Wow, that is a big relief. I hope we see some driving soon, then.

I just think that's really cool - rovers that are able to figure out that they're not where they're supposed to be.

Also this sounds like it's not completely dead

Sol 435:
The sol's plan included more remote sensing, plus diagnostic tests using attempts to change the steering direction of the right-front wheel very slightly at different times of day and at different voltage levels. The testing did show motion in the steering motor. While analysis continues, the rover is resuming normal science and driving activities with restrictions on the use of the right-front steering motor.

Hopefully it's just some dust somewhere in there that'll work its way out. Or else just a software glitch.

Where is the rest of the world? We have this big news item concerning the wheel problem and no one seems to know or care. It isn't even being mentioned by NASA..yet.

Oh, yes it is
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/status.html#opportunity

Oh, thank god. I can breath again. Although Opportunity is not out of the woods yet, I was concerned it might have developed a serious mobility problem just as it was getting to the etched terrain. It's very encouraging that not only have they been able to drive a fair distance with the problem, but also that "the testing did show motion..."

Well that's certainly a bit of a relief. I wonder what's causing these problems with the steering actuators....the same fault on both rovers seems highly unlikely unless there's a design weakness in that part somewhere .

It's the same dilemma i always have with my twin daugthers. If they're BOTH ill by a not contageous disease: is it because they're built the same way (with the same stongnesses and weaknesses) or is it just pure coincidence ?

I'd say the steering actuator problems have to do with a "weakness" in both....though we don't have the inside information on what's exactly going on.

Oppy is moving again.........but did take a little detour again.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B0P1893L0M1.JPG

Am I wrong, or is it good news that i only see perfectly in-line wheel tracks again in your posted navcam img. ? Looks like the curvature in its path is almost gone too !

Great image at the detour by the way (taken 3 hours before) !
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...11P1223L0M1.JPG

one word

P H E WWW.

SCOTT

For those who haven't seen it, Steve Squyres posted this on his new PI update at:

http://athena1.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

"Over on Opportunity, I suppose the biggest news has been the trouble with the right front steering actuator. It stopped working a few sols back, and it may have failed permanently. This isn't nearly as bad as it sounds! The rovers have many possible steering techniques, and some of them don't require the steering actuators at all. And we caught a lucky break... the wheel is pointed very close to straight forward, which makes these alternative steering techniques pretty easy. So if we've lost this actuator, it's really just an annoyance, not a problem. It's a powerful reminder, though, that these rovers aren't going to live forever. We've been pushing Opportunity very hard, and we're going to keep pushing her. "

Also from the article:

The big science news for Opportunity is that we are now in the etched terrain. This crept up on us slowly, but we're now starting to understand what etched terrain looks like. We've known for a long time that the etched terrain has a "grain" to it, visible in orbital images, that runs north-south. And what we now realize is that the grain is caused by the very large ripples that we've been driving through. These ripples look different from the ones that we saw farther north. The obvious difference is that they're a lot bigger, but that's not all. Look at some of the recent pictures and you'll see what I'm talking about. We're going to look them over pretty carefully as we continue to the south.

do we think he is referring to the bright soil that has been appearing in Oppy's tracks of late? or the micro craters?

Don't know about you guys, but if Steve Squyres can manage to post something
once a week I think it's great!
That piece alone was a breath of fresh air oppossed to the meagre helpings we
get from the Nasa homepage.
Brilliant!!
Thanks for reminding me about that site

This is an excellent peice of news, the P.I. taking time to post on the web is wonderfull.

Maybe the etched terrain is where all the eroded "white" rock ends up? Maybe the winds carry the eroded salt grains to the south, and they end up getting deposited on top of the dunes, created the "etched" terrain?

Just a process note, here -- the above URL isn't working at all for me. If I take the "1" out of "athena1" the URL works and takes me to Squyres' most recent update -- the URL that works for me is:

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

However, if I go back to Home in the Cornell site, without the "1" in the URL, the link to the mission updates is the old link that ends with April 2004. The new update doesn't appear accessible from the home page of the Cornell site that I can get to. (Which is really odd, considering the new update is accessible with the direct link above.)

Does anyone know what's going on with the Cornell site, or why I'm not able to connect using this "new" URL with athena1 rather than athena in the address?

-the other Doug

But, the http://athena1.cornell.edu/news/mubss/ site has update for April 18th, the athena (without the 1) does not...

As far as you could tell from my experience, here, the "athena1" version of the site doesn't exist, since every single time I try to access it, allI get is the standard 404 not found error.

Better way to put it -- the "athena1" version of the site does not appear to exist via the RoadRunner servers I connect through.

Anyone else, at *all*, having this problem? Should I be phoning up RoadRunner and telling them they have a problem? Or should I be phoning up Cornell University?

And, BTW, the link in my post above to the "mubss" page at the Cornell site (sans the "1" in "athena") now shows the April 18th update as well as the April 17th "first entry" in this new run of diary entries by Squyres. So that page *is* being updated at the "athena-without-the-1" version of the site -- it's just not accessible from the home page of the "athena-without-the-1" site.

-the other Doug

And now, not half an hour after the link above showed me both the April 17th and 18th updates, the 18th update has disappeared.

Methinks the problem may lie at the Cornell U. servers, if pages are being swapped in and out over such a short period of time.

-the other Doug

"athena.cornell.edu" and "athena1.cornell.edu" may possibly be on different file servers.

A few notes that may be of interest.

1) A check with the NSLookup site on Kloth.com gives the following:

"athena.cornell.edu" == "athenacornell.r3h.net" == 208.184.39.153
"athena1.cornell.edu" == "space5.astro.cornell.edu" == 132.236.7.46

2) However, if you ping "athena.cornell.edu" you get an IP address for "athenacornell.r3h.net" of 63.218.7.158 rather than 208.184.39.153, while pinging "athenacornell.edu" itself produces a variety of IP addresses, including 64.41.192.125 & 65.170.56.15.

3) Pointing a webbrowser to "http://athenacornell.r3h.net" works like "http://athena.cornell.edu". However, pointing that same browser to "http://space5.astro.cornell.edu" gives you the (old) webpage for the "Ithaca Ballet"!

4) Attempting to view any page on a "space5.astro.cornell.edu" URL, including the "click here" link on that last page, will get you transported, not to "http://www.ithacaballet.org" or even to "http://athena1.cornell.edu", but to "http://athena.cornell.edu/404.html". ("Page not found")

5) If you use "http://132.236.7.46" you will get the same webpage as for "http://space5.astro.cornell.edu" whereas using the IP addresses for "athena.cornell.edu" or "athenacornell.r3h.net" as the URLs all produce blank webpages, which is not really what should happen.

Yes, of great interest...

It would appear that Cornell may need to pull and re-disseminate their DNS entries. They're somewhat broken.

-the other Doug

dvandorn:

I'm not having any problem accessing the athena1 version. I'd suspect Road Runner's DNS server is not up to date.

No pictures today.....I bet they're trying to figure out what happened here instead :

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...11P1223L0M1.JPG

Seems like they are doing some more tests on the wheel. I think they should exhaust all the options available to them. Part of me still hopes it's a software glitch, not a mechanical problem.

I'm wondering if the IDD can be used to look at the right front wheel close-up... Can the MI reach the wheel?

Yeah, I meant to ask about that image, too. Apparently the wheel is not locked in the 7 degree off-center position, since it has turned roughly 80 degrees to the right in that image. It looks to me as if it is free to turn at least that much. I guess it may have been forced into that position in the turning and testing they did in that location. Then later, it was forced back to the 7 degrees off-center position as they drove forward. There must be a stop that prevents it from completely straightening out.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ATP1205L0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...B0P1214L0M1.JPG

It is the right front wheel... And it hasn't moved

Now would that be the right front wheel if it is moving foward and i was riding on it looking foward...or the right front if i was standing there looking at it...or if it was driving backwards would that make the back wheels now the front wheels? or if i was standing on my head looking in a mirror behind the rover casting a reverse view of the rover from the front would the wheel be on the right or would it be on the left?


scott

they really should have labeled those things.

Well it is the same wheel they were dragging on Spirit and they called that one the right front wheel

I wonder if the trenching manuevers they did on purpose earlier in the mission had anything to do with these problems on the right front wheel, first Spirit and now Opie.

Speaking of trenches and the bright material paxdan pointed out:
http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...05P2595L4M1.JPG

This might be a good time to do a scanning on this material and perform some t-shooting with the spare rover back here on Earth.

Damn, looks like exploratorium is dead again at the moment. ....

I think they ruled out that trenching had anything to do with the wheel problems on Spirit.

As of the skid marks made by Oppy, most likely they ran some driving tests to determine how they can now drive the thing, especially how to make turns. Since the two middle wheels cannot steer, they cannot just 'orbit' around the broken wheel - they have to turn it a certain way or the broken wheel will probably dig itself into the soil. It may even be that they can turn only one direction from now on, either clockwise or counterclockwise, but it shouldn't pose a major problem except when trying to navigate slopes. For that reason, going into Victoria, if it ever gets there, may now be out of the question.

...no update of Opportunity images at JPL's RAW pages today either......of all the times to stop getting picture updates it would be right now LOL

That would be a bummer if Oppy couldn't drive into Victoria Crater simply because of the stuck wheel. But wouldn't the rover be able to drive backwards and turn normally that way?

And I'm hoping to see some pics from sol 440 and 441 soon.....I've been running the Midnight Mars Browser every few hours to see if there's an update, like an addict needing a fix

Oh, my gosh. You're right. I guess I was a bit too quick to comment

Unless the exploratorium site is fixed it's likely to be next week before we see anything new.

is this really only a problem with the exploratorium site ... ?
Also no updates at the JPL site.
let's hope not another mars-to-earth communication issue
like when Mars Oddysee went into safe mode two weeks ago.

... it's a pity this happens just when both rovers started moving again.

Maybe one of the insiders could confirm that the Odysee-link is still
intact and this is just a normal delay in the raw images
(hope, it's just the webmaster making a vacation
... just to calm the fears of us MER-addicts who keep nervously checking the
exploratorium site by the hour

Images have been appearing in the JPL site, for Spirit at least...but they don't always update at the weekends, so we might have to wait a while to see what Oppoetunity is up to.

LOTS of pancam images have just arrived..........http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity.html

Looks like a 360 pan (downsampled).....no driving though, not sure if that's a bad sign or not.

They are probably testing the best ways to drive in the sandbox before the apply it to Opportunity

Yeah....they might be building lots sand dunes lol..........That 360 pan probably took up quite a bit of time too.

extraordinary, another face of Mars .... surf's up on Sol 442 !

Endurance Crater is still easily visble in this downsampled pancam image:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P2297R1M1.HTML

The terrain to the south must be fairly flat.....as there still isn't a great deal to see on the horizon.

Interesting idea. I'm sure if they time it right, they can get a lot of pictures of the wheel with the sun at the right angle. With the control sofware they've got, I don't think that'd be too difficult of a feat. The IDD can also have a look at the top deck of the rover, at least the front of it - hopefully it is able to look at the wheel.

Be even better if it's a stuck pebble, and they wind up using the IDD to pick it loose.