Duck Bay Adventure - Page 2

er, Oppy is already about 20 meters from the outcrop in reply 16.

Oppy sol 1285 ( Sep 5 ) MI with dust cover:

Looks pretty clean -- compared to Spirit. I would guess JPL is "saving" the MI for observations in Victoria -- any day now.

Hi Ben

Re. your reply #19, I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out. But yes. There are at least 2 that look as if they might be agglomerations of smaller berries but it is not really clear. I recall that sometime ago I was calling these small berries "protoberries" and I have at least one MI image crop that show them clearly cemented together forming the larger berries. Will look for it.

The meridiani berries are really mystifying and I really don't understand why Oppy's controllers don't command the occasional MI of naturally split berries as they are seen to get some more data on them.

But I forgot. They know that they are typical concretions, A mar's version of the Utah marbles. No need for any further data.

Winston

Hi Ben, Here's one of my colourized images with the "protoberries"; Oppy sol 545.

Winston

Hi Hort

Lots of dust seem to have fallen on the MI barrel and other parts of the instrument arm today.

Winston

Winston: could the small berries in the image be the result of disaggregation of the "blackberry" types ?

Winston, very nice images in reply 23 and 25!

Yes, there does seem to be more dust on Oppy's MI.

Here is a sol 1283-1287 comparison. As always, comparisons between images based on the JPG images is fraught with difficulties -- but I think I can see some worsening.

Are the 545 colorized images based on the 12 bit original data? ( Er, they look "upside - down to me. )

Argh! Would it really be so hard to go just a few meters to the right to find out what Sputnil crater really looks like?

Bob Clark

That's "Sputnik" crater.

Bob Clark

HI Hort.

Thanks!

re. the sol 545 colourized images. They were done long ago and were not 12 bit original data. Re. whether or not they are "upside down" I don't recall but it is quite possible. The lower, lighter blue berry is a crop from another image and might have been rotated. The main image colours were approximated from a pancam as far as I can recall. I'll have to check back through my sparse records for details.

Re. the question of small berries aggregating to form the normal sized ones. I had another look at the surficial sol 401 berries that were brushed by the rat and also some other berries from the same yuri gagarin series that were embedded in the evaporite and ratted on sol 403. They also looked as if they might have been composed of aggregates of small "berries"

The sol 401 brushed berries:-

The sol 403 ratted berries:-

You need to view at X2 or so magnification in stereomaker to see the "protoberries"

Winston

"same yuri gagarin series"

Hi LWS,

Please describe the term and it's origin.

Thanks

HI a1call

The area (Evaporite Rock) where the sol 401 and 403 MI's MB and other data was done was named the "Yuri Gagarin" area by NASA/JPL, accoring to the MER analyst notebook. It was one of the series honouring former astronauts.

Winston

Thanks for the info.

Does anyone know what Oppy's "power in" is now?

I have yet to see an update on how much power she's been getting lately. I feel like we should wait for a cleaning event before we descend into the crater. I half think we should sprint and drive over to the blueberry wind drifts again and wait for a cleaning event before we descend.

Seems like once we get into the crater the dust will only be going onto the solar panels, as Victoria is just once big sandtrap. I figure we'll spend 200 days in the crater if the rover lasts...better make sure we have the juice to make it that long!!!

Maybe I'm wrong and the wind gusts
will still clean the rover inside the crater...

[link]

Hi Winston.

These are the "plains berries" right?

these were said to be different than the berries studied earlier, as said by the paper that brian posted alink to.

According to this paper , the berries were created in a series of different water events, the one(water event) that created the "berries' "unique", in that it was much more oxidizing, and or it had a higher ph.

Odd that this same series of complicated events accured, to create the 403 berries also.

yuri gagarin first man in space
[link]

Sol 2188 mini-Tes port / mirror test:

alt="1M242535769EFF86FIP2909M2M1-11">

Uh oh. The mirror test results do not look the same as the Spirit test. There may be a major, major instrument failure of the mini-TES.

A summary from 09.07.07 update on

[link]

Opportunity's planned descent into the giant Victoria Crater was delayed, but now the rover is preparing to drive into the 800-meter-diameter crater (half-mile-diameter) as early as Sept. 11.

"These rovers are tough. They faced dusty winds, power starvation and other challenges -- and survived. Now they are back to doing groundbreaking field work on Mars. These spacecraft are amazing," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

"If the dust cover or mirror is no longer moving properly, we may have lost the ability to use that instrument on Opportunity," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments. "It would be the first permanent loss of an instrument on either rover. But we'll see."

"The instrument already has provided extensive valuable information about rocks and soils in the Meridiani region where Opportunity works. "Mini-TES has told us a lot about the rocks and soils at Meridiani, but we've learned that the differences among Meridiani rocks are often too subtle for it to distinguish," Squyres said. "The same instrument on Spirit, at Gusev Crater, has a much more crucial role for us at this point in the mission because there is such diversity at Gusev." Researchers will rely heavily on a different type of instrument, Opportunity's alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, for analysis of rocks at the bright-band target layer in the crater."

Postscript from Mizar:
I'm impressed, just impressed.

HI Mizar

If it were the miniTES on life support I would be concerned, but not as much as for the MI. The loss of Oppy's MI would be a calamity as far as I am concerned. Let's hope it rights itself or some miraculous cleaning wind or anti-dust event occurs.

Winston

Spirit / Oppy MiniTES mirror comparisons:

fredk on the "blue board" pointed out that the differences were most likely due to lighting differences, so I processed the images to make the reflection in the mirrors as close as possible.

To my eye it looks like the reflection in Oppy's mirror is less distinct than Spirit's.

So, the problem may be "only" a dust problem and not a mechanical problem.

Oppy - Spirit MI lens comparison animation:

Er, Oppy's lens and IDD instruments are much dustier than Spirit's.

The fizziness of the miniTES mirror may have more to do with the MI dust than the miniTES mirror.