[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.

[Ron Hobbs]

Don't think it'd be the IDD...

Thanks all for the clarification. I found that sentence confusing. I thought maybe they would use a technique like Juramike suggested.

[algorimancer]

Extend the arm out as far as possible, and use the MI to stare at a patch of distinctive grains.

That's a really interesting notion. Much the same might be achieved by having pancam stare at the arm or a distant target. Either would require onboard processing of a long-running image sequence, something like watching for dust devils but more intense.

[fredk]

Using the arm that way might be useful in weather-station mode, but I'd be surprized if you'd get useful seismology out of it since I'd expect the arm movements to be completely dominated by wind. But then you could turn the argument around and use the arm this way as a wind monitor, since we have no wind sock. At least with the arm extended out in one direction you could presumably read off one component of the wind velocity by looking at the arm's displacement. Rotate the arm around 90 degrees to get another component, perhaps.

[elakdawalla]

Topic split, continued here from the point that Spirit's wheels started moving!