News about Spirit and Opportunity on Mars...

[Rick]

Opportunity Climbs to High Point on Rim

After completing two drives this week, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has paused to photograph the panoramic vista from the highest point the rover has reached during its 40 months of exploring the western rim of Mars' Endeavour Crater. The view is one of the grandest in Opportunity's Martian career of nearly 11 years and more than 25.8 miles (41.6 kilometers).

The rover has been having trouble with a section of its flash memory, the type of memory that can store data even when power is switched off. Opportunity's operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, have adopted a tactic of avoiding use of the flash memory, while they prepare a software remedy to restore its usability.

The rover is atop "Cape Tribulation" on Endeavour Crater's rim. Like the informal names for several other features around the 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) crater, the name Cape Tribulation is a reference to one of the locations visited by the HMS Endeavour captained by James Cook in his first voyage of discovery to Australia and New Zealand in 1769-1771.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4437

[Rick]

Hilltop Panorama Marks Mars Rover's 11th Anniversary

A panorama from one of the highest elevations that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached in its 11 years on Mars includes the U.S. flag at the summit.

The view is from the top of "Cape Tribulation," a raised section of the rim of Endeavour Crater. The panorama spans the interior of the 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) crater and extends to the rim of another crater on the horizon.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4455

[Rick]

Several Drives This Week Put Opportunity Near Marathon Distance

The project is operating the rover without using the Flash storage system to avoid reset problems and is using instead random access memory (RAM) for temporary storage of telemetry. The project is preparing to mask off the troubled sector of Flash and resume using the remainder of the Flash file system in normal operations.

Total odometry is 26.02 miles (41.88 kilometers).

More: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll.html#sol3909

[Rick]

Rover Examining Odd Mars Rocks at Valley Overlook

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed last month to an overlook for surveying "Marathon Valley," a science destination chosen because spectrometer observations from orbit indicate exposures of clay minerals.

Near the overlook, it found blocky rocks so unlike any previously examined on Mars that the rover team has delayed other activities to provide time for a thorough investigation.

"We drove to the edge of a plateau to look down in the valley, and we found these big, dark-gray blocks along the ridgeline," said Opportunity Project Scientist Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "We checked one and found its composition is different from any ever measured before on Mars. So, whoa! Let's study these more before moving on."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4502

[Rick]

NASA Reformats Memory of Longest-Running Mars Rover

After avoiding use of the rover's flash memory for three months, the team operating NASA's 11-year-old Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reformatted the vehicle's flash memory banks and resumed storing some data overnight for transmitting later.

The team received confirmation from Mars on March 20 that the reformatting completed successfully. The rover switched to updated software earlier this month that will avoid using one of the seven banks of onboard flash memory. Some of the flash-memory problems that prompted the team to adopt a no-flash mode of operations in late 2014 were traced to Bank 7. The remaining six banks provide more nonvolatile memory capacity than the rover has used on all but a few days since landing on Mars in January 2004.

In the no-flash mode of operations, Opportunity continued conducting science investigations and driving, but transmitted each day's accumulated data before powering down for overnight conservation of energy. Flash memory is nonvolatile, meaning it retains data even without power. Opportunity also uses random access memory, which retains data only while power is on.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4517

[Rick]

NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover Passes Marathon Distance

There was no tape draped across a finish line, but NASA is celebrating a win. The agency's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon Tuesday -- 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) - with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.

"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "A first time happens only once."

The rover team at JPL plans a marathon-length relay run at the laboratory next week to celebrate.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4521

[Rick]

Rover on the Lookout for Dust Devils!

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater next to the "Spirit of St. Louis" crater near the entrance of "Marathon Valley."

The rover had been conducting an in-situ (contact) science campaign at the outcrop named "Thermopylae."

More: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll.html#sol3990

[Rick]

Rock Spire in 'Spirit of St. Louis Crater' on Mars

An elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis," with a rock spire in it, dominates a recent scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

Opportunity completed its 4,000th Martian day, or sol, of work on Mars on April 26, 2015. The rover has been exploring Mars since early 2004.

This scene from late March 2015 shows a shallow crater called Spirit of St. Louis, about 110 feet (34 meters) long and about 80 feet (24 meters) wide, with a floor slightly darker than surrounding terrain. The rocky feature toward the far end of the crater is about 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters) tall, rising higher than the crater's rim.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4570

[Rick]

Martian Reminder of a Pioneering Flight

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is studying an elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis" and a rock spire called "Lindbergh Mound" within the crater.

The crater and several features in and near it are shown in a recent image from Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam).

Throughout Opportunity's 11-plus years on Mars, the science team for the rover has picked crater names from a list of "vessels of exploration," including ships, spacecraft and aircraft. The names informally assigned for this crater and features in it refer to Charles Lindbergh's May 1927 flight from New York to Paris in the airplane he named Spirit of St. Louis, the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4592

[Rick]

Opportunity Reaches 12 Years on Mars!

Opportunity is exploring 'Marathon Valley' on the rim of Endeavour crater. The rover is up on north-facing slopes for improved solar array energy production.

The rover is conducting an in-situ (contact) science campaign on the surface target 'Joseph Collin' (informally named for members of the Lewis and Clark expedition).

More: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll.html#sol4263

[Rick]

Studying Grooves

Opportunity is wrapping up exploration of 'Marathon Valley' on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The rover has driven to an area were the rock outcrop has interesting grooves. The science team is using Opportunity to conduct an extensive visual documentation campaign at this area.

More: http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status_opportunityAll.html#sol4458

[Rick]

NASA's Opportunity Rover to Explore Mars Gully

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover will drive down a gully carved long ago by a fluid that might have been water, according to the latest plans for the 12-year-old mission. No Mars rover has done that before.

The longest-active rover on Mars also will, for the first time, visit the interior of the crater it has worked beside for the last five years. These activities are part of a two-year extended mission that began Oct. 1, the newest in a series of extensions going back to the end of Opportunity's prime mission in April 2004.

Opportunity launched on July 7, 2003 and landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004 (PST), on a planned mission of 90 Martian days, which is equivalent to 92.4 Earth days.

"We have now exceeded the prime-mission duration by a factor of 50," noted Opportunity Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Milestones like this are reminders of the historic achievements made possible by the dedicated people entrusted to build and operate this national asset for exploring Mars."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6642