Oh, thank you Damia. I was looking forward to seeing a postcard. This will be a part of my next Mars presentation.

I can really imagine what it would be like to walk up this hill with Opportunity. What a ride!

Oh, and let me also bow to James.

Damia, your's is now my new desktop background . Great work, and thank you everyone. What a great place we are at.

So while we wait for much better colour views from James and Damia, here's a quick view across Endeavour Crater
Sort of freaks me out that view because I made a fanciful sketch of it over 4 years ago. Called it HOAV!

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

So, which one is the real one? I'm wondering how you'll call the view once we'll be a bit higher. HofHOAV? We definitely need a JAR emoticon.Thank you all for taking time to create those beautiful artistic pans

As you wish

James--any chance you have a wider version of the color elevation map for the region between Wdowiak Ridge and Smectite valley?

The DTM is publicly available:

http://www.uahirise.org/dtm/dtm.php?ID=ESP_018701_1775

in particular, here's the color coded altimetry:

http://hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu/PDS/EXTR...1775_U01.ca.jpg

Paolo

Thank you Paolo for pointing me to the links! Will Opportunity climb any higher than the brown elevation on its way to Smectite valley, or just follow the brown contour around. The ridge of the white peaks would have a great view...

And the 1x2 mosaic looking East.

All we've heard is the proposed route map on Crumpler's blog. It shows the route climbing pretty much to the highest point ("summit lithology"). I seriously hope we make it there...

Totally agree with you Fredk.
People and EPO people like me would not understand if a 360° pan is not made from the very summit of Endeavour Crater's rim.
This would mark a big step and will be seen as a major event in the history of the exploration of Mars !

It's now a week since we've received new pictures - the last were from 3758. It's not just that jpl/exploratorium aren't updating, since Lemmon's tau page also hasn't been updated since 3758.

We have been seeing previously unseen old images appear, though, which sounds like a good sign.

The JPL status report says there have been several flash memory faults in a row - typically these result from trying to write data to a bad area. Spirit went through this as well. The long-term fix is a reformatting, but that carries its own risks so it's only done when really necessary. That point might be approaching.

Phil

Is there risk in waiting too long to reformat flash? That is, could continuing flash anomalies prevent reformatting falsh? Or is the reformatting process itself independent of flash?

The Rover also has 128 MB of DRAM, which is where the formatting program would run from, so it's independent.

It is a ground problem, not a rover issue causing delay in images: https://twitter.com/nivnac/status/504757927954362368

I'm curious how James has learnt this - has the tracking database provided clues?

I guess while we wait for news and images, here's a pan from Sol 3749 using images that appeared on Exploratorium in the last few days.

Click to view attachment

Uses both left and right hand pancam images, plus some artificial sky.

I don't know for sure. If I comment that there is no data on Twitter I get a bunch of worried replies, so i was really heading that off as there is no reason to be concerned.

Circumstantial evidence that Oppy is OK:
1) We've seen data/images drop out many times before.
2) Recent comments on Twitter from insiders have sounded routine and unconcerned.
3) There are old images/data downlinked on recent sols.
4) New sequences are appearing in the tracking database (all be it just tau obs)
5) There are a bunch of 'Unexpected sequences' in the on board data list (which implies that the rover has sent data that the database had not been told about, i.e. ground data is missing, rover data fine)

It's a rover issue.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-292
An increasing frequency of computer resets on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has prompted the rover team to make plans to reformat the rover's flash memory.

The resets, including a dozen this month, interfere with the rover's planned science activities, even though recovery from each incident is completed within a day or two.

When Spirit first landed its software crashed when its flash became more than 50% full. While this bug was being fixed, Spirit was switched to a mode where it did not use flash memory to store data. The picture in the link below was taken during this time:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/gallery/press.../20040128a.html

This shows that Opportunity would be perfectly usable with flash memory disabled, although it would be able to do far less work each day.

With flash memory disabled, is driving possible?
I recall those tense Spirit flash days when Peter Theisinger
was calming us all down...quite rightly...

If command sequences are stored in different flash memory to that used to store data then I suppose that a 20m blind drive would be possible each day followed by each camera taking one picture at the end of the drive. These 8 pictures could then be transmitted to Earth at the end of the day's 20m drive without ever being stored in data flash memory.

I imagine that it is also possible to instruct Opportunity to do something immediately over its direct Earth link without sending this instruction as part of a command sequence. It therefore might be possible to tell Opportunity to drive a few meters without making this command part of a sequence.

I never heard that Spirit flash memory has been disabled, And I understand they are re formatting Oppy's not disabling

That was temporary:

"While this bug was being fixed, Spirit was switched to a mode where it did not use flash memory to store data."

When the rover is in crippled mode we use part of the RAM as a file system and am not sure that the remaining RAM would support driving with the additional buffers we need for imaging and all that. And driving in real time? No way! The OWLT (One Way Light Time) varies from 5 to 20 minutes, communications take a LOT of power and takes time to switch between driving and communicating. We sometimes have very lengthy discussions on where to drive, how, what safety parameters to set.

Just think yourself driving in a foreign country, no maps, with your mother-in-law providing "suggestions". How long would you last at the wheel?

Paolo

You, sir, are a driver of great patience and a master of diplomacy.

From the new PS update:

Let's hope for the best...

Just a thought... should we rename this place Cape Defibrillation?

Phil

No no no, I'm sure they know how to do it... by heart

I would image that after this procedure the formatting process will identify and mark off some bad sectors in the flash memory but is there any information yet on how many flash memory cells have already been marked as bad (both before launch, and as well since arriving at Mars). Also, how much got marked bad when Spirit did the procedure?

Follow Fred's link...

Ok, so Spirit lost 7% of total flash capacity when it reformatted, amounting to about 1/2 a bank. Worst case for Oppy could be about double that if they have to stop accessing bank 7 altogether.

If I understood the article correctly, the flash memory consists of 8 banks, each bank of 4 packages, each package of 32 sectors of 64 kBytes. The finest granularity for marking as bad is a sector. Total number of sectors is 8 * 4 * 32 = 1024. Hence the memory is marked in 1/1024 steps as bad.
The actual number of bad sectors of these 1024 sectors is known after reformatting. One bank (128 sectors) is excluded from the reformatting, since it contains the operating system, and is not exposed to frequent rewriting cycles.
Whether the reformatting resolves the root cause of the reboots, is known afterwards, too.

Today on Mars
Sol 3775 - Navcam

Click to view attachment

NB: Two LH images with partial RH image stitched in to cover a data drop. Artificial sky added for effect.

A few more quick stitches.
Pancam
Click to view attachment

Navcam
Click to view attachment

Wider pan of the post above using RH Navcams but with the drop-out image from the LH Navcam, so the reason for the mismatch.
Click to view attachment

Great work!
And my take to.

Here is the complete Navcam panoramic view on Sol 3775.

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment

thanks for the great stitches! its great to be Oppy-rational again. greats sights on sol3775 from the parting view going up around the bend and look up to Wdowiak with Klingon face etched atop the rock garden variety slab.
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

So can anyone give us an updated on the flash reformatting? Images are arriving, but from where in the pipeline? I'm assuming all went well.

Me too. These are new post-format images as Astro0's celebratory post implies . Only time will tell if the problems are completely fixed, though.

We heard that the formatting was probably going to go ahead last week but I haven't heard if it actually went ahead...

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has successfully reformatted its flash memory. Telemetry downlinked from Mars' most seasoned rover indicates the reformat completed successfully on Sol 3773 (Thursday 2014-09-04). LINK to full report : http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-292

Thanks for pointing that out - I never thought to look for an update in the old press release!

The Navcam L0 view on Sol 3778.

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment

Land of the Long Shadows
Click to view attachment

This is a circular view of Jan's full panorama from sol 3775. Opportunity shows Rosetta how to land on a double-lobed object. Simples!

Phil

Click to view attachment

..and the shadow-casting sol3778 crosseye
Click to view attachment

The L7 Pancam view on Sol 3778

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment