Update on pictures and Whrs:
Click to view attachment
thanks to recent light "burst", Spirit approached Oppy after surpass almost 1 year ago!)

Thanks Dilo,

I love your date setting in Italian....

It almost looks like some cosmic joker's sending us a message via Spirit's power curve

I'm still waiting for someone on UMSF to put together a graph in anaglyph form. I'm surprised we don't see more of that sort of thing.

Other milestones,
Last Oppy drive put the total odometer for both MER above 25 kilometers. (24969 + (~) 70m
Also,
On 09/09/09 (or so ), total number of pictures reached 250.000.
This is ~62 pictures per sol and per Rover or 3600$ per picture... if all costs have ever to be considered for taking pictures only.
Last 25.000 pictures have been shot in 251 sols.

Does that include the double counting of M1,2,3 etc versions of the same picture?

of the 250,000 images:

...109,689 were of the sun dial
...132,275 were of the sun

That's a surprize. That only leaves about 10 000 images not of the sun or sundial! And a lot of those must be navcam odometry frames - I wonder how many?

I think PDP8E was being sarcastic.

hey doug,
guilty...

Thanks for clarifying that, PDP! It would be interesting though to know how many frames have been sundial/sun/odometry. I could imagine writing a script that jumps through the jpl jpeg pages and counts them up. (Not downloading each image, of course.) Odometry would be easy - just add up the navcam subframes downsampled frames (match "EDN" in filename). Sun/sundial could be done by matching on the img width and height attributes...

We all know that odometry means weels turn and not real kilometers and that the sun dials can't be stealed by the Martians without been seen since they are shot so many times . Well, I didn't ear that the MER sun pictures are used by Soho's team either.

Anyway I like the milestone 25 kilometres, 250.000 pictures, 4000 sols, 6 martian years coming along nearly altogether at the same time.

The more I think about it the more useful it would be to do a thorough count of images. One other use would be to find all the images that appear on exploratorium but not on the jpl gallery pages. Has anyone else noticed that there are images missing from the jpl pages? For example, these images are not on the jpl pages:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ARP1979R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B8P2544L7M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...E5P1110L0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/pa...E5P2550L7M1.JPG
(these are from sols 1961 and 1972 (Oppy) and 1990 (Spirit)).

These were all released on August 9th and 11th on exploratorium, but never made it to the jpl gallery, obviously because of some glitch (August 10th images are missing too). But it would be good to have a list of all such missing gallery images, even though the images are public at exploratorium. The jpl gallery is a great, easy way to look for old images from some particular sol.

I figured I'd check the stats myself. This is based on images downlinked, excluding multiple versions, and doesn't rely on the image browsing sites, but I cannot vouch for absolute completeness. I also am ignoring thumbnails and looking only at the EFF, ESF, and EDN types. I see a total of 120,604 Spirit images, 124,728 Opportunity images, for 245k images. That adds up to 261 Gbits (2.5% of which is from thumbnails and engineering/calibration data) as downlinked. Image number by camera (A/B) is: Pancam 78,929/80,972; MI 5,824/5,996; engineering--the rest. Among Pancam, 8,806/13,298 are of the Sun or sky; 16,482/15,739 are of the cal targets (aka sundial). Those two categories add up to <4% of total Pancam bits downlinked. The rovers have taken over 300,000 images (147,166/160,573); the difference between these numbers and the first set comes from images taken but deleted on board (e.g., some empty dust devil movies) or taken only in thumbnail form (or maybe some missed in my count?). By type, Pancam images are mostly EFF or ESF (like Sun and sundial), MI are almost all EFF, and engineering images are mostly EFF or EDN (like autonav).

* The numbers are as of mid-day (UTC) 15 Sept. 2009 (probably sols 2026/2006 PM downlink).

[edit: fixed Mbits to Gbits. What's 3 orders of magnitude among friends...]

Hey Deimos,

I was finishing up my lunch and doodling how to approach an Exploratorium count with a perl and shell script when your posting came across the wires! Thanks for the independent numbers. You rock!

Agreed, very cool to have those numbers, thanks Deimos. Roughly a third of all pancam frames are sun/sky/sundial. (Should the total volume be perhaps Gbits rather than Mbits?)

With this latest week of drives, the combined driving distance of Spirit and Opportunity is now 26.62 km which beats the Apollo 16 rover driving distance of 26.55 km.

Just for reference:

Vehical / Distance

Lunokhod 2 / 37.00 km
Apollo 17 rover / 35.89 km
Apollo 15 rover / 27.76 km
Apollo 16 rover / 26.55 km
Opportunity (2056) / 18.89 km
Lunokhod 1 / 10.50 km
Spirit (2076) / 7.73 km
Sojourner / ?

Interesting figures indeed.

We've now (last status nov 5th) roved 6209m since Victoria which added nearly 50% more odometry since there (started at 12678m).

I believe that Sojourner (the little rover that could...) drove a total distance of about 110 meters... longest drive during one sol was about 7 meters? How far am I off ?

The total distance will never be known. After Pathfinder died, contact between Sojourner and Pathfinder ceased. Sojourner was programmed such that if this ever happened (like if Sojourner wandered behind a rock or something), to circle Pathfinder, trying to establish contact. This would continue until either Sojourner re-established contact, or died.

Pathfinder died, so contact was probably never re-established. Sojourner spent the rest of its days, unattended to by anyone or anything, circling its lifeless companion, trying desperately to contact it. All in vain.

Actually - we can be fairly confident about how far Sojourner got after pathfinder died, as there's a fairly convincing identification via HiRISE of Sojourners location. We had an entire thread here about it- a pool of where we thought Sojourner would be

Sojourner has been found? I thought its location remained unknown =o. Apparently I didn't keep up with it.

And how did you resolve the issue of not knowing how many times Sojourner circled Pathfinder?

It's fairly clear from the location that it drove from its last know position, in a straight line partially back towards the lander, and stopped.

In a perfect world - it would have circled the lander. But the pathfinder landing site was far from a perfect world.

post 70+ in this thread - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...irise&st=60

On november 20th total Sols was 4160.
If one devides 900M$ by 4160x84600 (Number of second per Earth day), he'll find that costs of 1 rover second hit 2.5$.
Nominal mission was above 52$

Keep in mind that the whole 'Bambi circling its dead mother' imagery was always more poetic than predictive. The code said to return to the lander; the result of certain keep-outs was that circling would occur on perfect terrain. But where Sojourner was on sol 83, Ender was on the most likely first direction. That is significant because Ender & Wedge almost ended Sojourner's travels much earlier, with a rover driver threatening to turn off all safety checks and command enough wheel turns to grind the rock to dust if that's what it took to move again. That terrain, the best entrance to the Rock Garden, was nearly non-navigable. An unattended rover with fault protections (tilt, etc) on had zero chance of passage. (My guess in '97 was right against Ender--wouldn't have won the pool, but close.)

Note that Sojourner got stuck somewhere around 6x nominal mission. The response to both Opportunity and Spirit being stuck has been much more cautious, despite being even further "past warranty". I think the real explanation is a somewhat different culture (despite a similar cast & crew); equally, though, it is clear that the MERs each had more future potential from continued roving, compared to Sojourner with the Rock Garden abandoned.

Also, I have 7 m (sol) and 104 m (mission--before the last couple m) for Sojourner.

That's an interesting perspective, Deimos. Would you say this culture change is a result of increased experience (and confidence) with Mars rover operations in general, or increased maturation of the players , or perhaps a liitle of both?

All teasing aside, though, Sojourner was a secondary vehicle with admittedly far less capability then the MERs so its premature loss would not have been the end of the Pathfinder mission, just a degradation. This would probably foster a tendency to take greater risks with it if the potential rewards seemed at all achievable.

Update on pictures and Whrs, in occasion of 6th anniversary:
Click to view attachment
As usual, on the left plot green curve shows cumulative pictures (Spirit only) and red is total (both rovers). Blue dotted is average pics/day from both.
Right plot shows energy in whr/sol, decay slope for Spirit is really worring...

Spirit is less than one mission duration away from breaking Viking 2 duration of 2245 sols
Fingers crossed.

Fingers crossed?!?
Nah! 90 days will be a piece of cake!

100% agree. What I was thinking was that if she sleeps at that time and dies before spring come, we'll never know if she made it.
But I'm on the optimistic side too; no doubt she'll make it and rove again.

I trust the Sun will look after Spirit
Thanks for those intriguing stats Climber...

3 milestones rounded up at the end of January 2010!
Oppy reaches 12 miles
27 km total for the Rovers
Which is 45 times more than scheduled

Also, there are more than 62 days differences between Sols and Days since landing. Except Scott Maxwell , they all must be happy they did synchronise a while ago

New update.
Click to view attachment
I'm starting to worry about Spirit power...

Scott Maxwell Tweeted:

"Below ~140W-hr/sol, we're power-negative & start dipping into batteries. Too many sols at that level & we hibernate. "

Hang in there, gal...

Hoo boy. Deus ex Machina!!!

"Don't bet against Spirit"... <---- good advice, she's a tough one.

Here we go (139Whr on sol 2203):

@marsroverdriver mentioned that as IIRC, Spirit is down to 133whr as of March 22 (~ sol2210)
Hang in there girl!

This was mentioned in the spirit thread, but probably worth mentioning here. 140Whr is no longer the threshold for hibernation:

Mark,

Sorry for replying to such an old post, but as Spirit and Opportunity are now closing in on the VL-1 record I have been trying to understand exactly what the record is.

While VL-1 was, as you say, given the faulty commands on sol 2252, as far as I can tell there was no response to that command and of course no subsequent response at all. At the time communications sessions were only being done approximately weekly, so as far as I can tell the last time that anything was actually heard from VL-1 was the previous DSN session back on sol 2245 (the date that most sources give for EOM)

I guess the question is: Is the end-of-mission, the day we broke it, or the day we last heard from it?

James

I was just back in France but contacted the following day after we received no downlink from VL1... It's really sol 2245. We all agreed on this Sol date at JPL as the most relevant for the end of mission date : i.e. the last transmission received from VL1 (with latest images and meteorological data from Sol 2238)
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=156850

If I understand Eduardo's Oppy's route map, on Sol 2188, Oppy reached the most western point of her whole journey... since she'll rove east from now on.

Click to view attachment

Until, that is, she's done with Endeavour and Iazu, and then heads back west to Bopolu and then farther into Miyamoto...

As a coincidence, half a mission ago, on ~sol 1100 she was on her most Eastern point so far, and yes, she's supposed to challenge this very soon.
What about showing your BLACK MAN at Miyamoto for scale, fredk?

I checked out the JPL Rover website on the pictures section: for the first time since landing, Oppy shows more Sols than Spirit: 2209 vs 2208

Update:

Sorry I missed this one 2 weeks ago.
On sol 2218, April 21st 2010, Oppy from Victoria surpassed Total Spirit mileage.
On previous drive Total distance was 20385m (source Mer website) and since Oppy left Victoria at 12678m, the traverse was 7707m.
Total for Spirit is 7730m and Oppy sol 2218 was over 60m (source Eduardo's map).
This gives a pretty nice prespective of what has already been accomplished during the traverse.

I guess this really does give an insight into how you break down a daunting task into small, manageable chunks. 19km in an ageing rover appears impossible - but by taking it day by day the impossible can now be seen in the camera lens, growing larger with every driving sol. By my rough calculations (and please correct me if I'm wrong, Fredk, Eduardo, Stu etc) although she has covered more ground than Spirit since leaving Victoria, Oppy has still only (only!) covered about 7,300 metres, as at sol 2226, of the 19km route to Endeavour crater (that is about 38.4% of the journey - I wish they would still show that bar on the maps!)

This just gives one pause for thought on the magnitude of this trek doesn't it? Every day that Oppy drives, whether it be 10 mtrs or 100 just keeps eating away at the task.

I'd be interested to know how others visualise this distance. Personally, I do it in two ways. Firstly, I think where I could be if I drove from my house as far as Oppy has travelled? - In my case this would take me into the neighbouring county! Secondly, re the trip to Endeavour, I see the 11,700 mtrs as just over 29 laps of a full size running track still to go.

As ever - Go Oppy!

Neil

I think that these numbers aren't quite right. The 12678m figure quoted by climber probably comes from this JPL update, but that number corresponds to the odometry at the end of sol 1687. That's several long drives into the journey, which began on sol 1683. The same update notes that Opportunity was already 314 meters along at that point, bringing the total odometry to 8021m as of sol 2218.

Personally I still like to think of the journey as having started from Duck Bay. My "records" (I use that term loosely) indicate that that would add another 565 meters. Estimating the last three drives at 75 meters combined, said "records" look like this as of today (sol 2238), stage by stage:

Thanks Poolio - I'm more than happy to be corrected!

If we take Duck Bay as the starting point as you suggest, are we still looking at a total journey of 19km or do we have an update on that figure as well?

Neil