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Posted by: alan May 18 2005, 04:29 AM

Place your bets. When will Oppy be free of this dune. Pick the sol when all of the wheels are out of the trench and on top of the soil.
I'll start by picking sol 490

Posted by: dot.dk May 18 2005, 04:51 AM

I don't think (hope) it will take 23 SOLS to get out of this!

I will say in about a week we will be free. So I bet we are free on SOL 474

The winner get's a Mars bar right?

Posted by: CosmicRocker May 18 2005, 06:09 AM

Good idea, but I was hoping we'd get another sol or two before having to hazard a guess. I think we may need to better define the conditions where we would all agree Opportunity is mostly moving freely. May I suggest a progress ratio of 1 unit of length of actual movement per 2 units of length of driving attempt?

I totally lost out on the Titan landing location poll because I got into that bet after all the good locations had already been chosen. I see that there are major risks when betting early, too.

However we define success, I'll pick sol 480, and take my chances. (I'm really tempted to guess it will be sooner than that, but I am sticking with 480.)

Posted by: dvandorn May 18 2005, 07:20 AM

I'll say Sol 479, but that we won't drive very far (less than 20 meters) from the "free" spot for another three to five sols after that.

-the other Doug

Posted by: chris May 18 2005, 09:19 AM

482 for me

Chris

Posted by: djellison May 18 2005, 09:35 AM

I'm going to be brave, and out of character is predicting ahead of most people - and say that oppy will be up and out of the trench on onto the surface properly by Sol 475

Doug

Posted by: TheChemist May 18 2005, 09:39 AM

I 'll put my bet on Sol 476, thank you...

By the way, no official announcement of the Titan landing poll yet

Posted by: ustrax May 18 2005, 09:42 AM

477

Posted by: djellison May 18 2005, 10:00 AM

I'm still waiting for some papers or announcements from the Huyg team to wrap that one up

Doug

Posted by: Tman May 18 2005, 10:16 AM

Is sol 483 still free? Ok! My vote sol 483 in terms of an average of 3 meters wheel turns per sol.

Posted by: OWW May 18 2005, 11:59 AM

I think it will be sol 485.

But actually I'm more interested in when Opp will reach the 'real' etched terrain, now that the dunes prove to be such a pain. How many meters left to go?

Posted by: mike May 18 2005, 05:11 PM

I say sol 470.

Posted by: alan May 18 2005, 06:13 PM

A quick analysis of the bets so far (best to do this before most of the options are taken) with 11 bets in we have an average of 479, the earliest is 470 (mike) latest is 490 (me)
It seems I'm the most pessimistic here, hope I'm wrong.

Posted by: garybeau May 18 2005, 06:29 PM

I'm going to go with Sol 486. I don't want to be too pessimistic, but things never go as quick as I would like to see. Plus, all the good numbers are used up.

Gary

Posted by: RNeuhaus May 18 2005, 07:11 PM

My guess is that Opportunity will be free of sand stuck by sun 491. On the other words, that is when Opportunity has reached at a point which it will turn on the other way.

Rodolfo

Posted by: Chmee May 18 2005, 07:25 PM

477 all the way baby! Note to self: Send email to Steve Squires to rev Oppy up so i can win the Mars bar

Posted by: alan May 18 2005, 07:37 PM

477's already taken how about 478 instead?

Posted by: EckJerome May 18 2005, 09:58 PM

Bob, I bid one dollar! Oh...wait. Okay, Sol 474.

Posted by: garybeau May 18 2005, 10:00 PM

Hmmmm. May have to re-think my estimate. Steve Squyres update.....

"We're going to kick her into a slightly higher gear today, commanding 8 meters of wheel turns, and we'll see what we see. Optimism continues to run high. "

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

Gary

Posted by: TheChemist May 18 2005, 10:09 PM

Oppy might be out of the trench after the 2nd 8m wheel turn, which would make all of us (except mike) look like extremely pathetic pessimists

Posted by: dot.dk May 18 2005, 10:49 PM

Now we're talking. looking forward to that drive

Posted by: mike May 19 2005, 12:23 AM

I'm good.

Posted by: Myran May 19 2005, 09:45 PM

Are sol 479 taken? If not I have it.
Thats on a weekend?
Ill take that one anyhow.

Posted by: john_s May 19 2005, 09:51 PM

I just had this horrible thought that Oppy will suddenly spring free, dash across the trough, and bury itself in the dune on the other side.

Posted by: mike May 20 2005, 12:28 AM

I was wondering the same thing.. but that dune in front of Oppy (behind?) looks pretty simple.

Posted by: Bill Harris May 20 2005, 01:32 AM

Uh, so did the dune behind (in front of?) Oppy a few sols ago.

I'll vote for "soon" on her freedom...

--Bill

Posted by: dvandorn May 20 2005, 02:10 AM

Sorry, I took Sol 479 two days ago...

-the other Doug

Posted by: alan May 20 2005, 02:24 AM

sols taken 470, 474,475,476,477, 479,480, 482,483, 485,486, 490,491
chmee asked for 477 I bumped him to 478 since 477 was taken
so Myran how about 481?

Posted by: Tesheiner May 20 2005, 10:17 AM

My bet is Sol 473.

Tesheiner

Posted by: RNeuhaus May 20 2005, 03:33 PM

As remainder, now it is sol 470. The winner will get a ticket to Mars.

Posted by: mike May 20 2005, 05:16 PM

I'm not sure they could see the dune in which Opportunity is currently stuck when they started the drive. I wager $1 billion that Opportunity would have to try very hard to get stuck in the dune behind (in front of?) it.

And today Opportunity escapes its sandy trap! Enjoy.

Posted by: ddeerrff May 20 2005, 05:25 PM

As a lurker, I have to jump in here and pick Sol 472.

Posted by: brianc May 20 2005, 08:28 PM

Ref : JPL e-mail addresses for passing on congrats, mars bars etc

All seem to be of the format forename.surname@jpl.nasa.gov

e.g in the unlikely event Michael Jackson worked there it would be michael.jackson@jpl.nasa.gov

I guess MJ wouldn't have an trouble 'backing out' of difficult situations, perhaps thy ought to hire him

Posted by: djellison May 20 2005, 10:06 PM

I'll try attaching a golden trowel as an email attachment, but I have a feeling it'll get stuck in my wireless ADSL router.

Doug

Posted by: Myran May 22 2005, 06:57 PM

Thanx for correcting me alan, I take 481, else it would have been only ½ a mars bar!

Joined up on this for a bit of lighharted fun, but to show my optimism andhope we might get a bit more on this Mars buggy that already have surpassed most peoples expectations in any way. Yes also mine, remember when Spirit sat in Gusev disabled only able to say 'beep' at the start of that mission? We've come a long way since!

Posted by: Bubbinski May 22 2005, 09:10 PM

I'll take Sol 484 then.

Posted by: EckJerome May 24 2005, 05:18 PM

Okay, Oppy, today's my sol....come out for a stroll!

Posted by: Myran May 25 2005, 05:19 AM

Lets see Sol 474 + 7 days = 481!

Posted by: OWW May 25 2005, 08:51 AM

from http://space.com/missionlaunches/050524_rovers_update.html

and



So let's see... 474 + 14 = 488. Looks like Alan's first estimate in this thread was pretty accurate.

Posted by: CosmicRocker May 26 2005, 05:36 AM

Yep. The progress has been remarkably linear, so far. I wasn't expecting that, and wonder if I get a second guess.

I have been plotting the progress that has been published by JPL and others so far, and the ratio of advancement to attempted distance driven has been pretty much constant.

I was hoping to post the data and some graphs, but other things prevented me from doing that tonight. The progress has been very linear, and the best ratio I have managed to derive is around 0.0056-0.0058. If someone wants to estimate the distance needed to set us free, the equation should be something like Y=0.0057X.

It is encouraging that the ratio has at least held constant.

Posted by: CosmicRocker May 27 2005, 05:11 AM

OK, here are the plots, if anyone is interested.

http://img92.echo.cx/my.php?image=opportunityprogressgraphs3uc.png

The upper graph shows meters attempted versus centimeters advanced, for sols 464-469...the only sols I have individual data for. In the lower graph I have added a point that is the sum of all the previous points, and also a point gleaned from the recent space.com article (which apparently was privy to information from sols later than 469.) They reported a total of 48 meters of attempted driving and 27 centimeters of progress.

What I find most interesting is the fact that a linear best fit equation based on sols 464-469, constrained to pass through the plot's origin, also passes very close to the space.com point, which contains information about an additional 26 meters of attmpted driving.

Apparently the going has not been getting any better for our dear Opportunity, which is quite contrary to what I was expecting to see.

Posted by: chokai May 27 2005, 05:35 AM

It's kinda stating the obvious here but I think getting back on TOP of the sand is going to be a pretty big problem for Opportunity, rather than actually getting out of the dune itself. I have wondered a lot over the last couple of days if they will simply "trench" rather than climbing out. My experience from driving cars on Long Beach in washington state is that sometimes once you have sunk in you'll stay sunk in, even if you can move, until you have some type of major texture change in the sand, such as going from dry to wet. And unlike us here on earth they don't have the luxury of finding some logs or boards and throwing them under the wheels to provide traction and lower the ground pressure until they do get up on top.

Posted by: sapodilla May 27 2005, 07:51 AM

How deep is the soil between the dunes? 5cm? - 10cm? - 15cm?. I think if it`s only about 5 - 10cm Opportunity can turn on the bottom and then drive between the dunes till it get to a safer ground and back on top of the soil. Between dunes - the blue "road" left of Opportunity in this picture: http://www.avaruusmgz.info/vol12/toukokuu/opportunity.html

Posted by: RNeuhaus May 27 2005, 01:49 PM

Maybe Opportunity will find some ice under the floor after trying to rotate the wheels. It is possible to get out of sand only under exceptional conditions without any help. The bigest help is to drive toward to the negative slope. Sometimes, after sinking some cms, it will find a harder texture on the bottom, perhaps, it would be wetter (some humidity??? under the floor?) that would help Opps to get better grip to advance. This is true when I drive a mud floor, the wheels sinks until reach a firmer soil (stones) and it helps to advance.

Hope the Opportunity will be free by the sol 491 as I put my bet.

Rodolfo

Posted by: sapodilla May 30 2005, 04:36 PM

I guess that Oppy need to back about 6 meters to get free. 6cm a Sol x 100 Sols = Sol 580

I think they (MER team) should stop playing with 5 - 10cm a Sol. They should roll the wheels 100 - 200 meters a Sol which is 50cm - 1 meter (0,5%) in reality, then Oppy should get free in 5 - 10 Sols.

Posted by: RNeuhaus May 30 2005, 04:57 PM

Its advancement won't be uniform all long way.

A very important matter is that Opps will reach very soon (about one meter) to start to slide down which will increase its daily advancement.

Rodolfo

Posted by: djellison May 30 2005, 05:13 PM

Yup - you dont want to command too far - because it might suddenly pop up out the trench and head off like a scalded cock back towards Endurance

Doug

Posted by: Myran May 30 2005, 09:19 PM

Were making progress!

Edit: Removed hotlink and say you can look for yourself instead by going to:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportunity/forward_hazcam/2005-05-30/1F170716681EFF55PSP1214R0M1.JPG

Posted by: Bubbinski May 30 2005, 09:40 PM

Couldn't Oppy be programmed for a 250 meter drive, but with built-in stops every 70-80 meters (of commanded wheel turns) to survey the scene and be programmed to stop if they are at a certain point away from the dune?

Also, it seems to me based on the maps and animations that Oppy's gone past the crest of the dune and is on the downhill slope. Here's hoping for freedom soon - I've got dibs on Sol 484 but we'll see what happens. It'll be interesting to see what conclusions and how many scientific papers come out of this impromptu soil science experiment.

Posted by: Jeff7 May 30 2005, 11:12 PM

I guess they don't want to risk driving it too much and then chance it hitting a spot with traction, and then it winds up driving itself right into another dune.

Posted by: Edward Schmitz May 31 2005, 04:01 AM

The auto nav software does not work that way, so it cannot be commanded to do that. It could be reprogrammed to do that, but it would require a development effort and a sw upload. That would take tons of time.

Short answer is - no, it can't.

Posted by: Edward Schmitz May 31 2005, 04:07 AM

I'm down with that, let's be careful rather than fast.

I think fast is what got them in this mess to start with. If they want to do a long, blind drive, break it into small chunks with a short, bump, auto nav drive in between. That way if it gets stuck, the auto nav sequence will go out on fault and stop any further motion. I'm sure that there will be no more 90 meter blind drives in the future.

Ed

Posted by: dvandorn May 31 2005, 06:45 AM

Not in the current terrain, of course not. But when we get out of this, we'll be traveling out of this terrain into different stuff -- and if they decide to retreat back to "safer" ground and approach Victoria from a different angle, over the darker ground with 5cm drifts as oposed to the 70cm+ dunes in the etched terrain, we could easily get back to 100m blind drives again.

-the other Doug

Posted by: dot.dk May 31 2005, 10:47 PM

Played around with excel and made a graph showing meters driven summarized vs. cm gained summarized.

It shows the very linear motion very well. Maybe with a slightly better tendency at the end. This only goes to SOL 475 though.

Actually it shows a slightly worse tendency at the end. Embarrasing that I can't even read my own graph

Posted by: Pando Jun 1 2005, 12:03 AM

Perhaps. It's also likely that they will look for exposed outcrop material where the sand is not deep, and try to navigate the dunes by staying between the crests.

I think the rover tracks show that most of the time the rover stays on top of the sand, but if it starts digging in and continues on for a while it will be pretty hard to get out of it, especially if the surrounding area is flat with deep sand. It can practically rototill for miles without ever getting on top of the sand surface.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Jun 1 2005, 04:56 AM

I really enjoy having some cold, hard data to play with. In particular, I like to plot data in ways that help me make sense of it. Dot.dk already posted the data in a really interesting plot of cumulative meters driven versus cumulative centimeters advanced.

I'd like to post two other ways to look at the data. This first plot is a simple scatter plot of the centimeters of progress made in each drive attempt versus meters driven, rather than the cumulative values. (Please note that my graph plots centimeters advanced on the Y axis and meters driven on the X axis. I realize this is the reverse of the convention dot.dk used, but I had already made my graphs and I am too tired to change that right now.)

This kind of graph allows one to calculate the slope of the best fit line to all the data points. The slope of that line represents the average advancement efficiency ratio of all drive atempts so far, and it is essentially equal to the 0.5% that has been published. The R-squared value on the plot indicates the data are not widely scattered.


The second graph is even more interesting, I think. It displays that ratio for each Sol on which there was a drive attempt. It's not a pretty picture. Progress was best when Opportunity initially tried to back out, and it has sytematically gotten worse all the way through to sol 475. You can see the 0.5% plateau between sols 468 and 472, but it drops off after the no-drive problem they had on sol 473.

Sorry for the lengthy discussion, but this looked significant to me.

**Edited to embed the actual graphs into this post. These are the same images that are in the links.

Posted by: dilo Jun 1 2005, 05:42 AM

Very interesting plots, Dot.dk/CosmicRocker. Hope decreasing trend in last one will not continue!
The "no-drive problem they had on sol 473" should be represented with a 0cm effective advancement or simply no attempt to move?
Thanks.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Jun 2 2005, 03:42 AM

I really hope that decreasing trend in the ratio does not continue, since it means it has been getting harder and harder for Opportunity to make progress. It is encouraging that we continue to see decent progress, but that is only being accomplished with more rotations of the wheels. I've got to think that somewhere along the way we will see it break upward. That will be the sign that Oppy is breaking free.

I didn't enter 0,0 for the no-drive day to keep it from skewing the statistics for the average ratio calculation in the first plot. There is actually a 0,0 point inherent in that calculation, since the best fit line is constrained to pass through the origin. Also, if I used 0,0 for the sol 473 ratio in the second plot, it would cause the forbidden divide-by-zero error.

Posted by: alan Jun 3 2005, 03:37 PM

487,488, and 489 still available. Anyone want to claim them?

Posted by: mhoward Jun 3 2005, 04:28 PM

I'll take 487.

Posted by: mike Jun 3 2005, 05:19 PM

I'll claim 489, if at all possible.. I already claimed 470, but admittedly that was not the proper sol. EXCEPT that that was the day it went over that one really bad patch, you know, the one that looked like all the others, but uhh, ehh.

Yeah. I'll take 489, if it's legal to do so.

Posted by: CosmicRocker Jun 4 2005, 03:29 PM

So, who picked Sol 484?

Posted by: Bubbinski Jun 4 2005, 03:40 PM

"So, who picked Sol 484? biggrin.gif"

I did! I just downloaded the images with MMB 1.1 - looks like Oppy's free! Free!

Bubbinski

Posted by: dot.dk Jun 4 2005, 03:47 PM

Wooooohooooooo, this is SO GREAT!!



I'm so happy now!! Go Oppy Go Go!!!

Posted by: Bill Harris Jun 4 2005, 04:45 PM

Yep, the front hazcam in the other thread shows that the wheels are on firm ground and headed up and over the dune, and the rear hazcam (the previous message in this thread) shows good traction on the rear wheels, although the whell on the right side of that image seems to have more slippage.

Good deal. I knew she'd get out eventually.

--Bill

Posted by: Tman Jun 4 2005, 06:11 PM

Congratulation! About my (bloody close-by) bet sol 483 I found a nice verbalisation in an English dictionary: "A miss is as good as a mile" - right?

Posted by: Myran Jun 5 2005, 01:04 AM

Can almost see the cartoon version of this already. Two small martians sitting on the solar panels of Opportunity one saying to the other: 'Let go of the wheel and move over, from now on I will drive!'