Another drive today, it seems! Take it easy Scott, these sorts of speeds we'll get dizzy!


Doug

More of a turn than a drive, I think. It looks like Spirit might be lined up for the attempt now.

Quiz.
Where does the shadow on the LGA come from?
Click to view attachment

Since the sun is almost directly above, the shadow comes from the circley things at the top of the LGA itself.

I'm sure hoping that 'attempt' is successful... if she could just get into some strong winds... there might be more life for her.

"More of a turn than a drive, I think."

No, I think the RHAZ and FHAZ views make it clear that there was a drive of a few meters at least, at about right angles to the last one, getting close to the shallow slope up onto the plate.

Tesheiner's maps give a great perspective on our two rover pals. The Opportunity map has those 100 m squares, which seem to go by a drive at a time on average. Home Plate, Spirit's home for 1000 sols, would fit in one of those squares.

Phil

You're right. The drive data is messed up in MMB for some reason, which threw me off.

Doug (and all Los Angeles area rover-tracking folk) - this eve, Sat and Sun, there's an opportunity - here's a quote:

At Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, the full-size rover model will be on display in the Depths of Space gallery Jan. 23 through Jan. 25, accompanied by rover team members from JPL. Talks about topics such as how the team drives the rovers and what the rovers have revealed about Mars will be presented in the observatory's Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater. These talks, by JPL rover-team members Al Herrera, Scott Lever, Scott Maxwell, John Callas, Bruce Banerdt and Ashley Stroupe, are scheduled for the following times: 7 p.m. on Jan. 23; 1:30 p.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Jan. 24; and 1:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Jan. 25.

For more information about visiting Griffith Observatory, see http://www.griffithobs.org/.

A P.S. - I'm going (Griffith Observatory) tomorrow at 4PM, events permitting... will post a brief report and a couple of pics, if I get any that might be interesting..

Almost 7m, if the mobility data is accurate.
And todaytomorrow (sol 17991800) is driving day. Let's see if the attempt is successful.
Edit: Corrected sol number.


Here are both maps at the same scale (1m/pix) so we can see the completely different strategies.
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

I'm 6,000 miles away

Speaking of thousands, Doug, you are now just two posts away from the 10,000 mark. Will there be a party to celebrate the occasion?

Sol 1800 is driving day, not Sol 1799.

My 30th, MER 5th, UMSF 5th - I think we're doing ok for celebrations right now.

By the way did anybody notice that we have microscopic images from Spirit?

I wonder if Steve Squyres is still interested in taking another look at Fuzzy Smith. It looks like Spirit will be be passing right by it after mounting Home Plate. Does Fuzzy still hold the record for silica content?

"...loose rocks atop Home Plate include the small, irregularly shaped rock Fuzzy Smith. It has the highest silica content reported to date (May 2007) on the mission. Scientists believe hydrothermal processes "bleached" out the primary elements in the rock, leaving the silica behind."

Dust devil on the horizon
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...89P1561L0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/na...89P1561L0M1.JPG

near the center moving left to right, flip between images to see

Alan, I'm not seeing it. Did you accidentally post the same pair of images? The image IDs are the same.

The IDs are not the same, somewhere in the middle of the ID, and if you flip there is a VERY faint effect - alan has some kind of freaky super-powers to catch that. It's easier to see above the horizon than below it.

Here's a pic made by subtracting one from the other, cancelling out everything except the DD and noise/JPEG artifacts. The arrows point to the two images of it as it moves. The image subtraction leaves one white and the other black.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Its quite subtle, I only noticed it when watching the slideshow in MMB, its the last two navcam subframes from sol 1785

Whoa! I stand corrected, and in awe of your powers of discernation, Alan. Some catch!

Yikes, that's pretty subtle. I had noticed what looks very much like a devil on 1784. Here's a crop of the navcam view. There's no other frame to see the motion of the devil, but at least this one looks kind of like a dd!
Click to view attachment

Well, it's great to finally see Spirit on the move again. Let's hope one or two of those dust devils she's seeing will come on over and give her solar panels a much needed cleaning off. Here''s hoping....

I see a couple more in the sol 1799 navcam subframes. The 2009 dustdevil season is underway.

On another note Spirit, at sol 1801, is now beyond 20x the primary mission.

It is terrible, every time I see the thread title ("Leaving WH3 Behind") I am thinking of Spinal Tap singing "How could I leave this ...behiiiiind" Sorry! http://www.geocities.com/ironwallcoleman/songs/bottom.htm

That song's probably more relevant to MSL

But you will need to turn the amplifier up a little bit more past 10 when you play it.
This image just in from the OPPY navcam..

Click to view attachment

Perhaps this will answer important scientific questions, such as "who they were" and "what they were doin' "..

(also.. Sorry!)

Nah - that's obviously a natural formation. Nothing to get excited about.

Back to reality...

Did Spirit just have an un-drive? The new pictures look like post-drive imaging, but she didn't seem to move a mm.

Give a gal a break! NavCam view
She came down off HP; didn't like it, and now is headed back up!
Next stop Fuzzy Smith!
Hee Ha! ! Big wheel keep on turnin'

Nice view down onto the plain...

Click to view attachment

There's a series of sun-finding images taken prior to the "post-drive" ones. My 2c goes on that Spirit coudn't track the sun and fine-tune its attitude data so the drive was aborted.

Uh-oh:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/09012...ver-glitch.html

Always frightening when an elderly person has a health scare...

Hmmm... Spirit had a problem on Sol 1800?

Maybe it's good that we will almost definitely never see Sol 18000...

-the other Doug

Funny. Did anything untoward happen on sol 180?

By the way, the original release has been amended:

There is at least another to be seen in the sequence from sol 1803. These early vortices seem to be too far away to be helpful in the short term

It's difficult for me to imagine how "18" could be digitally significant. Still, it does appear to be an unusual coincidence. I don't like to see any kind of weird stuff going on in my personal computers, let alone those onboard any of my favorite Martians.

Not sure... let's see, Spirit arrived at the Columbia Hills on Sol 156, right? So this would be 24 sols later... right around then I think they were finishing up work on Pot'o'Gold and were planning a drive to the north face of Husband. Sounds about right, anyway.

Is there a sol-by-sol record that would give any details on Sol 180? (If I were awake enough, I'd figure 180 sols out from landing day and look at UMSF posts from the day... )

-the other Doug

Looks like everything went fine back at sol 180



Although a hiccup meant sol 181 was wasted



And that drive was to get to 'engineering flats' to try and fix the lubrication problem with the front-right wheel.

Now back to sol 1800

Maybe I've missed something - what does this have to do with Sol 180.

Nothing.

Just investigating oDoug's thought, and Emily's follow-up, that Spirit has a problem with sols numbered 18 x 10^n (n = whole number)

I'm wondering... Did we jinx Spirit by the topic subject? Perhaps changing it to a more neutral Post-WH3 Activities might remove the curse?

A couple of recent mosaics...

'Mustang': sol 1798



'Martian Chronicles': sols 1801 & 1804



Both images link to the same page.

Tearing up the place again...

Click to view attachment

A bit of an update from jpl:

Think this shows really well just how poor Spirit's wheel is being dragged through the dirt...

Click to view attachment

Of course the stuck wheel turned out to be a good thing, 'cos it exposed that luvverly silica-rich deposit, but still... can't help thinking "Awww...."

If I'm correct they had a method on the old Soviet Lunochod moonrovers to fire some pyro's and basically cut the axis connecting the wheel with the motor, in case the thing got stuck, leaving the wheel to turn freely. It is a pity nothing like that exists on MER, I guess driving would be a lot easier if the wheel just could turn freely..

Regards,

Geert

Really? I would NOT like to be the person responsible for either writing the code for that pyro, or pushing the button to fire it...!

Spirit's doing just fine, I think, dragging her wheel like a lame puppy dragging a leg. It's just one of the - many - reasons why we adore her so much.

(Cue cries of "It's just a robot!!!!!" hahahahaha...)

It's today (1806). Fingers crossed and let's see what happens.

short move
before: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...CLP1154R0M1.JPG
after: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...DHP1214R0M1.JPG

Yes, just positioning for the final climb, I think.

Phil