mars rover with open source software

Since it deals with Software and systems, I thought I would share it here.
Admins. if you think of a better place, please let me know.

That definitely looks better. The black strut looks 'black' now as well.

Astro0, I believe Ondaweb was posing his question based on the article on the AEGIS software.
His point is, why are they going to wait 9 to 12 month (as per the article) to install the software, when
it would be more useful during the approach phase to Mt. Sharp; where we will start doing longer, autonomous, drives.

An interesting article in Information Week.

Looks like there is a plan for Curiosity to get little sister Opportunity's AEGIS software capability.

A jump to the left! Knees in tight...

JPL has been posting updates on the MSL project page.

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/news/whatsnew/...

What is interesting is that on September 17th, the use of DAN was part of the regular drive sequence.

EGD, I think you might lose that bet.

I am betting this is not hematite simply because these are hollow spherules; and all of the broken hematite spherules we have seen in the past have been solid.

Thanks for that, Emily. I did a search and it was very enlightening.

Though the processes would be similar, it made me think just how alien the Martian environment is and how it would effect what we see.

I think you have the colour balance better here Stu. You can really tell that we have something special here.

One of the videos that I watched that explained the operation of the SAM instrument, had one of the investigators explain what happens to the sample after it is analyzed.
He explained, that to avoid contaminating the martian environment, the powdered sample gets dumped into a bin at the bottom of the rover and retained. The bin apparently has sufficient capacity that far exceeds the expected lifetime of the mission.

I very much agree with you vikingmars, but I also think NASA needs to do a better job. Part of it's mandate is to educate the public and one way would be to expose the American public more to the Metric System. But they have not been doing a particularly good job with MSL, given how popular it has been. I find frustrating how, much of the material presented and many of the presenters still using the Imperial system, when data was being presented.

NASA is squandering a brilliant opportunity while interest is still high.

Congratulations Eduardo! You deserve the recognition

And the tech is pretty cool if updating here means an update to GE. Got to love it!