Right! I tried to match features on the pile in front of the LF and a lot of the face of the mini cliff in front of the LF seems to have fallen away, but there is no pile of fallen material visible. In fact, a pile of material (orange arrows) that was present before the drive is also missing.
Click to view attachment
Before drive.............. After drive

From the latest update:

And this was really interesting - she actually made too much progress in her first step, so the second was cancelled!

Here is a little animation of the underbelly of Spirit (sols 2088 -2090)
I dusted off the program that s t r e t c h e s the heck out of the histogram of the images (no respect for gamma)

Click to view attachment

Cheers

(Stu -- sorry to hear about the flooding -- your family and friends are in our thoughts)

Animation middle right and left (Pancam L257):

new http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=150717

Wow! That RM cleaned up nice! The LM seems to have dug in, but I like those clean cleats on the RM -- ready to grab hold and push the RF along.

Another 600m and we're out

as the most annoying thing of sand is it keeps falling on you while you dig... would it be possibile for the IDD to remove the sand over the wheel, to prevent it from burying the wheel itself?

EMBEDDED IMAGE REMOVED - please either attach images or post links to them offsite -- embedding makes life difficult for people with slow connections or small screens.

The IDD is not a shovel........so NO.

never mind what it is designed for, think of what it CAN do! "Think lateral" , or we'll never get out of there!

There is no way they are going to be shoveling with the IDD. MahFL was being polite by just saying NO.

are there any other reasons than "don't want"? I can see in pictures that IDD can reach the sand near the wheels, and maybe it even already touched it (not sure about little circluar print on the sand hill)

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN LESS THAN A DAY: DO NOT POST BIG IMAGES INLINE! LINKS OR ATTACHMENTS PLEASE! THE IMAGE WAS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY TO YOUR POST ANYWAY. --ADMIN

I'm sure the team has thought of this, as it is an obvious thought. Whether the consensus is "not in your wildest dreams" or " Plan D", I don't know. But so far plan A seems to be working fine.

My own feeling is that if the IDD could reach the area, it would likely only be able to touch the top of the pile and would end up pushing as much of it against the wheel as away. The wheel itself seems a much better tool for moving soil, as evidenced in this last drive.

One thing I'm led to wonder is whether the surprising (?) progress is due to packing of the underlying soil due to sitting in one place for so long. This might motivate a strategy if the current plans otherwise go awry. Hoping I'm wrong.

We just need to all sit back, calm down and have some patience here, these chaps know what they're doing

After 12 driving sols we will have backed out onto the firm ground - you mark my words

Oooh, that sounds like a call for a Spirit Extraction Pool. Some of our members would be absolutely thrilled about that!


NO MORE POOLS PER DOUG - ADMIN

Third drive attempt soon, according to the latest update:

A different view of the Sol2088-2090 move.
Click to view attachment

Yeh! For some strange reason I saved the gif to my 'marspics' folder and titled it, "Getting Underway.gif" - sort of reminded me of a ship pulling away from port.

Planned for sol 2092 i.e. today.

Some data on the tracking site now. Looks like about 5mm progress forward, although worryingly, another 4mm 'down'.

And this time it looks like the two steps were executed.

I'm wondering if "down" might just mean that the mid part of the rover is down a bit, but the rear is moving up.

Less progress on 2092 than on 2090:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...05P1214R0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...06P1214R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...08P1214R0M1.JPG

Here's a tweaked version of the rear wheels:
Click to view attachment

It looks like there was a bit of a roll to the left and further yaw like in the last drive. Impossible to say what all this means yet.

Movie of 2 forward left hazcam pics taken on Sol 2092 - Earth Time Sun Nov22.
2F312091613EFFB207P1235L0M1.JPG
2F312092660EFFB208P1214L0M1.JPG

First pic with IDD (arm) down and second pic about 18 mins later. Looks like that revolving left wheel is pushing up a bit of 'sand'. Rover slewing a bit to the right and probably not sinking in relation to that wheel. And, dare I say it, possibly a bit of movement towards safe ground! That critical right wheel - looks like no perceptible movement in relation to ground.

Click to view attachment

Just seen your post Fred - yaw right at front = left at rear?!! It's a bit early on Sun morning here!!!

Front, Rear and Nav sequences from sol2088 to sol2092.
Front and rear sol2092 show both steps.
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
Click to view attachment

I do not like the repeated down movement of the right RW.

Full res. GIF of the progress from the Forward Hazcam (by Mirko from the German forum)

The LF wheel is still steadily shoveling soil and that should start to pay dividends. Wonder when they will try some crabbing?

Some rough and ready renderings of Scamander crater based on the OSU elevation map posted with the press conf a week or so ago. The exaggerated elevation is 5x exaggerated.

doug
your renderings are very cool

I agree, excellent renderings.

Looks like we're again imaging underneath the rover.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...08P1162L0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...08P1162L0M1.JPG

Looks different now (i.e. farther in the distance). Touching?
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/mi...08P2926M2M1.JPG

Here is an animation of the underbelly of Spirit over the last 3 imaging sessions (sols 2088, 2090, 2092)
I have pushed tortured the histograms and did some adaptive processing

Click to view attachment

Cheers

Animations middle right and left (Pancam L257):

new: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=150822

Three steps -

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New Free Spirit update

Last drive was aborted after 4m worth of wheel spinning due to a RR stall.

Sequencing diagnostics today (for nextersol, 2095)) including a possible steering test, a small backward rotation of just the right-rear wheel and a short (~1m) forward drive of all wheels.

How is this defined for Spirit?

The story James linked to only mentions a "forward commanded motion of the rover", not a drive of all the wheels. Obviously the RF won't take part in the drive, and the only question is whether the RR will. But without the RR, three left wheels vs one right wheel means she'd yaw over to the right pretty severely I'd think.

I don't see any reason for that since the stall ended the drive. This is confirmed by the motion in all axis been a matter of mm. So, "severely" is may be over stated. May have been a "tendency" instead?

Are you thinking that the RR may not have been turning much during the entire last drive? If that's true, then you're right. Three left and one right wheel driving didn't yaw her over much - it didn't make very much progress period.

But we don't know how the RR behaved during the entire last drive. Maybe it slowed down only at the end, just before the drive was aborted. If that's the case, then 3L + 1R driving might still yaw us a lot more than we've seen yet. Still, traction is worse on the left side, so it's not clear what might happen.

But not the tilt of the rover?

Problem is they removed a local tilt to produce the DEM- and I don't know how much - so it was guess work on how to place the rover in terms of tilt etc.

Here is the underbelly animation showing more of the left side (looking under and to the back of the vehicle..2088,90,92)
A rocker or a boogy is really moving, maybe someone can illuminate what is (mechanically) happening with that kind of motion?
Also notice in this animation as well as the other a few posts back, that the ground appears to heave up on the 2092 image.
Well, the ground isn't heaving up, the camera platform (Spirit) is digging in and so it is lower (yikes!)

Click to view attachment

Cheers

(there is one more animation set showing more of the right side (the Scamander side) that I will be getting to ...)

Question: has anyone seen the origin of Scamander discussed?

Is it assumed to be an old impact crater that was filled with the loose bright material or could the hollow have been formed by the same process that produced the material.

Here is the last animation based on Sols 2088,90,92 that show the rightmost section of the undercarriage of Spirit
One thing I would like to point out is the repeatability of the camera pointing; the arm deploys the MI to the exact same places over many sols - I have not made any attempt to align the images - awesome engineering!

Click to view attachment

Cheers

The images from today's diagnosis / drive are available: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...cam/2009-11-24/
And looking at the data available at the tracking web, the net movement was 2.5mm N and 1.3mm W.

Before: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...08P1214L0M1.JPG
After: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...14P1214L0M1.JPG

There is some movement in the soil behind the RR wheel after tosol's RR wheel diagnostic drive:
Click to view attachment
That sounds like a positive sign (tea leave), but we'll have to hear what they say in the next official release.

Full quote of previous post removed - Mod

These images appear to show the ground moving away, which is a very good sign. The three attempts at movement so far have been very promising but I became concerned by the front Hazcam views from Saturday that appear to show that the locked right front wheel has lodged against a small stone and did not appear to move when there was a clear movement from the left front wheel. I wondered what would happen if Spirit rotates around the locked front wheel. Would this cause the rover to slide further into Scamander crater?

I see clear motion on the FR during the last drive. Small, but so was the motion from the FL. I don't think small pebbles etc are going to significantly increase the drag caused by that wheel.

Animations of middle right and left wheel (till sol 2095):
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

There was no stall of the suspect wheel during the diagnostic drive, so it's full speed ahead (relatively speaking!) for the next 5m drive over the Thanksgiving weekend.