[X] My Assistant

[remcook]

I hope we won't have the result for this one in quite some time, but Spirit had some steering problems (only steering problems though)

so which one is going to last the longest?
Oppy did much less legwork, so my guess is on it.

[slinted]

Opportunity might be leaving the 'parking lot' within the next couple weeks. The etched terrain might present significant driving hazards, and the dunes themselves are growing. We might have been fooled into thinking these drives were easier than they should have been, mainly because Oppy has been running straight south aligned with the dunes. If she had to cut across a sandy dune every couple of meters, we'd be looking at significantly slower drives I'd imagine.

[dvandorn]

Opportunity might be leaving the 'parking lot' within the next couple weeks.  The etched terrain might present significant driving hazards, and the dunes themselves are growing.  We might have been fooled into thinking these drives were easier than they should have been, mainly because Oppy has been running straight south aligned with the dunes.  If she had to cut across a sandy dune every couple of meters, we'd be looking at significantly slower drives I'd imagine.

If you look closely at the super-hi-res images of the area, you can see that the evaporite outcrops tend to break up the dunes. It's a little circuitous, but it looks like Oppy will be able to chart a course through pretty flat ground.

I don't think Oppy is going to find a lot of problems in trafficability yet. I think that Spirit is definitely going to be traveling rougher ground than Oppy for some time to come, and that's got to be rougher on the wheels and the associated mobility systems. So, I think the odds are pretty good that Spirit will be the first of the two immobilized. But immobilized is not necessarily dead...

-the other Doug