Spirit - Still Alive - Page 3

sol 1798-1806 ( Jan 23-31, 2009 ) animation of move:

Less than a meter? deliberate - or difficulties encountered?

Possibly still encountering problems

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7858125.stm

From the Planetary society report:

For now, Spirit is still acting like the little rover that could. If all goes as planned, it will be roving onward today, on a 15-meter drive that may just take it up and on top of Home Plate and on a straight path to Goddard and von Braun.

The sol 1806 drive was stopped by a partially buried rock?

From the MER Pancam Data Tracking Web Interface:

Looks like another drive attempt today:

Sol Seq.Ver ETH ESF EDN EFF ERP Tot Description
----- -------- --- --- --- --- --- ---- -----------
01809 p0713.03 0 0 0 0 0 0 navcam_3x1_az_198_3_bpp
01809 p1201.22 0 0 0 0 0 0 front_haz_penultimate_1_bpp_pri_17
01809 p1214.05 0 0 0 0 0 0 front_hazcam_ultimate_4_bpp
01809 p1301.09 0 0 0 0 0 0 penultimate_rear_hazcam_pri_17
01809 p1314.00 0 0 0 0 0 0 rear_haz_ultimate_4bpp_pri15


Horton, could you explain in English, or in images, this seemingly NEW method of moisture seeking???

"In recent weeks, the team has discovered some consistent, though subtle features -- a downturn at the longest 1 mm wavelength of Pancam, for example, – which indicate hydration. "Melissa Rice at Cornell has done some work and it's turned out [Pancam can] be a useful tool for investigating hydration of soils as we go on about our traverse,” said Squyres. “The nice thing about this hydration index is that it does allow us, as we drive along, to use a remote sensing tool to investigate the degree of hydration of the some of the materials we are seeing – and we will do that.”

[link]

How and why would they seek MOISTURE, in dry dust, on a dead planet??

could it be used on old images?

Thanks for the question mann.

Here is an image that may show the effect:

sol 1804 R234567 of hydrated minerals???:

I have been arguing for some time that there was useful mineral information in the false color infrared images.

There is a link to an animation of the raw infrared images so show the differences in the filters.

I use a square root transform on the saturation channel to highlight the differences after using the color map ( R, G, B ) = ( R7, max ( R6, R5 ) , min ( R4, R3, R2 ) ).

The soil darker in the R7 infrared filter shows up as bluer in the false color image.

And, yes, this coloring technique can be used with any full infrared sequence taken. Perhaps it is time to look at some of the radiometrically corrected original infrared data. Any suggestions about what images might be processsed?

sol 1809 ( Feb 3, 2009 ) R0 3x1 after move:

About 5 more meters to the top. Looks like the plan is to use the rocks on the right side for traction while dragging the bum wheel through the soil on the left side.

sol 1811 ( Feb 5, 2009 ) R0 3x1:

a 4 meter drive eastwards. Looks like the plan is to ease up the top rather than a direct drive. A 6-7 meter drive to the top next time?

sol 1813 map position:

The 1813 position is the intersection of 3 distance circles from 3 rocks in 3 navcam stereo pairs.

Next drive should put Spirit on the top of homeplate.

sol 1816 ( Feb 10, 2009 ) :

Uh oh.

Damn!! Would you call that driving to close to the foot of HP where the dust has accumulated. "Next Driver"

sol 1818 - still diggin in.

sol 1820 ( Feb 15, 2007 ) rear hazcam L0:

Looks like Spirit has backed down from the attempted climb. Now what?

A curious dust devil sequence on sol 1815:

See Flickr comments for, er, comments.

Did a dust devil pass directly over Spirit?

sol 1818-1823 ( Feb 13-18, 2009 ) rear hazcam L0 animation of progress towards top of homeplate:

Looks like another attempt to climb at this spot.

I just noticed that the reply 54 hazcam view is actually from the front hazcam - looking backwards. ( Spirit is driving rearwards so backwards is the front camera and frontwards is the back camera... My semantic dyslexia is in full bloom)

I just noticed that in fact the label is totally correct in reply 54. Ignore reply 56. Pay no attention to that pachyderm behind the curtain...

sol 1825 ( Feb 20, 2009 ) front hazcam L0R0 ( looking back ):

Digging in - again. No looking good.

sol 1823- 1826 front hazcam animation:

Although the front wheels are free, the rear left wheel is now dug in.

Maybe it's time for a "plan B" - or maybe plan 9 from outer space?

sol 1831 ( Feb 26, 2009 ) R0 3x1 pan:

back to within a few meters of the sol 1802 position.