Spirit - Still Alive - volume 2 - Page 11

> another 7+ degrees of tilt

Horton, wouldn't that be tilt towards the west rather than towards the north?

link

Update on Spirit's predicament at SpaceflightNow. Probably written just before the recent dramatic progress in rotating the rover.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/uploads/post-152-1264371825_thumb.png

This poster speaks odf a crust being broke thru.
Does anyone here have any thoughts on this?
I find it hard to think of an Earth
comparison.
In other words,Earth=mud+water.Mars?

So this pit would in eons past have been pond?
Now it is a vent?

Questions,questions,questions,

Elongated segmented ("wormy") feature just to the left of the mast shadow here.

Joe; Sulfate duracrust was found on the surface at the Viking landing site.

My guess is that the crust they refer to is similar and occurs on the surface of the powdery material filling the pit.

This could be due to processes that don't require water.

IMO it is just a filled, wind scoured depression,never was a crater, never a water filled pond,and certainly not a vent

WOW,,,talking about getting a bubble busted!
Thank you for your honest opinion.
I will Indeed be thinking on the new model(for me) you are proposing.
The "waterless"one is the hardest to digest.
I wonder what makes the soil clump??

Sulphate duracrus,,,thanks amillion for that one.

And its defiantly not a vent?I then have
mistakenly assumed a lot of data wrong.
Oh well, ass comes before me in the dictionary.

Again,Thanks a million for the communication.

New post about an hour ago from @marsroverdriver on Twitter: "If you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen." -- Conan O'Brien

Yes,they are looking,hoping,for extraction from Troy.

The sol 2154-2156 forward Right hazcam animation shows an increased tilt of 2+ degrees to the north.

I think the goal is to minimize the angle between the vector pointing towards the sun at noon on winter solstice and the vector normal to the deck of the rover. ( alpha critical )

rotating the rover a few more degrees towards the west and dropping the right front wheel into the left front wheel trench should result in a net decrease in the alpha critical angle.

Also, if the left rear wheel could be perched on a rock, it might help.

I saw a post that suggested extending the rover arm towards the right. If the extra torque could encourage the rocker-bogie system to dip the chassis relative to the right front wheel, that could help too.

Yes you are correct Barsoomer and Hort,Finally
(maybe) at rest.Hind sight is 20/20,,,The panel angel for winter wasn't much of an issue 2-3 weeks ago.
Now it may mean the difference between life and death.Correct me if I am wrong.
Joe in Texas

There seems to be a lot of fibrous material in the mound behind the RR wheel. Brightness increased by 800%.

Original source:

Barsoomer, I think most of the "fibers" are results of ICER and JPEG compression in the shadowed areas.

Here is the 8x contrast stretched 3D detail of the tench. It's pretty clear not much detail can be believed to be "real" in the deep shadows.

Distinguishing "real" from "artifact" is the main reason I do 3D images. And why I am so annoyed that so few 3D close pancam images have been done around Concepcion crater.

What's wrong with the Oppy image guys?

Mars is about as close as it's going to get for probably the rest of the lifetime of the MER missions ( Maximum image throughput from Mars ), one of the rovers is effectively "dead" ( more bandwidth for the remaining vehicle ) and the youngest broken rocks the mission will ever see are in view ( fresh crater = fresh fractures = best "whacked with a hammer views" of the rocks should translate into maximum "opportunity" to return maximum information available about the rocks.

Also, full filter views is now the only way Oppy can do a "chemical" survey of the rocks.

So what did they do? an L1 360 survey; a #^*%-load of L257 views only; no APXS; no MIs. And today is a movement day.

Ah well, ah well. Back on the bus.

Horton, thanks for pointing out the compression artifacts. I hadn't realized this was such a problem.

Nevertheless, I think I still see some fibrous material in the stereo view, especially if I look at a reduced-size version of the stereo pair, which I expect would lessen the impact of the artifacts. That is, some of the "fibers" appear to be common to the two images. Is this just a random effect?

It might be interesting to examine the uncompressed images when they are eventually released. Also, would averaging multiple images of this area tend to eliminate the artifacts?

Here is a side by side rear hazcam comparison of sol 1889 and 2156. The 1889 image was created with the original 12 bit data. If you enlarge the two images 200% or more you can see the compression effects. IF the ICER compression was the same then it looks like of the artifacts are coming from the JPG compression.

The comparison has several rocks marked to show the changes in the wheel locations.

We can only guess where Spirit would be in that alternate universe where the decision to keep driving backwards was made 9 months ago.

Here is an interesting link.

http://xkcd.com/695/

Sol 2161-2165 ( Jan 31-Feb 4, 2010 ) R0 Hazcam animation:

and here is the rear Hazcam animation.

This may be as good as it gets. There are not many possible driving days left - if any.

These sol 2163 L257 pancam images may be the last for a while - maybe forever.

According to the sol 2166 status report Spirit is now parked for the winter.

The power level is now below 185 watt-hours. Oppy's "near death" experience was 150 watt-hours. The tau is now a very clear 0.292 and the dust factor is 0.527.

The images in this set were taken around noon. Notice how long the shadows are on the sundial.

sol 2174 ( Feb 13, 2010 ) lookback at the front of the rover:

at first I thought this might be the start of an MI "self portrait" - but only the 5 MI images were commanded. Maybe more later???

In a recent interview which I have posted a link to Steve Squyres has more or less said that Spirit can just about hang in there for the Winter month's however if there are any heavy dust storms like those we had a couple of years back that could end the mission for good.

I think during those storms power levels dropped as low as 125 watt-hours and various measures were taken to shut things off to live on these levels, but that level did not last for long and the Tau improved just in time.

No doubt there is a team looking a la Apollo 13 exactly what can be shut down, hybernation and sleep modes to conserve energy for the next 6 months.

I really hope Spirit can survive I so want to know if Mars has a liquid core, I think it does.