According to the most recent picture is that the IDD position is still much higher altitude than the wheels. So, the IDD is not going to drag on the surface and I expect that the software has been modified to take a new default measurements of position of the IDD. Otherwise, try transverse as much as possible on sand since the surface is softer and it does make less vibrations than tranversing on the outcrops to the rover that might cause any unforseen problems... It would be good if only the geologist say, oh no more outcrops...

Rodolfo

Here is a link to a tech catalog at Maxon:

http://www.maxonmotor.com/docsx/Download/c..._dc_24_25_e.pdf

This gives a good overview of the design of the motors used on the Rovers.

--Bill

So if I'm understanding this right, there are 9 separate windings on the motor and if you loose one, you can compensate by merely increasing the power to the remaining windings (thereby increasing their associated magnetic fields, making up for the lost force which would have been applied by the broken winding). If this is the case, won't increasing the power to the remaining windings significantly increase the risk of blowing yet another one? With each subsequent loss being exponentially more likely? If so, we can probably expect to see conservation of arm usage just like that of the rat.

A new update from JPL:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity

And it looks like they are making the most out of the wait time



At least this is not like Purgatory

The future some rock and site names are of a mix of language: spanish, and english.

Informal names for targets examined in this vicinity by the panoramic camera include "Drake," "Chino Valley," "Bellemont," "Camp Verde," "Young," "Cherry," and "Paulden."

Chino : Chine
Verde : Green
Camp : Field (Campo, truncated name)

Chino Valley--> Valle Chino
Camp Verde --> Campo Verde (Green Field).

Those are funny spanish-english names...

The probable places are:

Valle Chino --> The same valley where is Oppy, between small dunes toward to Mogollon rim?
Camp Verde --> On the West side where there is an outcrop with dark stones?
Drake --> ?
Bellemont --> ?
Young --> ?
Cherry --> ?
Paulden --> ?

Rodolfo

That's correct. It turns out that you have to double the power, since the broken winding prevents current from flowing through an entire side of the motor.


It's not necessarily that bad, but of course those are the kinds of questions that need to be answered. I believe that up to now the temperature excursions every night from the stuck heater have been much worse than those caused by operating the motor. Also, it takes some time for the motor to heat up, and they have a measurement of case temperature.

Regardless, you can be sure that arm usage will be a carefully managed resource in the future.

Thanks for the update on the stalled IDD motor; Oppy has indeed been busy doing science and making a fantastic panorama.

--Bill

My article on the MER talks at the AGU meeting is now out on the "Astronomy" website ( http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=3781 ). Unfortunately, they:

(1) ...trimmed it down so much in length that it contains virtually nothing you don't already know, except for their official plans for the next extensions of the two rovers' missions. There really weren't many interesting new MER discoveries unveiled at the meeting -- except for the emphasis by Squyres and several other speakers on the extraordinary diversity MER-A has found in the Columbia Hills rocks. But there were some very interesting talks by Brian Hynek, Nick Tosca and James Greenwood on possible interpretations of their findings. Since "Astronomy" didn't print my comments on these, I'll try to elaborate more soon in "SpaceDaily" -- or else here.

(2) ...committed one howler (which I've already complained about) by saying that MER-B has "a jammed right front wheel", which would be rather more serious than the actual jammed right front wheel steering motor.

Coming up in a day or two: my companion piece on the much more interesting Mars Express findings (and I wonder how they'll disembowel that one).

From Astromoney Magazine:



Going slightly OT: you don't have "a strong solution of sulfuric acid in water", you have water that is acidic. Did acidic water weather the basalt, or did the water become acidic during the weathering process? Water is "the univeral solvent" and when in contact with the rocks of the aquifer it can and does pick up dissolved constituents such as sulfates, carbonates and metals. Groundwater can become acidic in this way; typically, the oxidation of iron sulfide yields hydrogen ions, sulfates and free iron. I'm sure that the groundwater on Mars is highly mineralized but I can't visualize vast pools of oil of vitriol.

Are you meaning to suggest that the blueberries weathered out of the basalt?

Back to our regular discussion: the Rover team will get this IDD problem quantified and nullified soon enough and Oppy will be on the road again. I'm still curious about the next outcrop...

--Bill

Yes... as much as is spoken about Victoria, I feel more frustrated that great IDD targets are so close and we haven't been able to use the MI! And that next outcrop looks very interesting as well.... no need to go over the rainbow just yet.
But I have every confidence Oppy will make it to Oz eventually.

Absolutely, Lyford. I've been drooling over these outcrops since last year and now that we're here it's "look but don't touch". That's unrequited geomorph!

<sigh>

--Bill

It's moving!!

This is the subject a forthcoming (massive) paper in a special issue of JGR-Planets reporting detailed results from Spirit. From what I recall, the paper was tentatively (at the time of submission) titled "The Rocks of Columbia Hills" or something similar.

Not just Squyres, but a whole parade of AGU speakers kept emphasizing how astonished they were at this. The explanation seems to be that giant impact events during the Noachian period when the Hills surface was first formed kept throwing material from all sorts of different locations -- covered with basalt of varying original compositions, and in some cases undergoing different degrees of aqueous (and acidic) modification -- into the Hills region. (Many of the Hills rocks are breccias made of different components that have clearly undergone different degrees of water modification.) As Squyres says, this is an indication that "ancient Mars' crust was of extraordinary complexity." MER-A has even found two or three small outcrops of what may be the same phyllosilicate clays that Mars Express is now finding from orbit:
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&...t;P12A-04"

The main puzzle about the Hills at this point seems to be the central one of their existence: why are they still sticking up there, when most of Gusev's floor was eroded away by something and later covered by that flat, homogeneous flow of dry basalt? Were they originally sticking up even higher -- perhaps pushed up as part of an old crater rim within Gusev after they were originally laid down -- so that they remained higher than the rest of the crater's floor after the erosion that cleaned Gusev out?
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?&...P21A-0133"

(Unfortunately, due to money problems I wasn't able to hang around for the Tuesday morning batch of MER and Mars Express posters, some of which look damn interesting.)

LOL..... when I saw that thumbnail attachment... I thought you'd made the same mistake I made hehe. Good to see it REALLY is moving this time.

Scott: I just love this long-standing engineer/scientist debate. I am a dyed-in-the-wool scientist, and my best friend is a similar kind of engineer. We have had this debate for several recent decades, much to the detriment of our friendship. On the positive side, I think we both have discovered that we have much to learn from one another. In the end, we both want to accomplish the same result, but we each find different problems to concentrate on. It all boils down to communication among people speaking different languages.

Ooh, those were some fascinating abstracts, but I had to key in on that Squyres quotation. Geologists haven't often had the pleasure of seeing rocks that were likely created in the early stages of formation of a planetary crust. Our imaginations are going rampant with images of partially molten crust, incipient volcanism, random large impacts, and an early atmosphere, laden with water and other other primal volatiles.

Ask another geologist and you'll get another picture, painted in different colors.

The rovers are giving us these tiny little windows into brief geologic moments of the ground truth of the planetary-forming processes. I'm giddy with delight, but I doubt we'll figure out all the details with so little data.

It became apparent to me long ago that I would never have the opportunity to leave our planet, but these two little rovers have given me the next best thing.

I want to see more of those clays.

From the pancam tracking site for tosol:


I suspect they will try extending the IDD? 1st line for the arm extended and MI selected as tool? There is a large bunch of MI images sequenced too.

Thanks for the newsflash! I'm keeping my fingers crossed....

A welcome sight:

Good detailed picture. It is the neatest IDD showing picture! I would like to confirm about the IDD parts which are the following:

1) Back : RAT
| 2) Right lower: Microcospic Imager
| 3) Down: Alpha Particle X-Ray spectrometer
| 4) Left: Moussbauer spectrometer
| 5) Right Upper: Wrist actuator
| 6) Middle Upper: Turret Actuator

Rodolfo

'|' re-edited for completing the unsecure parts.

| conclusion: At that time, Oppy was performing a Moussbauer analysis.

What a wonderful birthsol present!

Another one:

1M187751018EFF64KCP2936M2M1.JPG
1M187751331EFF64KCP2936M2M1.JPG

Nice to see you back RAT !

Nico

...and now...

_ __|_____

WOOHOO!

YES

*dances around Opportunity in joy*

This is a very welcomed sight!!

Thank you MER engineers! You do amazing thing with these vehicles!
It seems no matter what breaks you'll find a workaround

Now Victoria Beacons!

Beautiful to see it not only moving, but doing what it was supposed to do! This means they were able to aim it accurately as well! Yippee!
Please pardon my irrational exuberance.

YEEEEEEhaaaaaaaaaa! Good job MER team!!!

Absolutely Wonderful. I'm giddy with anticipation...

--Bill

Any word on what the problem was? They must have guessed the exact cause since they seemed to have gotten the exact pics they wanted
jb

Probably some broken windings in the shoulder joint motor. They just increased the current to that motor to get it to move.

I'm one happy camper...

Congratulations, engineers.

I was wondering where to put this comment, but now that the arm is back in business and taking MIs, the Strange MI Images thread is probably as good a place as any...

Are we seeing botryoidal bluberries in that concretionary cluster of baby blueberries, visible in the upper left of this image?


I suspect we have been seeing a variety of more irregular concretionary forms in this area of more varied mineralization.

I'm tempted to describe some of it as baroque, in spite of the fact that that term has many implications.

LMFAO - I gave a talk on Opportunity last night - and said "right now they're running their first proper science sequence with the arm since the trouble started, but I had to leave a little too early to find out if it worked"

And it HAS worked. Thank GOD for that!!!

Doug

It's great to see the IDD working again also I wonder if the botryoidal Heamatite has the concentric ring structure that it often has on Earth.

Reckless

If Oppy does RAT this outcrop we'll hopefully see one of these "blackberries" in section. However, I'll speculate that the IDD will be used with more discretion in the future so we may be seeing _less_ MI and RAT but _more_ interesting ones.

--Bill

Steve Squyres mentioned on Monday afternoon's seminar at the Hayden Planetarium that they will probably lock the IDD's position with the "upper arm" in the extended postion so that the shoulder joint motor will not have to be used again. They will drive in this mode and there will be sufficient remaining degrees of freedom for the instruments to be used in a meaningful manner. He felt there was enough "locking" strength in the joint to allow driving in this mode (instruments tucked in towards the rover) given the relative benign terrain; this would probably not have been possible for Spirit.

He said that motor has two independent sets of windings; one of them is open circuit, most likely because that motor's heater has been stuck on as is well known of course. This motor has therefore experienced much greater termperature cycles every sol than the other motors (kind of ironic, really, getting too warm on Mars!).

Airbag

As I recall, these are thin-film heaters which put out 2.5W and are designed to keep the motor temperature above -70 deg (C or F??) whereas without the heater the minimum temp was expected to be -120 deg. Seems like they turn the heater off instead of letting it run contiuously. This is all from memory, but I suggest that although -70 deg is relatively warm, it still pretty darn cold!

--Bill

During deep sleep, the heaters would be off, leading of course to the lowest temperatures. But then during daytime operation, the heater (as it is stuck on) would heat the motor to a higher temperature than the other joints, hence the larger temperature extremes for just that motor.

Airbag

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/05121...y_arm_updt.html :

" 'We’re developing a mode for keeping the arm out in front,' Erickson said, adding that engineers are now studying various positions in which to stow the arm and ensure its continued use as a science tool. 'We’ll essentially stow it now by putting the instrument pack up over the rover’s deck.'

"Erickson said more analysis and arm motor tests are planned in order to determine the best configuration for the arm during drives."

So I guess it needs a sling for the IDD. I think I saw an appropriate picture floating around the forums somewhere.

Use the RAT to drill a hole in the deck, and stick part of the IDD through it to hold the arm in place.

...and if there is no "cleaning event" for long time they could use brush to clean solar panels...it's like washing your back...only a bit harder....

Oppy is re-learning to use her IDD-- today's image shows that she positions well above the target getting set in x-y before dropping down in z (and into focus). IMO.

The target is the rock next to the mobile sand we saw last week, and the "blackberry patch" is on the left of the rock.

--Bill

A new Opportunity Status update:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/status.html#opportunity

Seems like the shoulder joint is still acting up

Sol 671:
The first half of the mosaic completed as planned, but the arm sequence was halted after that due to a stall of the shoulder-joint motor.

Sol 673: The plan was to complete the microscopic-imager mosaic that was started on sol 671 and place the Mössbauer spectrometer on a target called "Williams." However, the shoulder-joint motor stalled once again.

Were these stalls even with the more current added to the motor?
If so, the future for the shoulder joint looks pretty bad.

Better get used to do work with only the other joints on the arm...

And if you look at it. The shoulder joint is probably the least important joint to loose, if you had to choose a joint on the IDD.

I would imagine it would be more difficult to use the arm if one of the elavation or elbow joints were lost.

So of all the joints, we lost the right one

Here is the complete mosaic.

Taken with the MI on Sol 671 and Sol 677.

jvandriel

Excellent mosaic!

This problem falls under the "dumb question" category, but is it possible to use frame-stacking on some of the pancam close-ups to create high-quality images that can be zoomed like a quasi-MI? I'd try this out with some of Oppy's latest images, but don't know where to start...

No need to get into a panic My guess the engineers would still be characterizing the motor, since the motor drive parameters have changed.
Give it a little time and they will figure out how to use it

dot.dk: "...Were these stalls even with the more current added to the motor?..."

I believe so. But it's not necessarily bad news. I believe they're using barely enough power to move the arm, and sometimes it's not enough. They're going to creep-up on "just enough". They are at risk at frying <maybe> the other motor winding at higher voltages/currents so they don't want to use any more than they need to.

Sols so far at this location 684 - 651 = 33
Sols stuck in Purgatory 484 - 446 = 38 ( left on sol 511 total sols = 65 )
Anyone want to start a new pool?

Wow! How time flies.

They recently brushed the top of that rock, so they will probably RAT it next. It's the holidays and New Year's Eve is yet to come. I don't know if they have decided on an arm configuration they would travel with. I'll be both conservative and optimistic, and bet that Opportunity will move by Sol 690.