When she can communicate, she will.

Does anyone have any good images of Spirit's underside ie: bottom of the WEB.
I'm looking for an image that shows what might have made what appears to be an impression in the soil near what again I'm assuming is 'Pointy Rock'.
Click to view attachment
Any help? Thoughts?

Normally anthropomorphizing spacecraft leaves me cold, but check out http://xkcd.com/695/

Aww q_q
I'm not going to lie, that made me tear up a bit.

Seconded. I have to admit I anthropomorphize our little buddy on Mars.

Only Stu could have done this.
This is it.

Great article, Stu. Not at all a requiem, but a celebration of change for Spirit...with many doors still open.

XKCD Poor Spirit

" did i do a good job ?"

"do i get to come home ?"

"guys???"

Well, it seems that Spirit may have come to the end of her travels (at least for now).
As she settles in for winter and commences her 'first stationary science campaign',
Stu and I have collaborated on a poster and poem to mark this new chapter (not the last) in Spirit's journey on Mars.
Click to view attachment

UPDATE: Full size poster 5.06mb on my blog.
Enjoy

I did enjoy this one A LOT.

In many many sols from now,
Spirit will still be there talking to us,
Weels tracks nowhere to be seen,
No clue where she did come from.

I'm usually very critical of anthromophizing machines or animals, but I have to admit that somehow today's XKCD touched me deeply too. I think it's "did I do a good job?" that did it to me . . .

--Greg

At the audio briefing, it was said that the low-power fault mode might be modified so that Spirit will only communicate when hailed, to save additional power. In that case, we will have no way of knowing whether Spirit is still alive until the Spring. So if some very low-power way could be found of indicating whether Spirit is still alive, that might be useful.

Would it be lower power to move the camera or antenna mast than to transmit? Perhaps MRO could monitor the shape and position of their shadow on the surface (I assume it would be too hard to see the actual mast). Have it vary between t and l each day or week, as a heartbeat. I know we could see the mast shadow from Opportunity at Victoria, but I'm not sure how definitive it would be pointed each way to maximize/minimize each shadow. Although, as an engineer, it would be a bit risky to have it moving back and forth without feedback on its status. Maybe they could use the positions of the hardware as a "poor man's" memory between low power fault reboots.

Well, I return from a micro holiday (Australia Day), floating for hours down the Murray River on a lilo, and the "stationary science platform" media release awaits me.
Ah well, I suppose all good things must come to an end.

I find it ironic that this decision occurs - after start of an (seemingly) amazing recovery discovered by finding the reverse gear! These sentiments are echoed elsewhere on this topic. There are hints however, that next year, they may try to move it again - fingers crossed - especially if over the next few weeks of "position[ing] itself to combat the severe Martian winter..." it should pop up and out of it's current sand trap and over onto firmer terrain.

I note the ideas about positioning the arm/camera to be a visible indication of 'alive status' to the HiRise camera.
Wouldn't a heartbeat 'beep' use less power and be a more reliable status indicator?


Q1) Was there any official word or hypothesis on the (temporarily) resurrected wheel that was in action briefly only a week or so ago? Reasoning for it rejuvenation / demise?

Q2) Is there a site where the rover power levels/telemetry is visible?
(I recall seeing sites where live system data was available for a satellite (I think) voltage levels / telemetry etc.... like this): http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/windnrt/

I also couldn't listen live, but would like to catch up now. I've read the whole thread from the teleconference up to here. Does anyone have a pointer to an mp3 of the news conference?

I saw the mentions of the iPlayer feed, but as I understand it that was just a related interview.

Edit: downloading now, thanks dshaffer!

Miles O' Brien has a short interview with Steve Squyres re/ Spirit on This Week In Space. The segment starts at around 01:30.

Last evening I stumbled across the mp3 here (top of the page):

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news...el20100126.html

@marsroverdriver pointed to a less depressing rewrite of the XKCD comic.
Click to view attachment

Like that one *much* better.

From http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&a...7&start=240

Pointy rock on left?
http://207.7.139.5/mars/spirit/forward_haz...Z8P1254R0M1.JPG

edit, oops that's to far to the left, never mind.

Looks like a good drive from a tilt perspective.

Indeed, it does look like a big improvement in tilt. Based on how far the horizon rose/dropped in the front/rear hazcams, I estimate an improvement in tilt of about 2.5 degrees towards the north on sol 2161 compared with sol 2158. The LR wheel has risen up quite a bit again.

She made less distance on 2161 than on previous backwards drives. I suspect the problem might be the RF wheel being stopped by the rock immediately to its rear (south). That rock is not very big, but itself might be caught by other rocks invisible under the belly. I wonder if wiggling (steering left and right) the RF wheel might nudge the rock it's against to one side.

Fredk, should that lead to a boost of 12-15W powerwise?

Yes, according to the figure of 5-6Whrs per degree of tilt that Callas gave at the briefing. But the big question is did the tilt improve by 2.5 degrees. The hazcams produce a lot of distortion so I could be a fair bit off.

Last couple of drives or so. The change in drive strategy is readily apparent.

(animation)

At first glance what strikes/surprises me is how the RF wheel appears to have started to dig in. I hope others can tell me if this is deliberate (If so, how?) or a reflection of possible change in the surface underneath the wheel?

I take it, based on earlier comments from Fredk and others, this is good news re tilt.

Neil

The RF wheel is moving into soil that was broken up by the RM in its initial pass, could be a good place to dig the wheel in if that's the plan.

The plan as they discussed at the briefing was to continue with backwards drives, and as far as I know no change in strategy has happened yet. They said they may try to wiggle the RF to dig it in, but there's no sign from the images that they've tried that yet. We'll just have to wait and see as always...

To help me (and I would hope others) gain a better understanding of Spirit's current predicament is anyone able to give us Spirit's current tilt angle and her predicted power production over the winter months? I think a summary of what the different power levels would signify could be very informative. For instance, (and I'm making these numbers up, below 180W means end of scientific measurements, below 160W means loss of daily contact etc)

(Not sure if this is in correct thread or wants to be in winter @ Troy)

Neil

Here are what I think are the highlights from the latest planetary society report on the question of extrication. Arvidson supports Stroupe's comments about further driving in the spring - even before the stationary science campaign, if I interpret this correctly:

And from Squyres:


And this about the tilt:


(I'm assuming we'll keep using this thread for extrication-related posts until all driving has stopped for the winter...)

Pics are down! It looks like another drive attempt backwards on 2165. Some distance and tilt improvement by the looks of it. RF wheel has been steered - I wonder if they've started to try digging it in:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...2WP1214R0M1.JPG
Edit: on second thought it looks more like a roll towards the west than a tilt to the north.

That's a good turnaround on the images - 4hrs

I see some dirt in the cleats of the RF wheel.
Click to view attachment

Checking previous images there was some motion on sol 2161

2158
Click to view attachment

2161
Click to view attachment

I can't tell if the motion continued on sol 2165.

By the look of it, they not only did some steering on the RF wheel, there's actually been some wheel rotation as well.
Click to view attachment
Animation Sols2158, 2161, 2165

The bottom of that rock is quite rough compared with the eroded top.

Good catch, Alan! I can't wait till we get the next update...

Now, I've got good feelings about a real possibility of extricating Spirit from this sand trap next spring... and rove a little
And I'm also still dreaming of reaching Von Braun. We need good dreams !

The last update suggested this could well be the last drive of the season - so this may well be it. A little bit of scuffing and spinning might be on the cards yet though.

Perhaps I'm not reading correctly (not native english) but I think they are telling that the last drive is / will be the next one, attempting to lift one side of the rover.
From http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...ll.html#sol2159:

Use the suspension? Are these rovers lowriders?

Please make that tilt before then...
The silence will be deafening...

I agree, Tesheiner, that there will be one more drive attempt before winter. I guess they'll just be driving certain wheels in order to get the suspension to do what they want. On the positive side, there was a slight increase in power to 188 Whrs, due entirely to clearing skies (lower tau) rather than array cleaning.

Cleat Cam video up on JPL site. I hope they release a new version when the missing images from sols 2150 and 2152 come down; the break is kind of obvious.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=889

Pics are down from the 2169 drive attempt (the last?). It looks like there wasn't much movement (not much was expected - this drive was supposed to improve tilt), but also it doesn't look like there was much tilt change:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...7MP1214R0M1.JPG

The movement between Sols 2165 and 2169 are indeed very small.
I wonder if this is what they were expecting or if the drive ended early.

Take a look at these animations.
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
Very minor tilt in the FHaz image. Larger movement by the rear wheels in the RHaz.
Interestingly, one wheel up and the other down, due to motion of RM wheel (?).

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
Looks like no motion/rotation of the LM wheel except that caused by the motion/rotation of the RM wheel.

I wonder if there will be any more drives attempted or if this was indeed the last for a while.

It may not be able to go down any farther. It may have bottomed out already.

I have made a hazcam video of Spirit's journey down the north side of Homeplate last winter, getting stuck in Troy, and attempted extrication to Sol 2169. Ohh!! and I have undistorted the images to .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLFUTsk6upk

I'll try and upload a better quality video later, and for some reason youtube changed the aspect ratio .

According to the latest update, Spirit's parked for the winter:

Good luck through the long cold winter, girl...

(I guess we're done with this thread...)