Any news on what this software update for the rovers gonna do?

Maybe they uploaded a Turbo command?!

If so... What is the theoretical maximum drive distance in one sol. How much power does the drive mechanism use?

The latest flight directors update just refers to "enchanced mobilty"

Perhaps with local terrain being what it is - they're reprogramming auto-nav to do 20, 30, 50cm steps instead of 10cm steps?

Doug

There was a mention of a software error occuring on Opportunity when they attempted the back-to-back 150 metre drives. So I guess they are fixing at least that. The error was reported in the rover updates for sol 362-363:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...All.html#sol360

That would be nice to see - the software enabling Opportunity to do longer drives. But I've noticed in recent images that the sand drifts seem to be getting larger, let's hope that's not a problem.

The last flight director update said that they were going to reboot Opportunity today (Sunday)....I just downloaded some new images with the Midnight Mars Browser from today (though they were all left over from earlier sols), I take it as a good sign that the software update took and the rover's ready to go again?

Drive length seems to be limited by power rather than software, given an obstacle free terrain.

They tend to do a blind drive, followed by autonav drive.

The first 50m or so will probably take only 20 minutes, but after that they'll take another hour to do the next 50m because autonav is very slow - stopping every 10cm to check terrain ahead.

If they can take 20, 30% off the autonav time, they can cover a lot more ground

Doug