[X] My Assistant

[fredk]

We may have the same scenery for quite a while. From the latest release:

The rover team... has suspended driving Spirit temporarily while studying the ground around the rover and planning simulation tests of driving options with a test rover... "Spirit is in a very difficult situation," JPL's John Callas... said Monday. "We are proceeding methodically and cautiously. It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again."

In the past week, the digging-in of Spirit's wheels has raised concerns that the rover's belly pan could now be low enough to contact rocks underneath the chassis, which would make getting out of the situation more difficult.

[Astro0]

Before we go calling on Jawas or sending nprev to Mars full of beer and jerky, it'd be nice to have as much information about the situation as possible.

I'd like to get a look 'under' the rover. We can't get a 'clear' view with the MI on the IDD, but what about shadows.
With the extra power that Spirit has available, would it be useful to look at the shadows she's casting late in the day and see what clearances Spirit has from the ground and a better idea of the current position of the wheels? Where is the sun setting right now at Gusev?
With our knowledge of camera views, angles, distances, how much information can we come up with at UMSF about the situation on our own?
Paolo has been very generous with the answers he has given so far, but he and the rest of the team are going to be busy for quite a while.
Working out as much as we can ourselves would be an excellent exercise - and as Doug said, we should 'get creative, and we might get out!'
We don't have our own rover or a Mars yard to test our ideas, but could we come up with another way to test strategies?

This could be lots of fun...

[RoverDriver]

...
I'd like to get a look 'under' the rover. We can't get a 'clear' view with the MI on the IDD, but what about shadows.
With the extra power that Spirit has available, would it be useful to look at the shadows she's casting late in the day and see what clearances Spirit has from the ground and a better idea of the current position of the wheels? Where is the sun setting right now at Gusev?
...

Tried. Rover is oriented North-South (front towards North), and left side lower than the right side (negative roll) about 10-12deg (will know the exact angles in a short while). Therefore we need to take images at sunrise, the ideal time is 6:00-6:10. We got 5 NAVCAMs on the morning of sol 1902 between 5:50 and 6:13 (IIRC) and today (morning of sol 1905) we should have 5 more captured after this set. I have not seen these last 5 images but It looks like the sun is blocked by the top of Home Plate at the time the Sun would be aligned with the belly pan. Sigh.

Hope this helps.

Paolo