Does anyone else think the route ahead looks very soft and embeddable? Is there an official, unofficial name for these rover-swallowers, such as Purgatoids came to be for Oppy's nemeses?

Good grief... that might be one of the most beautiful images of the whole mission, like something Ansell Adams would have taken on Mars. Just imagine how gorgeous a colour version of that would be...

Edit: had a quick go at adding some colour to your image...not properly colourised, but still pretty, I think...

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Thanks for the stunning mosaics, guys!

On another topic, SSTB light is joining the effort.

I hate to say it, but this isn't looking good. I guess this new test plan pretty much indicates that the testing hasn't gone very well, despite the earlier reports of "favorable motion." I hope I am wrong about that.

Mmm...I don't know if I'd go that far, CR. My read is that they want to make sure (as much as that's possible) that the proposed extraction sequence(s) don't do more harm than good.

Simulations are naturally never 100% representative of the real world. This one's trying to simulate conditions on a real alien world, so gotta assume that it's that much more difficult. Extreme caution is warranted before going for broke with Spirit.

Wrong? Who knows.

Jumping to conclusions? Ohhhh yes.

Enjoy the beautiful sunset on Mars yesterday (Sol 2002) in slow motion in all its glory! Only black and white, but I find it deeply deeply awe inspiring to watch a sunset on another world the day after it has happened. When I first looked at the Exploratorium pics I thought these smudges don't look so interesting - until I looked closer!!! Both Pancams were used - I took the right. Pics taken at around 1 1/4 min intervals from 18:19:36 to 35:54 Mars time ... 14 frames (I left the last -15th frame off). If I get time, I will try to do more with it.

Things like this make me very grateful to the MER-NASA mob..... and MHoward of MidNightMars Browser who's made it all so easy, but could be sued for producing an addictive product. So this is my small contribution.....


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A beautiful sunset it may be, but losing the Sun for the last few frames tells us that the dust in the atmosphere is pretty thick.
Hopefully the local weather will clear up soon and not affect our girl too much.

I agree. So much is different here (even without discussing the bad wheel). The situation here is so much more precarious than in Meridiani where they knew that ultimately there was a flat surface below the small dune, had a good idea of the full depth of the material and could count on predictable soil movement. Based on the visible slopes this stuff could be half a meter deep on one side and two meters deep on the other. Because of the slope the rover could slip and slide in all kinds of undesirable ways during extraction, and Lord knows what it is beneath it all, large boulders? Even finer sand? The fact is there are so many ways to make this a permanent observation that station a few months of cautious testing is totally warranted.

Everyone be patient.

Yeah. Ironically, it may be the same dust that makes the 2001 morning pan so stunning. At first I thought that was done before sunrise, since the shadows were so indistinct. But the sun was actually up for that sequence.

Here's the colourized version of the sunset - I have been enjoying putting this together so I hadn't really noticed the haze that much. But it does look like it's thick on the horizon. I've just read the Spirit update.

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Hi, long ago since I've posted. Not much done in the old "hobby" but on and off a loyal looker here. Amazing the rovers still are aktiv and soon both beyond 2000!

Don't know was turned the balance but suddenly I was up for a try on the new lovely sunset from Spirit.
The time is in LTST ...and the coloring barely accurate, I guess.
Hoping you have fun with it as well as I had/have, in what respects could it be more accurate maybe?
889KBgif

Nice one Peter (Tman)! Really glad that you posted. Watched yours a few times and learned some good things! Nice smooth sky + putting the times in.

I really pushed my interpretation, so that I think that the light part of the sky could 'flare out' and go a bit purple on some monitors. But, I was fascinated by the hills!! Your work has encouraged me to think more and (when I get time) improve what I've done.

Accuracy - only best eye guess using the screens of my PC! I have been thinking about true colour, but I've only just started thinking about it ---- also, so many different monitors,browsers and applications giving rise to so many very different viewing experiences.

OK, I'll admit that to some degree, I am "jumping to conclusions," but I am also trying to read between the lines with the available information. I understand that we don't like to be too negative here, but at some point we have to start facing the facts. My interpretation may be totally off base, but I am trying to view the situation realistically.

We have many reasons to be optimistic as the tests with the light rover begin. I also look forward to the planned, long-drive tests which have apparently been delayed until after the light tests have concluded. The long-drive tests will be the acid tests for this rover. The people operating these machines are the best our planet has to offer, so I am certain that if anyone can extract Spirit from this pit, they will be able to. All I was trying to suggest is that the previous month's worth of testing must not have provided a clear escape route, hence, a new set of tests with the lighter rover is called for.

Did you consider that the plan all along might have been to test the snot out of the instrument laden rover for a month or more, and then when a solution was found they would run through the entire process again with the lighter rover? In fact if anyone were to ask me I'd add a third round where the lighter rover would be tested on a lighter weight or less dense soil.

It's still guessing, I think. Difficult to guess the color with the indirect infos we get and shifting lighting conditions make it even harder. On Mars we get a much thinner Atmosphere with more dust in it (that should scatter blue light around the sun like the "blue" moon here) and the sun is less bright over a reddish environment.

Speaking of dust, hopefully too the now more amount of dust in the air will not hit (too much). Power is needed whether she get out here or have to stay through the winter - however it seems to be a good place for cleaning events here.

Going back to Paolo's comments in June, there seems to be a need to "match" the test bed to the soil mixture to replicate the behaviour being exhibited on Mars. Given that, I'm unclear as to how putting TeeBee Lite into the same soil as TeeBee would better simulate what Spirit might do given the same commands. I hope Paolo can come back and shed some light on this.

I was wondering the same thing. (And also wondering why Paolo hasn't been around -- apart from the obvious possibility that maybe he's just really busy.)

They are trying to replicate the "behavior" of the rover as it became embedded in the soil since they can never duplicate the actual conditions. If they had a few tons of the exact same soil in Pasadena it wouldn't do them much good because the soil itself would be 2.6 times as heavy as it is on Mars and therefore more compact with different mechanical properties (and that doesn't take into account whatever effect the 100 times atmospheric pressure might have on the soil properties). It's not possible to recreate those conditions so they are instead using trial and error to create conditions where the test rover behaves as the one on Mars did when it got stuck. Once they do that there is an assumption that the rover behavior in the extrication process worked out in Pasadena will likewise be duplicated on Mars,

Paolo mentioned that this is what they did with purgatory. At first they tried the rover that weighed 38% of the actual rover, assuming it would behave the same as the rover on Mars was behaving. But it did not. They couldn't get the lighter rover to embed itself in the test dune the way the real rover did at Purgatory. So they switched to the heavier rover and a different soil mix and eventually they achieved an analogous ratio of rover mass to soil density that worked in the test bed. But you have to remember that analogous relationship worked at that place at that time with those mixtures. The situation at Gusev is far different. So they are touching all their bases with the lighter rover just to be certain that some disastrous consequence might not come from whatever they have planned.

I personally am still in favor of them researching some exotic mixture of terrestrial materials to create an extremely light mixture for the testbed as the final test with the stripped down rover.

Me too. Seems like the testing is really in high gear right now, so I'm betting on the obvious possibility. IIRC, he was running this show.

Aerogel. It can't get lighter than that. Funny thing is that Spirit is carrying some as insulator.

No, I honestly didn't consider that, Dan, because I doubt that was the plan from the beginning. With problems like this one can never know how the testing will turn out, so they must proceed one step at a time. I'm sure if the initial tests went extremely well there would have been a few follow-up tests to be certain, and then they would probably have begun extraction maneuvers on Mars.

I suppose the cleaning events in early July would have removed a lot of pressure to rush things, and perhaps encourage more extensive testing. Anyway, I'm not trying to convince anyone that my hunch was correct. I'm sure everyone can come to their own conclusions about the SSTB-lite testing.

There is a difference between the testing going badly (i.e. no extraction) and the testing going well ( i.e. extraction) but not replicating the vehicle dynamics as best as they think they can.

That's what they've got to do - get the ISIL to match Gusev as well as possible.

That sunset, from yesterday...is really amazing.

Yes, I'm still excited by that sunset. And still grateful to Squyres et al. After showing the little movie I did to non-astronomy orientated friends and getting lots of oohs and aahs, I decided to upgrade it a bit (music track - pic of Spirit in the test bed, map of Gusev etc etc) and put it on YouTube.

Type in: Sunset August Mars

To Peter (Tman) - learning from what you did, I chucked the times in to the YouTube movie for starters. Will probably work on improving the colour, smoothness etc a bit as soon as I have spare time in the coming days and post a version 3. As for 'true' colour - YouTube - flv files etc is a bit different yet again!

Power down to 392 watt-hours on sol 2006.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/20090825a.html

Ouch! Fortunate to have had those cleaning events boosting the energy up to 900Wh, otherwise...

From that same status report: "The team is aiming to start sending drive commands to Spirit in September.".

Yikes, that's a lot decrease and abruptly. Well it seems the regional storm getting not worse and abates already. We can hope for... more than ~600 again?

Optical depth is above 2.5, highest it's been since 1287. The big unknown is whether it comes back down mostly by advection of the storm away from Spirit (reasonably likely) or from falling in place (some will sure, but this isn't nearly as extensive as the sol ~1250 storms). The panels are clean now, but the dust will fall somewhere...

Emily visited the Rover Test Bed yesterday. Make sure you read her very valuable report here: http://planetary.org/blog/

Yes, v interesting read. I thought this sums it up well.....

"......extricating Spirit could not be done with one basic motion as had worked for getting Opportunity out of Purgatory; it's going to be more complicated than that with Spirit. So now they are being very, very methodical, doing every possible test on Earth, before they begin to slowly, methodically, carefully drive the rover on Mars to try to get free of Troy".

Patience required. It can be done but very little room for error. IMO the Spirit team will succeed.

Thanks for that report Emily (wiping envious drool off my chin). It's good to hear that they have been proceeding very much as we had expected.

This has probably been explained in this thread already, but I am sort of unclear about it, so please excuse me.

Is it true that they are actually going to push FORWARD towards Von Braun, instead of trying the extraction back towards known territory?

Anyway, if the overall plan of the basic direction of extraction is known, this could be added in the extraction FAQ.

I believe that forward extraction plan was mentioned before, but with the new testing they're doing now, I'd think which way they extract will depend on the results of the new tests.

I don't think this has been raised as an issue before, but...

If they continue toward Von Braun, at some point the stuck wheel is likely to end up off the hard surface it currently drags along, and into the churned up soil where the leading wheels have been digging away. Wouldn't this cause it to create even more drag on the rover?

From the latest Spirit update:

Yikes! That 66% dust factor is down from 83% last week!

You can see the effect of the duststorm with these before-and-during images. First note the shadows in these hazcams:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...E5P1131L0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...E5P1131L0M1.JPG
And compare the horizons in these navcams:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...E5P1561L0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...E5P1561L0M1.JPG

Let's not get too worried about the dust storm or the drive direction nor the strategies that the rover drivers may employ to Free Spirit.
I think that Spirit has found her own way to get free!
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You're a very, very naughty boy!

Love it!

...yeah, I'd have to call that a constructive technique!

Official version of Calypso pan has been released
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pre.../20090826a.html

How I wish Spirit was *just going through a rocky patch*... - This quicksand has proven so much worse!

I guess because of the time between updates the new Free Spirit video went un-noticed.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/freespirit/index.cfm

fyi

"The team working on extracting Spirit from Troy is not at JPL today since a one-day delay in those operations will not impact the rover,"

(due to fire evac)

http://www.space.com/news/090831-jpl-wildfire-update.html

Reading the shadows, it looks like the skies are starting to clear as of sol 2012. Look at the contrast between sundial shadow and sundial. It was lowest (dustiest sky) around sols 2007-2008, and has recovered quite a bit by 2012. Of course the times of day aren't the same, these are stretched jpegs, etc etc, but this does look promising.
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There's still the big question of where will all the dust in the air settle...

Edit: updated animation to include pre-storm 1994 image, to show that we're still not down to pre-storm levels.

It does look promising, indeed.
Now, if someone has the latest tau figures to confirm this trend...

There are some power numbers in the latest Planetary Society update:


Also, this interesting info on using simulations to help extract Spirit that I hadn't heard before:

Tau peaked on 2007 around 2.6, fell dramatically from 2009 to 2011 and is about 0.9 on 2013. It was under 0.5 before the storm. The dust appears to have simply moved elsewhere, but of course some would have accumulated on the panels during the brief storm.

Are the winds still blowing?