We got Spirit and Cassini pictures from JPL over the weekend but none from Opportunity since friday. I have a bad feeling about that.

Last info was that they thought about "dipping" the rover into Endurance for a second time ...

Let's hope Oppy isn't in trouble and new pictures or infos are coming in today!

Tom

I've been somewhat worried also. Spirit images have been on time to the Exploratorium site, but Oppy hasn't been updated.

There is a report on space.com though that seems to offer some relief. Mark Adler talks about events that have happened since the last update, so its probably from the weekend. The article is here:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/rover...ate_040613.html

antti

Ive been thinking the exact same thing. In last month or so pictures have been posted daily from both rovers. The only gaps occured when one of them experienced a problem.

As you say though, the space.com article seems to indicate things are going OK.

Last flight director update of 11 june also says nothing special

To be fair - outages of a few days for the Exploratorium are FAR from unprecidented

Even if Opportunity had got 'stuck' in the crater ( unlikely ) - It could still transmit UHF passes quite happily. I think they're just being lazy at JPL again


Doug

With Opportunity, I think we're forgetting one other thing and that is the deep sleep mode it goes into from time to time. During those periods of recharge, communications with the orbiting spacecraft doesn't occur during the Martian nights and my guess is that it causes JPL to fall behind on data and picture retrieval. Last I read, that mode is being used about every other night to keep the batteries more fully charged.

Yeah, I guess Oppy's Team is just lazy again.

On the other hand you can see on these pictures

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...60P1222R0M1.JPG

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...62P1222R0M1.JPG

the rover standing on the steep slope with the sun from behind. That's not exactly the best position to collect the sunlight. But the guys at JPL probably thought about that.

At least I hope so ...

Tom

New pictures from Opportunity have arrived!

Tom

Yahoo! And Opportunity is basicly at the lower rock layer.

antti

90% of them are from way back on Sol 60ish

Doug

Yeah, I just noticed the same thing... I was thinking Opportunity might be having flashbacks or something!

Makes me think that JPL's Opportunity team is doing the catchup necessitated by those deep sleep modes the Rover's been going into. I'm sure they've been having Opportunity transmit as little as necessary on those days when communications times are available to try to balance out the retrieval of new data and upload of that data to the Earth. When faced with uncertainty about the lifetime of the roving abilities of the lander, I'm certain that storing redundant images onboard and gathering as much new info as possible is probably a smart move. Of course eventually it catches up to you like I imagine we're seeing now. The engineers are probably feeling like they can handle the reduced power, the Rover seems to not be in harm in the crater, so let's clear out the memory and take a breath before the next step.

The latest press release is interesting reading. Apparently Opportunity's attitude in the crater means it gets a lot more sun on the solar panels, and so gets nice and warm. On the downside, the UHF communication is not so good. Oh well, c'est la vie.

In the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing the panorama that Opportunity's busy snapping for us, and I can't wait to see some of the MI shots of those layers...

More sun?

Okay, I stand corrected.

Tom