Perhaps a new topic is in order at the very special occasion of 3000 sols for Oppy. Congratulations to everyone on the team for what's become a truly epic mission. And with a whole new destination ahead of her: Tribulation!

The MER filenames clock has now turned to sol 3000, a bit before the jpl site and SPICE:
Click to view attachment

So I guess this is as good a time as any to announce that Stu and I have collaborated on a new 'poemster' (poem/poster) to mark this latest milestone in the MER journey.

Click to view attachment

3000 Martian days (sols)...what an incredible achievement.
Huge congratulations goes to the entire MER team of mission planners, scientists, researchers and of course, those amazing Rover drivers.

You can find larger versions of the poemster, plus a few desktop wallpaper versions on my blog.

Enjoy.

GO OPPY!

And a BIG tip of the hat to Astro0 for the beautiful new banner commemorating the occasion!

GO OPPY!!!

3

Chill Out my friend!

Paolo

I absolutely love this poemster!
"Opportunity's heart-flame of exploration still burns bright,
The rover that should have died long ago
Refuses to go softly into the Martian night."

3000 sols, wow! Just today, I met a fellow who still works at Rocketdyne, was involved in producing some of the components for the MERs and the upcoming MSL. We had a few laughs about how cute it was to have a MER drive over me at a JPL open house, while letting MSL drive over me seems like it'd hurt a lot!

If it's okay to blow your horn in this thread, perhaps this is a nice time to mention that I played on a soundtrack with John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNuEsiVAJmE...feature=related

-Bradford Ellis = brellis

At one stage we asked ourselves whether the rovers will last untill MSL arrival. It was more as a joke than anything else. It was a looooong time ago and none of us ever calculated it would be after 3000 sols.
Bravo!

Poemster looks beautiful, Astro0, as does the new banner, fantastic work!

I've a special post up on my "Road to Endeavour" blog now, celebrating Sol 3000, which I hope some of you will find interesting...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2012/...e-thousand-sols

Great article Stu and wonderful interviews.
Was that third person still at the bottom of the sea when he wrote that?!

Congratulations to you as well on your Road to Endeavour blog.
It is a fantastic 'chronicle' of this martian adventure.

As an aside, I was speaking with JPL Director, Dr Charles Elachi who was visiting CanberraDSN today. We were looking at our Visitor Centre's fullscale MER replica and I glanced over at the clock to notice it was the exact moment when Opportunity reached Sol3000. I mentioned it to him and he shook his head and he said "I hadn't realised that was today. The change in time zones threw me".
"Imagine how jetlagged Opportunity must feel" I replied

Great achievement, indeed !!!

(where is that emoticon with curtseying face?)

Regarding rover's Li-ion betteries, would anybody know how they are performing now after 3000 sols and 9 years of operation?
I couldn't find anything more up to date then status after 670 sols in this document - capacity loss in the MER batteries is 5-10% thus far.
Thanks

Congratulations to the whole MER team -- designers, fabricators, testers, operators, planners, managers, etc.! Remarkable to have a rover operating so long with so much capability still remaining. It would be ironic if a photovoltaic-powered craft was able to operate longer on the surface of Mars than a radioisotope-powered one. :-)

There are more reasons that just longevity when it comes to having an MMRTG on Curiosity. Reliability for one ( 2400Whrs/sol rather than 900, then 700, then 300, then camp for winter at 200 etc etc etc ) An MMRTG also produces a lot of spare heat to keep the rover itself warm.

I like variety in life. ;-). Paolo

Quick delurk just to offer congratulations to everyone involved with this astonishing feat of engineering, dedication, and long hours of hard work.

Here is a little update (26-Jun-2006 ) from the report above:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...3/1/06-1597.pdf

Or you could search the database like this: http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/simple-...ver+mer+battery

Thanks a lot, MoreInput, it's very good source of engineering papers.
It looks like battery capacity was still around 85-90% after 3 years, which is excellent, but unfortunatelly no info how it looks now in 2012.
Anyway, thanks again.

Congrats to Stu for that great interview, and of course the team, many happy returns!
Hope the eastward side of the Cape has even more favorable gusts....

What an amazing scientific and engineering accomplishment for our species.
The dearth of published news about it on the net makes me think some people need to reconsider their priorities.
If it wasn't for Stu and TPS, few would know.

ADMIN: Moved a few posts into the Spring at Cape York thread.

> One comment from Stu, repeated here though for continuity...

Stu: Thanks, CR. I really just gabble on about what's happening, and hope some people read it!

Rest of post/s moved here.

In the interview with Maxwell, he says he'd like a pic of the Milky Way. At first I thought it'd be too faint, but then we did get a shot of the Large Magellanic Cloud:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...E1P2741L1M1.JPG
The LMC is comparable in brightness to the brightest parts of the Milky Way, though of course the Milky Way is much larger, so you'd need many pancam frames. Navcam might be the way to go.

Three thousands sols on Mars and with rover! It's hard to believe.
Truly amazing work of the whole MER team.
I'm looking forward to Sol 4000!



Very nice graphic Astro0 and interesting interview Stu!

We also got Andromeda--it was barely detectable in the largest practical exposures. So the Milky Way center would have been detectable only if a good background could be established. That's hard for something big. Also, the center was moderately close to the Sun during "astronomy season". We did get the circumpolar part of the Milky Way, but it was not detectable. Even LMC was only a few DN at the peak.

Navcam doesn't help. It is far, far less sensitive than Pancam L1. Neutral density filters. Good for driving, bad for astronomy. We did some sensitivity tests, although we expected the result. No go.

Thanks for the info, Deimos. I don't remember Andromeda (M31), and I've looked through my collection and searched the forum. Do you recall the sol you acquired M31?

I believe it was A/1941, night time opacity field A (aka the "diffuse sensitivity test").

I wrote that it would be ironic for a MER to operate longer than MSL, because solar cells 1) are subject to dust accumulation and slant-angle/darkness issues to which an RTG is not susceptible, and 2) do not produce the critical heat of an RTG. If Curiosity manages to operate longer than Opportunity then no irony will have occurred. :-) Let's hope that turns out to be the case!

[Edited to remove an unintended emoticon parsing]

Does anyone find some differences in these two pictures?

Hint: It is not only that the lower picture is now in color ...

What a mission .. 3000 sols and counting.

I find something in common: the RPs like donuts!

Paolo