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

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?

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.)

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

482 for me

Chris

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

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

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

477

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

Doug

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

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?

I say sol 470.

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.

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

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

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

477's already taken how about 478 instead?

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

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

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

Now we're talking. looking forward to that drive

I'm good.

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

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.

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

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

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

--Bill

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

-the other Doug

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?

My bet is Sol 473.

Tesheiner

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

I'll take Sol 484 then.

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

Lets see Sol 474 + 7 days = 481!

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.

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.

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



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.

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.

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: Blue road

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

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.

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

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

Were making progress!

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

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...PSP1214R0M1.JPG

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.

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.