Anyway, the bad stuff didn't happen. Indeed, the drive went very well. We didn't make 100m, but we did set yet another new record, 92.7m.
"We set a new record, but we didn't smash the old one," John says.
"So we made Art happy," I say.
"Yeah," Craig Leff chimes in, "that's the bad news, but ...."
Another good thing that came out of yesterday's worries was a realization that this could have happened to nearly any drive -- in principle, any of our drives could have gotten chopped off this way. We just never thought about it before. Most of the time, we drive only once per sol, so if a drive got deactivated during the wheel wiggle, we'd know there was a problem -- we wouldn't have gotten the final drive imagery, which happens after that. But if that did happen, we might not notice that the goal error was masked, so we might unwittingly send a drive sequence that would execute with the mask on. To avert this possibility, I go talk to the mobility/IDD folks and ask them nicely to start putting the mask's state in their downlink reports.
We got pretty close to the crater rim. Thisol we'll drive in a zigzag path up to the rim, take some pictures of the crater, and drive on. At one point, I look at the drive from overhead, and realize our path forms a capital "M." So I attach a picture of this to my uplink report, with the note, "Today's drive sequences have been brought to you by the letter 'M.'"
Yes, sequences -- plural. We're splitting the sequence again. Art has some questions about this at the walkthrough, and I go through why there won't be a problem. He believes me, but says something to John along the lines of, "What will we do if we see a problem?"
John shrugs. "That's why we have an RP-2 here, for precisely that kind of thing."
"Yeah," Art replies, "then you [gesturing at me] can call us at home and tell us there's a problem."
"Well, if you'd rather I not tell you ..." I shrug.
Art's eyes widen. "No, no!" he exclaims. "You did the right thing!"
Damn straight, I did.
When I'm on my way out, I run into Richard Kornfeld. He was one of our SIEs, but I haven't seen him for a while, so I've assumed he's been working on Opportunity. Nope. He's moved on; he's now doing some kind of system engineering or something for MSL. He asks if I'm thinking of transferring to another project.
"No way," I tell him. "I'm staying until the rovers die or I do."
[Next post: sol 123, May 8.]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Looking ahead. Those hills are getting bigger all the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment