I guess the backups are plans that didn't make the cut for primary.

I'm curious, too, though won't be surprised if there are several backup plans. Lots of lessons learned from TeeBee, I'm sure.

MIs following the recent wheel moves.
Animation between sols 2076 and 2081.
Click to view attachment

Presumably she needs to get away from the crater that she's dug into. And we finally have a map showing the outline of Scamander crater ("Scamander plains"), with the latest Spirit map update.

With the crater taking up a sizable stretch of the middle of West Valley, I wonder what the approach would be if we drove out of Troy forwards (northwards). Would they continue to VB/G east or west of Scamander?

IMO, it is touching the underbelly. Actually, it's being dislodged by the rover's movement since there is a slight movement of the rock (clockwise orthogonal to the camera pointing).

Sure hope you're right, Eduardo. If that thing's at all mobile, it shouldn't be a factor in the extraction after all.

Now that we know of Scamander, we can see it... but we didn't before been stucked. I think I can see more crater-like features ahead in the 5.4Mb route map. Assuming Troy is "inside" a crater, I'll choose to drive on the "rims" of the craters to come whatever main direction will be selected.
This means will have to field prove that what we can see from MRO is what we actually can predict from Navcam & Pancam picts.
I'll be intersted to know if you see crater-like features ahead as I do.

To be fair, now I'm not so sure about it.
I see movement on that rock but it might be also an illusion due to the shadows or compression artifacts.

Yeah it looks to me like the perspective has changed a bit and everything under the rover has shifted over a bit, with belly rock staying in place relative to everything else. Hard to be sure though.

In terms of the press briefing, I don't think we've heard definitely what the primary extraction plan is. That would be something to listen for.

Any link to this since it'll be in about 15 mn?

Edited, here it is: http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/nov/H...ck_telecon.html

http://www.nasa.gov/news/media/newsaudio/index.html

Great new topographic map of Scamander Crater at the very bottom of the list of briefing images:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news...el20091110.html

A synopsis of anything new would be much much appreciated by we who can't access at work.

Go, Spirit, go, Spirit, go Spirit go!

Most single stricking picture of the conf:
Click to view attachment


Edited, sorry Fredk, same image as your link but can't remove it now.

Emily's Tweeting it...

"What mired Spirit: left wheels broke through duricrust covering soft-sand-filled crater. Right wheels outside crater. "

Flash was successfully reformatted yesterday; first drive command is Monday/Tuesday.

Spirit MIGHT be stuck here for good...

Monday = drive attempt

Efforts to continue until Feb when there's a review...

Plan = follow tracks back out...

1st drive Mon: plan = 5m worth of wheel turns... commands sent Mon night/Tues a.m, data due back later Tuesday...

"Still a lot of science can be done at this location..."

"Ability to do crude seismometry..."

1st attempt: straighten out the wheels and then drive out in the ruts Spirit made on the drive in; start Late Monday / Early Tuesday (jpl time?), get info back: Tuesday

then take a day to see what is going on and re-plan...

Its going to be really exciting around here over the next week or two!

Cheers

Hmmm. That map of Scamander really says it all. They pretty much have to try backing out. Sliding downslope is not an option, it's a rover-sized sand trap.

Re the wheel slewing: Is this Paolo's "sidewinder mode" (rotating the wheels while moving them from side to side)?

It's basicaly what Ray Ardvinson's saying at this time !!!

What a Monday on the horizon...
Cross your fingers until you get cramps!

Some very interesting discussion of Belly Rock. One of the big concerns they have, which I hadn't heard before, was that the rock may get caught in one of a couple of notches or depressions on the belly. If it did, then presumably the rover would be stuck, if the rock was firmly embedded in the ground. They said the notches are a few cm in size, and that they are near the front edge of the belly. So that's another reason they want to drive forwards (northwards). If they backed up, the rock could get caught in one of the notches.

They also stressed they'll try to keep Belly Rock away from the rover centre of mass. But they didn't say where their MI imaging says the rock is now - closer to the front or the back. (Obviously near the back would be best.)

Other reasons for driving straight forwards are that going backwards would mean having to break through surface crust, so backtracking avoids that extra work. Also going backwards means climbing uphill.

One more bit of info (which also appeared in a new New Scientist article, was that with current dust levels, Spirit might just be able to survive another winter stuck in Troy. So another dust storm without any cleaning could do her in. Another good reason to get mobile.

Good briefing, lots of new details.

I liked the description of Spirit sitting right on a boundary between the highest sulfate level material found by either rover under the left wheel and basaltic material under the right wheel. The sulfur material being the soft, light material on the crater (down slope) side of the rover. Also the vertical changes from the surface of the duricrust to lower in the crust to beneath the crust showing water processes that occurred since volcanic activity in the area ceased.

I don't remember the danger of the belly rock being caught in a engineering depression in the underbelly being brought up before. One reason for driving forward rather than backward. I think that depression is visible in the underbelly images to the left of the belly rock's tip.

The detailed description of what occurred in the last days before halting driving operations was interesting. I found it encouraging that the (middle?) wheel stall seems to have not reoccurred when that wheel was tested. Also, the extraction maneuver, straight forward, is a maneuver that was not previously tried when the rover first became mired. A fresh maneuver leaves room for fresh hope... for me. Also good is the rover was still making progress when the driving was halted and was not just spinning its wheels. The progress was, however, in the down slope direction which is no longer considered a good idea, which is why the wheels were straightened for a straight forward drive.
edit: To clarify, the rover was going backwards toward Von Brun when it stopped. So a forward drive will be heading back in the direction it came from.

My fantasy: The wheels catch traction on some buried rocks and Tuesday morning images show the rover popped out and looking back at Belly Rock.

Stories hitting Google News now; here's the Associated Press release, which usually serves as the root for derivative articles.

Typical media getting it wrong whenever they can.

Nasa comment regarding DM1 picture of today release was not much better (ok, probaly tiping mistakes)
"The red line tracks the 18.8 kilometers (11.7 miles) that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity traveled from where it landed in January 2004 to its position 2,955 Martian days, or sols, later, on Nov. 4, 2009. The rover landed inside Eagle Crater and spent about half of its first year examining layers inside Victoria Crater before embarking on a long trek to the larger Victoria Crater, which is explored for two years."

Now that we have these great maps of Scamander Crater, I went back and had a look for it in some old anaglyphs posted on this forum. And bingo: there, in Ant's sol 1869 pancam anaglyph mosaic from this post, it is. Here's a crop with Scamander circled in white. Also I've circled in black the "rock garden" where we're currently sitting, with one side hanging over into the crater.
Click to view attachment

Why not flap the solar panels and fly away??

Feel free. :-)

--Greg

I'm wondering if the dark rectangle indicated by the arrow is the depression in Spirit's underbelly that they are concerned may catch on Belly Rock's tip. The forward drive, toward us as we view this image, is supposed to eliminate this possibility.
Click to view attachment
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news...el20091110.html

Not to be denser than usual, but is anyone else getting terribly confused by the forward/back distinctions when talking about the extraction?

I propose establishing four standard reference terms: "rover-front", "rover-back", "rover-left", and "rover-right". Rover-front is the normal lead end of the vehicle where the IDD is mounted, and rover-back is obvious. Rover-left is the left side of the vehicle as viewed from above referenced to rover-front. Examples of useage: "Today Spirit moved 2m rover-back", "This MI image has rover-front facing the point of view", "Spirit experienced some slight rover-left slippage during today's drive".

Just a proposal, and in all probability there's already a perfectly good reference system that I'm not aware of.

nprev, I know what you mean, but inevitably someone will abbreviate rover-front to RF and then were confused with wheel references like RF (right front) etc.

Spirit has been mostly driving 'backwards' for the past 3 years, so backwards is rear facing and forwards is front of vehicle (IDD end).

I just love acronyms of course, but I'd be happier if Spirit just G-O (got out!)

Good point, Astro0, and I actually thought about that after posting. How about MER-xxx? Then we'd have MF, MB, ML, & MR.

(Boy; I have no life, do I?)

I like the fact that avoiding confusion forces the use of more descriptive language when describing a rover move.

Consider this a backlash against text message/tweeter speak.

I'll suggest arm-ward as the rover forward direction. I'll let someone else suggest a description for the other direction.

Armward ho!
Click to view attachment

This situation does have a "Back to the Future" vibe, or in this case, Forward to the Past.

RF has a lot of traction here whatever RF means...

That's a fascinating anaglyph Fred - you can almost convince yourself you can see the crater as a depression, can't you?

I guess it could have been a lot worse; if Spirit had driven further in, and not just sank in on one side, I think the game would already be over.

Sailors long ago came up with names for vehicle-referenced directions: fore/forward and aft/astern, port and starboard. I've even heard port and starboard used for aircraft.

Steve M

Yeah, thought about nautical terminology as well, and that'd be fine, too.

Anything would be fine as long as there was a consensus & consistent application.

I would say the crater is clearly visible - no convincing necessary! I was even able to match details of the size, shape, and topography with the contour map. Notice for example the "channel" running out of the crater to the NNW. (It shows up on the contour map as blue.) Look at Ant's original anaglyph to see it more clearly.

Exactly! I was thinking the same thing. Looking at those images, there's nothing (apart from the crater shape and hindsight) to suggest danger in the crater. I think the plan was to get over to the "sidewalk" beside HP, and that may have saved us from certain doom.

Sorry of the late reply. That's a nice idea. The moving sun looks very realistic.

Beside the colour adjustements you could yet implement the local true time generating with http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/html/filenames_ltst.htm

Does anyone know where I can find an mp3 file of the Nov 12 teleconference?

Thanks Peter - good ideas and also going to do a few more things for v4. A sort of learning experiment!!! Did it away from home under time pressure and didn't have your v. useful corrected time page bookmarked on my favourites. But I have bookmarked it right now .

Currently working on another Oppy navcam 'panorama' - Sol 2058. They are a real challenge and great fun to do.

"@marsroverdriver Showtime! #FreeSpirit 3 minutes ago from Twitterrific"

We might see the first images at exploratorium in the next hour then.

IIRC at the press briefing they said the commands would be executed late Monday evening, Pasadena time -- or maybe that was when the downlink would happen. Perhaps "Showtime" referred to the uplink? Mars24 tells me it's now only 08:20 at Gusev, so they wouldn't be driving yet, right?

Edit: Blerg, I misread Mar24. As I write this it is indeed late evening Spirit time, 19:42. Sorry to add to the confusion.

The commands go up tonight, the pictures come down early Tuesday morning. I'm guessing this is all California time. Right now, Spirit time is early evening, so the rover still has a full night's rest ahead before the big day on Mars.