Opportunity Sol 408 (Spirit Sol 429)

The regular science team has returned from their conference, so Charles is out as SOWG chair (after a damn honorable term of service) and Ray is back.

And thisol is the first sol we're going to seriously shoot for 200m. Apparently, Steve Squyres has been privately campaigning for this. Another person who likes the idea has a pithy reason: "Just to stick it in MSL's eye."

So they give us a heck of a long time to drive: an hour of blind driving followed by three and a half hours of autonav. In the best possible case, this would give us time to drive 235m or so, with 210m being a more likely outcome.

But this judgment is reduced on appeal, as it were. The PCAM team wants to do some damn imaging or something, and then other stuff comes up, and by the time it all settles out, our 3.5 hours of autonav is down to 2.5.

So we won't break 200m thisol, not even by extending the blind drive. But we might come close. And that'll still be pretty darn good.