On the road again ....
Well, not just yet. We'll be bumping in a couple of days, exercising those weary wheels. But we want to do some MIs first, and we don't want to do IDD work and driving in the same day -- driving our five-wheeled vehicle will be plenty tough without any added distractions. So we're doing the MI today, and then we'll bump Thursday and/or Friday.
The surface we're MIing has something that looks like lapilli -- they're these little glass beads formed in volcanic ash. Whether the objects we're seeing are actually lapilli or not is an open question; that's just what they look like.
To a geologist, anyway. To John Callas, they look like peas, and that starts a whole lot of comparisons between the features we're seeing and Twinkies, pancakes, and I can't even remember what else. I think we all must be hungry!
[Next post: sol 1037, December 3.]
2011-11-30
2011-11-28
Spirit Sol 1032
It's only sol 1026 on Mars, but we're planning sol 1032 for Spirit -- nearly a week ahead. These long APXS and MB integrations will do that.
Next week, things get more interesting on this rover: come Thursday or Friday, we'll try to drive away. We want a spot where we can see the MB "damage" from the winter campaign, and from which we can begin our attack on Esperanza.
Should be fun. But the only thing we're up to today is a MB-to-APXS tool change. And it was already done. Yesterday. By a shadow. Makes me feel damn near useless.
Can't wait for next week.
[Next post: sol 1034, November 30.]
Next week, things get more interesting on this rover: come Thursday or Friday, we'll try to drive away. We want a spot where we can see the MB "damage" from the winter campaign, and from which we can begin our attack on Esperanza.
Should be fun. But the only thing we're up to today is a MB-to-APXS tool change. And it was already done. Yesterday. By a shadow. Makes me feel damn near useless.
Can't wait for next week.
[Next post: sol 1034, November 30.]
2011-11-25
Opportunity Sol 1009 (Spirit Sol 1029)
I'm not on shift today, so I decide to run an errand and go in a little late. While I'm running the errand, my cell phone rings. It's Al Herrera.
"Hey, are you on Lab?" he asks. That's never good news.
"Nope."
"Well, uh, Ashitey was scheduled to be RP-1 today, and he's not here. And he's not answering his cell phone."
Now, that's as unusual as all get-out. "I'll be right in," I tell him. Tara -- RP-2 today -- is there, and she can hold the fort until I arrive. But I'm awfully worried. Ashitey's as reliable as they come; if he's not there, he's probably dead in a ditch. And don't think I'm kidding.
The terrain mesh is just amazing. We're perched near the rim of Victoria Crater, looking out into it, looking across the crater at another promontory. We could damn near drive over there if we wanted to, and if we thought we could somehow descend safely into the thing from here.
Instead, we'll be hauling ass in the other direction, mostly away from the crater. The plan is to make lots of progress toward our next imaging position, but to end this drive well away from the crater, to give us room to perform some more testing of the new mobility flight software. If those tests go well, we'll be able to use even more advanced autonomous hazard avoidance.
The bad news for today is that we don't have PCAM in the drive direction. So I pull out a technique we don't seem to have used on this rover in a while: autonav. It makes me feel good just to be using it again. We back away from the crater rim using VO, so that we'll know for sure when we're 5m or so away. Then we drive blind up to the limit of our mesh -- only about 10m -- and switch on autonav for another 40m or so, a total of about 60m.
Not bad at all, really: I didn't even think I would get to drive the rovers today, much less that I'd do one of the longer drives we've seen for a while. I'm almost disappointed when Ashitey shows up during the day. It turns out the whole thing was a misunderstanding: they'd originally planned no RP activities today, and when they changed their minds, Ashitey didn't get the word. So that explains that, and at least he's not dead in a ditch! Which is good news -- and what's more, since I've already invested in the day, we decide it's best for me to just complete the shift. Bonus!
One of the reasons we can afford to do such a long drive is that our energy has been creeping back up. We're now getting 560 W-hr per sol. It's enough that they suggest to Steve Squyres that this could be the sol we resume doing overnight ODY comm passes.
Steve's excited -- but skeptical. Not because he doesn't believe it, but because, as he puts it, Colette has been playing "Lucy and Charlie Brown" with him -- teasing him with the promise of an overnight pass, only to yank it away at the last second.
"So I'll believe it when I see it," he mock-pouts.
That makes it all the funnier when Colette works it out so that we can do an ODY pass, and Steve gets really excited, and then something or other changes and she has to take it away again at the last second. As usual, Steve takes it with good grace and humor. I'm sure those screams of anguish are in jest, mostly.
I almost don't want it ever to work out. This way is more fun.
[Next post: sol 1032, November 28.]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. A small part of the view from today. Glorious!
"Hey, are you on Lab?" he asks. That's never good news.
"Nope."
"Well, uh, Ashitey was scheduled to be RP-1 today, and he's not here. And he's not answering his cell phone."
Now, that's as unusual as all get-out. "I'll be right in," I tell him. Tara -- RP-2 today -- is there, and she can hold the fort until I arrive. But I'm awfully worried. Ashitey's as reliable as they come; if he's not there, he's probably dead in a ditch. And don't think I'm kidding.
The terrain mesh is just amazing. We're perched near the rim of Victoria Crater, looking out into it, looking across the crater at another promontory. We could damn near drive over there if we wanted to, and if we thought we could somehow descend safely into the thing from here.
Instead, we'll be hauling ass in the other direction, mostly away from the crater. The plan is to make lots of progress toward our next imaging position, but to end this drive well away from the crater, to give us room to perform some more testing of the new mobility flight software. If those tests go well, we'll be able to use even more advanced autonomous hazard avoidance.
The bad news for today is that we don't have PCAM in the drive direction. So I pull out a technique we don't seem to have used on this rover in a while: autonav. It makes me feel good just to be using it again. We back away from the crater rim using VO, so that we'll know for sure when we're 5m or so away. Then we drive blind up to the limit of our mesh -- only about 10m -- and switch on autonav for another 40m or so, a total of about 60m.
Not bad at all, really: I didn't even think I would get to drive the rovers today, much less that I'd do one of the longer drives we've seen for a while. I'm almost disappointed when Ashitey shows up during the day. It turns out the whole thing was a misunderstanding: they'd originally planned no RP activities today, and when they changed their minds, Ashitey didn't get the word. So that explains that, and at least he's not dead in a ditch! Which is good news -- and what's more, since I've already invested in the day, we decide it's best for me to just complete the shift. Bonus!
One of the reasons we can afford to do such a long drive is that our energy has been creeping back up. We're now getting 560 W-hr per sol. It's enough that they suggest to Steve Squyres that this could be the sol we resume doing overnight ODY comm passes.
Steve's excited -- but skeptical. Not because he doesn't believe it, but because, as he puts it, Colette has been playing "Lucy and Charlie Brown" with him -- teasing him with the promise of an overnight pass, only to yank it away at the last second.
"So I'll believe it when I see it," he mock-pouts.
That makes it all the funnier when Colette works it out so that we can do an ODY pass, and Steve gets really excited, and then something or other changes and she has to take it away again at the last second. As usual, Steve takes it with good grace and humor. I'm sure those screams of anguish are in jest, mostly.
I almost don't want it ever to work out. This way is more fun.
[Next post: sol 1032, November 28.]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. A small part of the view from today. Glorious!
2011-11-19
Spirit Sol 1024
Opportunity's drive stopped early; what was to be a 1.5m bump was a 1m bump. But they can see just fine from where they ended up, so they're staying there.
Spirit's drive didn't go as well as planned, either; we failed to stomp the outcrop. However, we ended up where we wanted to be, which on this vehicle is a huge success. We might try again.
But for now, we're OK with where we are, and we're up to some light IDD work: MI+APXS thisol, RAT nextersol.
Terry's the shadow today, and he needs more practice using the IDD, so I hand it over to him.
It's a long day. A long, long day.
[Next post: sol 1029 (Opportunity sol 1009), November 25 -- MSL's launch date, we hope!]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. We might not have done everything we wanted, but we ended up in a cool place. Those platy-looking outcrops make tasty food for our robotic arm.
Spirit's drive didn't go as well as planned, either; we failed to stomp the outcrop. However, we ended up where we wanted to be, which on this vehicle is a huge success. We might try again.
But for now, we're OK with where we are, and we're up to some light IDD work: MI+APXS thisol, RAT nextersol.
Terry's the shadow today, and he needs more practice using the IDD, so I hand it over to him.
It's a long day. A long, long day.
[Next post: sol 1029 (Opportunity sol 1009), November 25 -- MSL's launch date, we hope!]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. We might not have done everything we wanted, but we ended up in a cool place. Those platy-looking outcrops make tasty food for our robotic arm.
2011-11-14
Opportunity Sol 1000 (Spirit Sol 1019)
I called dibs on the Opportunity "Now Planning Sol 1000" sheet -- and got it. So I have the set.
Dibs is a very powerful concept.
I shouldn't actually be working today, but Sharon, who's our team chief and therefore handles the schedules (among many other things), is a woman of her word. They changed when they were going to plan sol 1000 -- that was originally scheduled to be tomorrow, but for complicated reasons they decided to plan it a day in advance, so it's getting done today. Sharon had promised me I'd get to work on sol 1000 on both rovers, so as soon as she heard about the change, she came to me to alert me to it, and see who I wanted to bump so I'd be on shift.
Jeng and Antonio were RP-1 and RP-2, and Tara was shadowing. So who did I want to bump off the list? Well, what kind of a person would I be -- what kind of a team lead would I be -- if I took away the fun of planning sol 1000 from someone else? So I had Sharon add me to the list as a second shadow.
And here I am, shadowing, as we drive Opportunity to the rim of Victoria once again. It's a short drive, and one we can do without a lot of uncertainty, using VO all the way. But certain people (Cindy Oda) have been freaking out whenever we drive up to the rim, and today is no exception.
So today I try a new approach. I start trying to compare the drive to things people can see around them. We're driving less than the width of the room we're in, a little more than the length of our conference table. I measure the size of the carpet squares; they're a little more than a half meter on a side. Walt Hoffman has a great idea: we've got a couple of 3m network cables lying around, which gives you a handy way to measure 3m (our distance from the rim), 1.5m, and 1m, at least.
I think this helps. It gives people something more concrete -- being able to say "We'd have to be wrong by the length of this 3m network cable, on a drive the length of this conference table" is pretty effective.
So everything proceeds apace. Until John Callas shows up late in the day and starts asking the same questions all over. And even that is going fine until Justin Maki -- a level-headed, bright, and valuable guy -- starts winding Callas up. "Well, what if we had two meters of range error in the NAVCAMs you're using for the drive?" Justin asks. Two meters of error? This is just absurd, and very much out of character for Justin. A realistic number for range error over that distance is maybe 8cm.
But John Callas doesn't know any of this, and it's his ass if something bad happens. So that's a painful conversation.
John Wright is listening to all this, and doesn't say much. Except, when it's all over (and we've cut the drive short another 50cm for no good goddamn reason), he tries to make me feel better about it. In his way. "Spirit's probably not going to survive another Martian winter," he points out. And he's right, we barely made it this time. "So keep Opportunity safe," he continues.
Yeah. I see his point. I mean, we were keeping her safe before, but ... yeah. I see his point.
Oh, well, we're still going to enter sol 1000 with a hell of a view. As is his wont, Jim Erickson pops by to see how things are going. "We're planning sol 1000 today!" I tell him brightly.
He looks down his nose at me, mock-snide. "Talk to me when you get to sol 10,000," he says.
Don't think I won't, Jim!
[Next post: sol 1024, November 19.]
Dibs is a very powerful concept.
I shouldn't actually be working today, but Sharon, who's our team chief and therefore handles the schedules (among many other things), is a woman of her word. They changed when they were going to plan sol 1000 -- that was originally scheduled to be tomorrow, but for complicated reasons they decided to plan it a day in advance, so it's getting done today. Sharon had promised me I'd get to work on sol 1000 on both rovers, so as soon as she heard about the change, she came to me to alert me to it, and see who I wanted to bump so I'd be on shift.
Jeng and Antonio were RP-1 and RP-2, and Tara was shadowing. So who did I want to bump off the list? Well, what kind of a person would I be -- what kind of a team lead would I be -- if I took away the fun of planning sol 1000 from someone else? So I had Sharon add me to the list as a second shadow.
And here I am, shadowing, as we drive Opportunity to the rim of Victoria once again. It's a short drive, and one we can do without a lot of uncertainty, using VO all the way. But certain people (Cindy Oda) have been freaking out whenever we drive up to the rim, and today is no exception.
So today I try a new approach. I start trying to compare the drive to things people can see around them. We're driving less than the width of the room we're in, a little more than the length of our conference table. I measure the size of the carpet squares; they're a little more than a half meter on a side. Walt Hoffman has a great idea: we've got a couple of 3m network cables lying around, which gives you a handy way to measure 3m (our distance from the rim), 1.5m, and 1m, at least.
I think this helps. It gives people something more concrete -- being able to say "We'd have to be wrong by the length of this 3m network cable, on a drive the length of this conference table" is pretty effective.
So everything proceeds apace. Until John Callas shows up late in the day and starts asking the same questions all over. And even that is going fine until Justin Maki -- a level-headed, bright, and valuable guy -- starts winding Callas up. "Well, what if we had two meters of range error in the NAVCAMs you're using for the drive?" Justin asks. Two meters of error? This is just absurd, and very much out of character for Justin. A realistic number for range error over that distance is maybe 8cm.
But John Callas doesn't know any of this, and it's his ass if something bad happens. So that's a painful conversation.
John Wright is listening to all this, and doesn't say much. Except, when it's all over (and we've cut the drive short another 50cm for no good goddamn reason), he tries to make me feel better about it. In his way. "Spirit's probably not going to survive another Martian winter," he points out. And he's right, we barely made it this time. "So keep Opportunity safe," he continues.
Yeah. I see his point. I mean, we were keeping her safe before, but ... yeah. I see his point.
Oh, well, we're still going to enter sol 1000 with a hell of a view. As is his wont, Jim Erickson pops by to see how things are going. "We're planning sol 1000 today!" I tell him brightly.
He looks down his nose at me, mock-snide. "Talk to me when you get to sol 10,000," he says.
Don't think I won't, Jim!
[Next post: sol 1024, November 19.]
2011-11-02
Spirit Sol 1007
It's my first day back on shift after conjunction. Both rovers weathered conjunction just fine -- maybe they don't need us as much as we think they do!
During conjunction, with the sun firmly planted between our two planets, Spirit also survived crossing the sol-1000 barrier. And I managed to snag the "Now Planning Sol 1000" sheet, and got everybody to sign it. Sweet, sweet victory. Since I'd requested to be scheduled on sol 1000, Sharon scheduled me for that day, even though there was no planning that day. I just walked around all day with a big dopey grin on my face. It'll be even sweeter when Opportunity's sol 1000 comes around in a couple of weeks.
This will be the first time we've MId Spirit's solar panels since about sol 505, apparently. Thisol is -- or, rather, these sols are, since the work executes across 1006 and 1007 -- pretty MI-heavy. Ken Herkenhoff, the MI's designer and lead, is going to be in heaven.
Meanwhile, here on Earth, not everything is going that well. Our building has a partial power outage, leaving us with nothing but emergency lighting and the glow from our monitors. I love it, actually. It's all Star Trekky. This is how things are supposed to look around here!
But there are also problems with Maestro, our planning tool, that threaten to delay the day significantly. Fortunately, our TUL, Colette, manages to get things under control, and we finish the day on time -- not with a lot of margin, but some. She's a heroine!
[Next post: sol 1019 (Opportunity sol 1000), November 14.]
During conjunction, with the sun firmly planted between our two planets, Spirit also survived crossing the sol-1000 barrier. And I managed to snag the "Now Planning Sol 1000" sheet, and got everybody to sign it. Sweet, sweet victory. Since I'd requested to be scheduled on sol 1000, Sharon scheduled me for that day, even though there was no planning that day. I just walked around all day with a big dopey grin on my face. It'll be even sweeter when Opportunity's sol 1000 comes around in a couple of weeks.
This will be the first time we've MId Spirit's solar panels since about sol 505, apparently. Thisol is -- or, rather, these sols are, since the work executes across 1006 and 1007 -- pretty MI-heavy. Ken Herkenhoff, the MI's designer and lead, is going to be in heaven.
Meanwhile, here on Earth, not everything is going that well. Our building has a partial power outage, leaving us with nothing but emergency lighting and the glow from our monitors. I love it, actually. It's all Star Trekky. This is how things are supposed to look around here!
But there are also problems with Maestro, our planning tool, that threaten to delay the day significantly. Fortunately, our TUL, Colette, manages to get things under control, and we finish the day on time -- not with a lot of margin, but some. She's a heroine!
[Next post: sol 1019 (Opportunity sol 1000), November 14.]
2011-10-07
Opportunity Sol 961 (Spirit Sol 982)
Today we're continuing the pre-conjunction IDD activity to execute during conjunction. In one of those wonderful happy-fun-time events, there are two RAT targets -- and neither of them really works, thanks in part to wonky data in the terrain mesh caused by shadowing. We end up taking another image of the currently shadowed area, with modified image parameters that we hope will improve range data, and in the meantime we do what we can with what we have.
That turns out to be a huge pain. When at last we get something that seems to be working, we run into a joint limit on the APXS and have to start looking around for alternatives. But the alternatives that are RATtable have even worse problems, so we go back to the first target. Eventually we tweak the normal so that we can place all instruments there, but the tweaked version can't handle more than about a 10N preload from the RAT. That's not nearly enough to brush, to say nothing of grinding -- we need 40N or so. So we keep working on it ....
Eventually, we end up with a two-pronged strategy. Prong one is to choose a target in the shadowed area, despite the poor range data there. Prong two is to cross our fingers.
For the first time in a long time, there's a press conference playing on the TV behind us as we work. It's them science guys, talking about Victoria Crater. One of the images they show illustrates the scale of the crater -- they show the Rose Bowl fitting into it, with room to spare.
Wow. I see why the science team wants to stay here a while. So much to see!
[This is where we had to take a few weeks' break for solar conjunction: a giant flaming ball of gas (no, not Rush Limbaugh, the sun) interposed itself betwixt us and our beloved rovers. That made radio communication impossible for a while and thus interrupted normal planning. Next post: sol 1007, November 2.]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Victoria Crater swallows the Rose Bowl.
That turns out to be a huge pain. When at last we get something that seems to be working, we run into a joint limit on the APXS and have to start looking around for alternatives. But the alternatives that are RATtable have even worse problems, so we go back to the first target. Eventually we tweak the normal so that we can place all instruments there, but the tweaked version can't handle more than about a 10N preload from the RAT. That's not nearly enough to brush, to say nothing of grinding -- we need 40N or so. So we keep working on it ....
Eventually, we end up with a two-pronged strategy. Prong one is to choose a target in the shadowed area, despite the poor range data there. Prong two is to cross our fingers.
For the first time in a long time, there's a press conference playing on the TV behind us as we work. It's them science guys, talking about Victoria Crater. One of the images they show illustrates the scale of the crater -- they show the Rose Bowl fitting into it, with room to spare.
Wow. I see why the science team wants to stay here a while. So much to see!
[This is where we had to take a few weeks' break for solar conjunction: a giant flaming ball of gas (no, not Rush Limbaugh, the sun) interposed itself betwixt us and our beloved rovers. That made radio communication impossible for a while and thus interrupted normal planning. Next post: sol 1007, November 2.]
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Victoria Crater swallows the Rose Bowl.
2011-10-06
Opportunity Sol 961 (Spirit Sol 981)
The drive went great. Today's all about the IDD: MI, RAT-brush, MI, APXS on the first sol; then RAT-grind, MI, and APXS again on the second sol.
Piece of cake.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Perfect driving put this patch of rock dead in front of us, right where we wanted it. RPs, one million; Mars, zero.
Piece of cake.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Perfect driving put this patch of rock dead in front of us, right where we wanted it. RPs, one million; Mars, zero.
2011-10-05
Opportunity Sol 959 (Spirit Sol 980)
The drive went beautifully, or so we think. We got a nice PCAM of the slab of rock we're targeting, just 6m away. The bad news is that we didn't get the HAZCAMs for some reason. One of the other RPs floats the idea of driving even without them, prompting Steve to tease, "Are the PIs more conservative than the RPs now?" But, I say, "Nope: we don't drive without the HAZCAMs."
Steve agrees. "We drove aggressively so that we would have a margin day. Let's use it."
That becomes the default plan. But it gets under my skin. We worked hard on yestersol's drive, and it worked, damn it. I hate being stymied by something like this. So I go down to MDOT and ask them what happened to our data. Sometimes it didn't make it to the spacecraft for one reason or another, but sometimes it's just a ground processing problem of some description -- a server needs to be restarted, or something. It's worth asking, especially since I won't have anything else to do if the HAZCAMs are truly missing.
The answer from MDOT is that the data made it from Opportunity to Odyssey (our relay orbiter), but they're not sure yet what happened to it from there. It's either still on Odyssey, in which case we won't get it until tomorrow, or it's in the Odyssey TDS (the telemetry data server), in which case they might be able to figure out what's wrong and get it unstuck.
This is actually pretty good news, as far as it goes, so I take that back upstairs with me. "Change of plans," I say. "Let's plan as if there's going to be a drive. If there isn't, we'll pull it and just do remote sensing."
Then I turn to the RPs. "While we're waiting on the word from MDOT, let's see what we can do without those HAZCAMs. The burden of proof has to be on those who want to drive: we'll have to prove it's OK to drive without them. But let's bring every piece of data we have to bear on that. We've done it before, but we know we'll have to have a wider discussion -- especially since we're so close to the rim -- and we should have a case to make when that happens." They swing into action.
Man, I'm on fire.
And it turns out it's a good thing. For some reason I don't quite get straight, we lost our uplink pass tomorrow, so today is our last day to bump before conjunction. (Well, we have one more day if we absolutely need it, but we really don't want to spend that one if we don't absolutely have to, since we're not sure exactly when we lose contact with the rovers, and we want to get some IDD work in first so that we can start a long integration over conjunction.)
And then we get the word from MDOT. They found our HAZCAMs! They've been here on Earth the whole time. They've restarted the server and we should get the data in about 20 minutes.
The good news is that when the images pop out of the server, they show nothing alarming. Just as we expected -- and we can drive! The bad news is that more data pops out at the same time, and it shows an unexpectedly high current draw on the RF wheel. No telling why, and we decide there's not much we can do about it. We're driving.
The actual sequencing isn't my concern, for the most part. I'm not on shift today, just hanging out to keep an eye on things for this near-rim drive. (Ah, the responsibilities of being a lead RP!) But it's a straightforward one, appropriately simple: we drive up to a rock target ("Fogo"), bump onto it to scuff it, and then back down a bit so that we can see the scuff and IDD the rock.
(This mini-story doesn't fit anywhere, but it's a classic. While we're chatting about the sequence, my cell phone rings, playing a Smiths song, and Matt Heverly grins at me. "You're the only adult I know who has that many ring tones," he quips. "You should be a junior high kid.")
Speaking of data coming down during the process ... while we're looking at the drive during the APAM, Squyres pipes up with an interesting question. "Hey, we just got the HiRISE image of Opportunity at Victoria Crater," he announces. This is the high-resolution MRO image we've been eagerly anticipating. "Would it improve the tactical planning process if I --"
"Yes!" I declare without even thinking about it.
"Whom should I send it to?" he asks.
"Me!"
I really am on fire.
A few moments later, we're looking at Opportunity, as seen from orbit. She's sitting there, perched on Cape Verde -- just a few pixels across, and most of that mast shadow, but it's undeniably our baby. This is astonishing. It makes her real all over again. I can't even find the words.
We're going to take good care of her.
Our sequence is appropriately cautious, sporting all the bells and whistles that it should for something that takes us so close to the rim. And it helps that we're going uphill to the rim from here, so if we slip at all, it will be in the safe direction, away from the edge. But everybody's nervous about it anyway. As Matt Heverly leaves, he sums up the feeling: "Well," he says, "see you at the Congressional Anomaly Review Meeting!"
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Ohio State University. Steve sent us a black-and-white preview of this glorious HiRISE (MRO) image showing, unbelievably, Opportunity from orbit. Click through for the full, spectacular image, available in both annotated and unannotated versions.
Steve agrees. "We drove aggressively so that we would have a margin day. Let's use it."
That becomes the default plan. But it gets under my skin. We worked hard on yestersol's drive, and it worked, damn it. I hate being stymied by something like this. So I go down to MDOT and ask them what happened to our data. Sometimes it didn't make it to the spacecraft for one reason or another, but sometimes it's just a ground processing problem of some description -- a server needs to be restarted, or something. It's worth asking, especially since I won't have anything else to do if the HAZCAMs are truly missing.
The answer from MDOT is that the data made it from Opportunity to Odyssey (our relay orbiter), but they're not sure yet what happened to it from there. It's either still on Odyssey, in which case we won't get it until tomorrow, or it's in the Odyssey TDS (the telemetry data server), in which case they might be able to figure out what's wrong and get it unstuck.
This is actually pretty good news, as far as it goes, so I take that back upstairs with me. "Change of plans," I say. "Let's plan as if there's going to be a drive. If there isn't, we'll pull it and just do remote sensing."
Then I turn to the RPs. "While we're waiting on the word from MDOT, let's see what we can do without those HAZCAMs. The burden of proof has to be on those who want to drive: we'll have to prove it's OK to drive without them. But let's bring every piece of data we have to bear on that. We've done it before, but we know we'll have to have a wider discussion -- especially since we're so close to the rim -- and we should have a case to make when that happens." They swing into action.
Man, I'm on fire.
And it turns out it's a good thing. For some reason I don't quite get straight, we lost our uplink pass tomorrow, so today is our last day to bump before conjunction. (Well, we have one more day if we absolutely need it, but we really don't want to spend that one if we don't absolutely have to, since we're not sure exactly when we lose contact with the rovers, and we want to get some IDD work in first so that we can start a long integration over conjunction.)
And then we get the word from MDOT. They found our HAZCAMs! They've been here on Earth the whole time. They've restarted the server and we should get the data in about 20 minutes.
The good news is that when the images pop out of the server, they show nothing alarming. Just as we expected -- and we can drive! The bad news is that more data pops out at the same time, and it shows an unexpectedly high current draw on the RF wheel. No telling why, and we decide there's not much we can do about it. We're driving.
The actual sequencing isn't my concern, for the most part. I'm not on shift today, just hanging out to keep an eye on things for this near-rim drive. (Ah, the responsibilities of being a lead RP!) But it's a straightforward one, appropriately simple: we drive up to a rock target ("Fogo"), bump onto it to scuff it, and then back down a bit so that we can see the scuff and IDD the rock.
(This mini-story doesn't fit anywhere, but it's a classic. While we're chatting about the sequence, my cell phone rings, playing a Smiths song, and Matt Heverly grins at me. "You're the only adult I know who has that many ring tones," he quips. "You should be a junior high kid.")
Speaking of data coming down during the process ... while we're looking at the drive during the APAM, Squyres pipes up with an interesting question. "Hey, we just got the HiRISE image of Opportunity at Victoria Crater," he announces. This is the high-resolution MRO image we've been eagerly anticipating. "Would it improve the tactical planning process if I --"
"Yes!" I declare without even thinking about it.
"Whom should I send it to?" he asks.
"Me!"
I really am on fire.
A few moments later, we're looking at Opportunity, as seen from orbit. She's sitting there, perched on Cape Verde -- just a few pixels across, and most of that mast shadow, but it's undeniably our baby. This is astonishing. It makes her real all over again. I can't even find the words.
We're going to take good care of her.
Our sequence is appropriately cautious, sporting all the bells and whistles that it should for something that takes us so close to the rim. And it helps that we're going uphill to the rim from here, so if we slip at all, it will be in the safe direction, away from the edge. But everybody's nervous about it anyway. As Matt Heverly leaves, he sums up the feeling: "Well," he says, "see you at the Congressional Anomaly Review Meeting!"
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell/Ohio State University. Steve sent us a black-and-white preview of this glorious HiRISE (MRO) image showing, unbelievably, Opportunity from orbit. Click through for the full, spectacular image, available in both annotated and unannotated versions.
2011-10-04
Opportunity Sol 958 (Spirit Sol 979)
"Have you see Mark Maimone yet?" Matt Heverly asks me as I walk into the sequencing room. "He's kind of freaking out."
And he's overreacting. The drive went just about exactly as planned, leaving us poised near the rim with a beautiful view out onto Cape Verde. It's the "near the rim" part that Mark was apparently freaking out about. By the time I find him, he's calmed down, admitting that he'd misread part of the uplink report.
So if he's happy, I'm happy. Matt and I go off and plan thisol's drive, one that will take us 20m out onto Cape Verde. If this one goes well, it'll leave us set up for the final bump to our pre-conjunction imaging position. And nobody will be freaking out.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Peeking over the rim of Cape Verde into the interior of Victoria Crater.
And he's overreacting. The drive went just about exactly as planned, leaving us poised near the rim with a beautiful view out onto Cape Verde. It's the "near the rim" part that Mark was apparently freaking out about. By the time I find him, he's calmed down, admitting that he'd misread part of the uplink report.
So if he's happy, I'm happy. Matt and I go off and plan thisol's drive, one that will take us 20m out onto Cape Verde. If this one goes well, it'll leave us set up for the final bump to our pre-conjunction imaging position. And nobody will be freaking out.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Peeking over the rim of Cape Verde into the interior of Victoria Crater.
2011-10-03
Opportunity Sol 957 (Spirit Sol 978)
So all we have to do is approach Cape Verde. It would help if we knew where it was: we have dueling localization estimates, and in the end we take our best guess.
Thanks to the recent flight software upload, we're nervous about using our usual waypoint commands anywhere near the crater. So we sequence a 40m shot at Cape Verde, using lower-level driving and reinforcing turns every 5m. The last 5m uses guarded motion -- it will autonomously stop if it detects a hazard, such as a cliff edge -- but otherwise there's nothing fancy.
It's gonna be a hell of a view. Victoria Crater is an awesome place, well worth the slog it took to get here.
Since we're shooting toward the crater rim, we decide to put in a few keepout zones to make doubly (actually, triply) sure we don't go in. Since circles are the easiest kind of keepout zone to specify, we put a big circle directly in our path, and two smaller ones off to the sides. I take a look from the overhead view in RSVP ... then adjust the two smaller circles slightly, and it's perfect: the Mickey Zone of Death.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. NCAM mosaic from sol B-957. Spec-freaking-tacular.
The Mickey Zone of Death!
Thanks to the recent flight software upload, we're nervous about using our usual waypoint commands anywhere near the crater. So we sequence a 40m shot at Cape Verde, using lower-level driving and reinforcing turns every 5m. The last 5m uses guarded motion -- it will autonomously stop if it detects a hazard, such as a cliff edge -- but otherwise there's nothing fancy.
It's gonna be a hell of a view. Victoria Crater is an awesome place, well worth the slog it took to get here.
Since we're shooting toward the crater rim, we decide to put in a few keepout zones to make doubly (actually, triply) sure we don't go in. Since circles are the easiest kind of keepout zone to specify, we put a big circle directly in our path, and two smaller ones off to the sides. I take a look from the overhead view in RSVP ... then adjust the two smaller circles slightly, and it's perfect: the Mickey Zone of Death.
Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. NCAM mosaic from sol B-957. Spec-freaking-tacular.
The Mickey Zone of Death!
2011-09-19
Opportunity Sol 943 (Spirit Sol 964)
The bad news is, we're starting at 7 AM -- which means that I and the MM and TUL and SOWG chair and a few others have to start even earlier, about 6:30. The good news is, this is the last time we do that, ever. Our much-loathed 7 AM starts are now a thing of the past; no more starting before 8. Well, those of us who have to be a bit earlier will start at 7:30. But it beats 6:30, I'll tell you that.
Since I can hardly focus anyway, it's a good thing today's drive is a simple one. We plan 57m, dead at Victoria Crater, stopping midway to image a smaller crater called Kitty Clyde's Sister. This drive cuts our distance to Victoria roughly in half: we should be about 51m away when we're done.
From 108m away, the 800m-wide Victoria crater is the broadside of a barn. Even starting at 6:30 AM, we couldn't miss it with our eyes closed.
[Next post: sol 978 (Opportunity sol 957), October 3.]
Since I can hardly focus anyway, it's a good thing today's drive is a simple one. We plan 57m, dead at Victoria Crater, stopping midway to image a smaller crater called Kitty Clyde's Sister. This drive cuts our distance to Victoria roughly in half: we should be about 51m away when we're done.
From 108m away, the 800m-wide Victoria crater is the broadside of a barn. Even starting at 6:30 AM, we couldn't miss it with our eyes closed.
[Next post: sol 978 (Opportunity sol 957), October 3.]
2011-09-13
Opportunity Sol 938 (Spirit Sol 958)
I'm not on shift today, but this is something I couldn't leave out. As part of my investigation of the Jammerbugt anomaly, I suggested that we reinstate the practice of having the science team periodically brief the engineers on recent science findings. Today's the first installment of that, being kicked off by Steve Squyres himself.
There's way too much to summarize here -- and I didn't bother taking many notes anyway, since they were filming it -- but a couple of things stood out for me:
and
[Next post: sol 964 (Opportunity sol 943), September 19.]
There's way too much to summarize here -- and I didn't bother taking many notes anyway, since they were filming it -- but a couple of things stood out for me:
"Mars is a terrible place -- the average daily temperature is -60C. All the water vapor in the atmosphere would form a layer a hundredth of a millimeter thick."
and
"Meridiani and Gusev were the two best-studied places on Mars before landing. We had Odyssey, MGS, Viking data. And we had 'em both completely wrong! We expected volcanic rock at Meridiani and sedimentary layers at Gusev."(What we found, of course, was basically the reverse. Shows the value of surface data to complement orbital data!)
[Next post: sol 964 (Opportunity sol 943), September 19.]
2011-09-09
Opportunity Sol 931 (Spirit Sol 954)
We're still not out of the dead of winter, and thus still not out of the woods. Daily energy levels aren't rising -- but they seem to have shallowed out, at least. At the same time, tau (atmospheric opacity) has spiked, and a more opaque atmosphere is bad news for solar-powered rovers.
However, tau has been on the low side lately, and is now only about average for this time of year, so it's nothing to worry about. As Oded points out, we mustn't panic about one measurement; we should wait to see if it's a sustained spike and one that causes power to drop.
And what are we going to do about it if it is rising, anyway? Go fly around with a vacuum cleaner and hoover the Martian atmosphere? No, we'll have to imitate a vacuum in another way, and just suck it up.
[Next post: sol 958 (Opportunity sol 938), September 13.]
However, tau has been on the low side lately, and is now only about average for this time of year, so it's nothing to worry about. As Oded points out, we mustn't panic about one measurement; we should wait to see if it's a sustained spike and one that causes power to drop.
And what are we going to do about it if it is rising, anyway? Go fly around with a vacuum cleaner and hoover the Martian atmosphere? No, we'll have to imitate a vacuum in another way, and just suck it up.
[Next post: sol 958 (Opportunity sol 938), September 13.]
2011-08-31
Opportunity Sol 925 (Spirit Sol 946)
Well, the tests on the IDD have gone well, and yesterday they even did real work with it. Maybe it was just a transient failure, after all.
However, we're still nervous about it, mostly because we're in for pain if it fails while we're trying to stow. During the stow and unstow process, the IDD maneuvers itself through a number of tight spaces, and getting it back out can be a real bitch. And stowing contains several small joint-1 moves, so if we didn't just have a transient failure -- if we have a real, ongoing problem -- then it's possible we'll fault out when that happens.
Fortunately, we can do something a little more active than just cross our fingers. We can walk the IDD partway through the stow process manually, at least as much as is relatively easy to sequence -- and to undo, if we get stuck. That will either build our confidence that the real thing will succeed, or tell us we shouldn't bother trying the real thing.
Happily, Eric Baumgartner left behind excellent documentation, including the exact IDD joint angles we need in order to do this test. So we look those up, put the sequence together -- and get shot down. Well, not permanently, but the SOWG chair's call is that since our doing this would put thisol's MB observation at risk, we should punt. And I can't really disagree, since we have a chance to do it again tomorrow. So we put our nearly complete sequence on the shelf, point the next day's RPs to it, and move on with the rest of the day's IDD sequencing. At least it won't be work wasted.
[Next post: sol 954 (Opportunity sol 931), September 9.]
However, we're still nervous about it, mostly because we're in for pain if it fails while we're trying to stow. During the stow and unstow process, the IDD maneuvers itself through a number of tight spaces, and getting it back out can be a real bitch. And stowing contains several small joint-1 moves, so if we didn't just have a transient failure -- if we have a real, ongoing problem -- then it's possible we'll fault out when that happens.
Fortunately, we can do something a little more active than just cross our fingers. We can walk the IDD partway through the stow process manually, at least as much as is relatively easy to sequence -- and to undo, if we get stuck. That will either build our confidence that the real thing will succeed, or tell us we shouldn't bother trying the real thing.
Happily, Eric Baumgartner left behind excellent documentation, including the exact IDD joint angles we need in order to do this test. So we look those up, put the sequence together -- and get shot down. Well, not permanently, but the SOWG chair's call is that since our doing this would put thisol's MB observation at risk, we should punt. And I can't really disagree, since we have a chance to do it again tomorrow. So we put our nearly complete sequence on the shelf, point the next day's RPs to it, and move on with the rest of the day's IDD sequencing. At least it won't be work wasted.
[Next post: sol 954 (Opportunity sol 931), September 9.]
2011-08-27
Opportunity Sol 921 (Spirit Sol 942)
Grim news from the Land of Opportunity today. The drive's off, because yestersol's IDD work on the trench failed. On the very first IDD move of the sol, we got a joint-1 stall at 80 ohms, which we haven't seen before. And the most likely interpretation of that is that the IDD has continued to degrade, and we're about to see a whole lot more failures. We might have lost the shoulder joint altogether. Jake Matijevic looks unhappy, which is never a good sign. "I'm concerned whether we'll ever be able to reliably stow again," he mutters to me sotto voce.
The only ray of hope is that the 80 ohms value isn't necessarily a magic number. It's a number we picked because it was supposed to work 90% of the time, or something like that. And if this is the first time it's failed in lots and lots of tries, maybe we just had some kind of bad luck, a purely transient failure due to ambient temperature or something. It has been particularly cold lately.
And Kirk Fleming makes a good point. "The first move of the day can be kind of sludgy," he notes as we're sitting in the fishbowl reviewing the data. "The stall doesn't seem to be resistance-related, or we wouldn't have hit the current limit. So either something else is wrong with the same actuator, or we just had a transient glitch."
Well, that is good news, and real reason for hope at last. Anyhow, we'll know more tomorrow than we do today. We're planning a test of the IDD in which we do a series of small shoulder-az motions, at increasing resistance values, until we get a success. That, of course, is hoping we do get a success, which is by no means assured at this point.
After a lot of discussion, we end up with a fairly simple scheme. We're going to repeat a test at three different times of day, so that we can test at different temperatures. Each test moves the IDD to the left and right with a rotor resistance of 80 ohms, then 90, then 100, the max we can command. If we succeed in moving it both directions at a certain resistance setting, we don't try the next-higher setting, since that's potentially dangerous.
And we'll take lots of pictures as we do it. Lots of pretty pictures. Which, we hope, will -- like the other data -- show nothing anomalous. That would leave us, perhaps, with a mystery. But given the alternatives at this point, it's a mystery I think I could live with.
[Next post: sol 946 (Opportunity sol 925), August 31.]
The only ray of hope is that the 80 ohms value isn't necessarily a magic number. It's a number we picked because it was supposed to work 90% of the time, or something like that. And if this is the first time it's failed in lots and lots of tries, maybe we just had some kind of bad luck, a purely transient failure due to ambient temperature or something. It has been particularly cold lately.
And Kirk Fleming makes a good point. "The first move of the day can be kind of sludgy," he notes as we're sitting in the fishbowl reviewing the data. "The stall doesn't seem to be resistance-related, or we wouldn't have hit the current limit. So either something else is wrong with the same actuator, or we just had a transient glitch."
Well, that is good news, and real reason for hope at last. Anyhow, we'll know more tomorrow than we do today. We're planning a test of the IDD in which we do a series of small shoulder-az motions, at increasing resistance values, until we get a success. That, of course, is hoping we do get a success, which is by no means assured at this point.
After a lot of discussion, we end up with a fairly simple scheme. We're going to repeat a test at three different times of day, so that we can test at different temperatures. Each test moves the IDD to the left and right with a rotor resistance of 80 ohms, then 90, then 100, the max we can command. If we succeed in moving it both directions at a certain resistance setting, we don't try the next-higher setting, since that's potentially dangerous.
And we'll take lots of pictures as we do it. Lots of pretty pictures. Which, we hope, will -- like the other data -- show nothing anomalous. That would leave us, perhaps, with a mystery. But given the alternatives at this point, it's a mystery I think I could live with.
[Next post: sol 946 (Opportunity sol 925), August 31.]
2011-08-23
Opportunity Sol 919 (Spirit Sol 938)
I take a personal satisfaction in today's activity: trenching with a stuck wheel.
Sure, I'd rather be high-tailing it toward Victoria. In my absence, the team got us to Beagle and beyond. Now nothing stands in our way -- well, nothing except the science team, who feel there's some science work we really need to do first.
Phooey.
The good part is that we're already prepared to do what they want to do. A few weeks before we reached the annulus, I got to thinking about that big old unknown sand sheet, and what we'd want to do once we got there. Trenching was one thing I knew they'd want to do, and I knew we hadn't done it since Opportunity's RF wheel lost the ability to steer, which makes our usual trenching sequence unworkable. So I got Paolo, Jeff Biesiadecki, and (bless his heart) Rob Sullivan to go down to the testbed and work out how to trench all over again.
Squyres said -- very, very politely -- that this was a waste of time. But I had a feeling it would prove otherwise, and it looks like I was right and he was wrong.
Well, it had to happen eventually.
So that makes the sol easy, at least: the trenching routine's already fully worked out, and we just have to send it to the spacecraft.
But you knew it wasn't going to be that simple, right? We're actually finished with the CAM when I realize what's wrong. The new trenching sequence draws a long, shallow scrape with the RF wheel, then turns slightly and makes a second scrape overlapping the first, thus broadening the trench. Now, the turn between the two scrapes is performed in an unusual way. Rather than turning through an explicitly commanded angle, which causes the rover to turn until the IMU -- roughly, her internal compass -- says it's time to stop, the mechanism used in the sequence simply runs the wheels a certain number of revolutions.
When I change this to an explicit turn for simulation purposes, the error is clear: we're turning way, way too far.
I call Paolo and confirm the problem. They worked this sequence out in the testbed, and the number of wheel revolutions to use in the turn was calculated empirically. In the testbed -- in the particular soil material in use there, in Earth gravity, and so on -- this does the right thing. On Mars, it might do the right thing, or it might turn the rover way too far.
Erk.
The change to the sequence is simple enough; we just have to replace the turn with an explicit one. I'm glad I caught this, but, boy, do I feel dumb for not catching it sooner. My first day back from England, and we're redelivering post-CAM.
Just like the old days, really.
[Next post: sol 942 (Opportunity sol 921), August 27.]
Sure, I'd rather be high-tailing it toward Victoria. In my absence, the team got us to Beagle and beyond. Now nothing stands in our way -- well, nothing except the science team, who feel there's some science work we really need to do first.
Phooey.
The good part is that we're already prepared to do what they want to do. A few weeks before we reached the annulus, I got to thinking about that big old unknown sand sheet, and what we'd want to do once we got there. Trenching was one thing I knew they'd want to do, and I knew we hadn't done it since Opportunity's RF wheel lost the ability to steer, which makes our usual trenching sequence unworkable. So I got Paolo, Jeff Biesiadecki, and (bless his heart) Rob Sullivan to go down to the testbed and work out how to trench all over again.
Squyres said -- very, very politely -- that this was a waste of time. But I had a feeling it would prove otherwise, and it looks like I was right and he was wrong.
Well, it had to happen eventually.
So that makes the sol easy, at least: the trenching routine's already fully worked out, and we just have to send it to the spacecraft.
But you knew it wasn't going to be that simple, right? We're actually finished with the CAM when I realize what's wrong. The new trenching sequence draws a long, shallow scrape with the RF wheel, then turns slightly and makes a second scrape overlapping the first, thus broadening the trench. Now, the turn between the two scrapes is performed in an unusual way. Rather than turning through an explicitly commanded angle, which causes the rover to turn until the IMU -- roughly, her internal compass -- says it's time to stop, the mechanism used in the sequence simply runs the wheels a certain number of revolutions.
When I change this to an explicit turn for simulation purposes, the error is clear: we're turning way, way too far.
I call Paolo and confirm the problem. They worked this sequence out in the testbed, and the number of wheel revolutions to use in the turn was calculated empirically. In the testbed -- in the particular soil material in use there, in Earth gravity, and so on -- this does the right thing. On Mars, it might do the right thing, or it might turn the rover way too far.
Erk.
The change to the sequence is simple enough; we just have to replace the turn with an explicit one. I'm glad I caught this, but, boy, do I feel dumb for not catching it sooner. My first day back from England, and we're redelivering post-CAM.
Just like the old days, really.
[Next post: sol 942 (Opportunity sol 921), August 27.]
2011-07-27
Spirit Sol 912
"Aren't you gone yet?"
That's Alicia Vaughan (nee Fallacaro), asking me the same question everyone else is asking me. It's enough to make me feel unloved, or at any rate it would be if they weren't asking when I was leaving for England.
Tomorrow.
Contrary to my hopes, we obviously won't be at Victoria before I hop the pond and lose touch with all this for a few weeks. Heck, we're not even to Beagle yet. Now I have to hope they don't get anywhere interesting until I get back.
It almost makes me want to sabotage thisol's sequences, just to give myself some extra margin ....
Heck, yestersol's sequence was nearly sabotaged for me. Yestersol's RAT calibration was undermodeled, so the IDD sequence cut off at the very end. It had taken the final image, but hadn't compressed the IDD data products yet. So we didn't get those. As a result, we don't have detailed current data, but we do have a visual OK and initial conditions, and that's good enough for us to proceed. So we'll clear the errors that resulted from the premature sequence cutoff and then continue down Rob's Yellow Brick Road.
We're off to see the wizard -- and I'm off to see some Shakespeare.
[Next post: sol 938 (Opportunity sol 919), August 23.]
That's Alicia Vaughan (nee Fallacaro), asking me the same question everyone else is asking me. It's enough to make me feel unloved, or at any rate it would be if they weren't asking when I was leaving for England.
Tomorrow.
Contrary to my hopes, we obviously won't be at Victoria before I hop the pond and lose touch with all this for a few weeks. Heck, we're not even to Beagle yet. Now I have to hope they don't get anywhere interesting until I get back.
It almost makes me want to sabotage thisol's sequences, just to give myself some extra margin ....
Heck, yestersol's sequence was nearly sabotaged for me. Yestersol's RAT calibration was undermodeled, so the IDD sequence cut off at the very end. It had taken the final image, but hadn't compressed the IDD data products yet. So we didn't get those. As a result, we don't have detailed current data, but we do have a visual OK and initial conditions, and that's good enough for us to proceed. So we'll clear the errors that resulted from the premature sequence cutoff and then continue down Rob's Yellow Brick Road.
We're off to see the wizard -- and I'm off to see some Shakespeare.
[Next post: sol 938 (Opportunity sol 919), August 23.]
2011-07-25
Opportunity Sol 890 (Spirit Sol 910)
The plan for the day is to drive on toward Beagle. First, we're going to repeat the unsatisfactory scuff done on sol 885, this time recording motor/IMU data at 8Hz to better characterize the rover's interaction with the terrain. We'll take juicy color PANCAMs of it -- or just get decent-quality HAZCAMs if we can't afford the PANCAMs -- and then we press on.
We're all fired up for driving, too. Tim Parker's "Victoria Goal Map" is showing us so damn close! We're only 85m from Beagle, and 561m from Victoria. I expect we should be able to do an easy 50m or so thisol, which would put us one drive away from Beagle and cut our distance to Victoria by about 10%. I am totally jazzed about this. We've got it all worked out, and we're raring to go.
That's why I'm so disappointed when the drive is cancelled. During the SOWG meeting, the science team decides the IDD data they've gotten at this location isn't quite high enough quality, and they need one more sol before driving on.
Bummer. But at least I get a good laugh out of Rob Sullivan's description of the now-irrelevant work we did on the scuff: "a fabulous exercise in futility."
[Next post: sol 912, July 27.]
We're all fired up for driving, too. Tim Parker's "Victoria Goal Map" is showing us so damn close! We're only 85m from Beagle, and 561m from Victoria. I expect we should be able to do an easy 50m or so thisol, which would put us one drive away from Beagle and cut our distance to Victoria by about 10%. I am totally jazzed about this. We've got it all worked out, and we're raring to go.
That's why I'm so disappointed when the drive is cancelled. During the SOWG meeting, the science team decides the IDD data they've gotten at this location isn't quite high enough quality, and they need one more sol before driving on.
Bummer. But at least I get a good laugh out of Rob Sullivan's description of the now-irrelevant work we did on the scuff: "a fabulous exercise in futility."
[Next post: sol 912, July 27.]
2011-07-23
Spirit Sol 908
The plan for the day starts with two 7-deep MI stacks of ripples Spirit hasn't paid too much attention to yet. The stacks are 7 images deep rather than our usual 5 because they don't want us to disturb the soil by touching it with the MB first. This is the start of a longer campaign to get MI coverage of a strip all the way between the two ripples -- a strip I soon begin to call the "Yellow Brick Road," because Rob Sullivan indicates its position with a yellow line in a planning image. The two 7-stacks are all we can afford today, but there's more in our future.
So I have what I think is a clever idea: since we know where the best focus position is likely to be, why not take a gamble? If we did five 3-stacks along the whole Yellow Brick Road, centered where the best-focus position is likely to be, then one of two things would happen. Either we'd get the best-focus images all the way along, in which case we win big, or we get enough information to work out where the best-focus position definitely is, and we come back and do a single strip of images at that best-focus position later. Either way, it's many fewer images than the planned method, and we might even get done in a single day.
Turns out, though, that this is the wrong time for the creative approach. In this case, Rob actually wants the whole 7-stack, including the out-of-focus images, because the terrain has some relief that he wants to be able to study in detail. Best-focus in one image is out-of-focus in another in a case like this. So that brilliant idea is off the table -- this time. But maybe next time.
So we get started down the Yellow Brick Road. (In keeping with the theme, I naturally push for calling our intermediate targets "Dorothy" and "Tin Man." Whee, the fun we have!) As we go along, we keep in touch with Rob, who requested this observation and is now calling in from the road on the way to a family reunion. We get to reminiscing about the nominal mission, when Rob -- one of the few who was even more hard-core than I -- practically tried to stay up 24 hours a day for the whole thing. "I used to roll from rover to rover and just pass out on the floor in the MI room," he laughs. "Hey, we should gather pictures of everyone sleeping!"
Sometimes I kind of feel sorry for the new kids -- such as Antonio, who's shadowing today -- who missed out on the overwhelming fun and excitement of the nominal mission. But at the end of the day, I overhear him on his cell phone, excitedly telling his wife that today he wrote his first sequence for the rover. The bloom isn't off the rose yet.
[Next post: sol 910 (Opportunity sol 890), July 25.]
So I have what I think is a clever idea: since we know where the best focus position is likely to be, why not take a gamble? If we did five 3-stacks along the whole Yellow Brick Road, centered where the best-focus position is likely to be, then one of two things would happen. Either we'd get the best-focus images all the way along, in which case we win big, or we get enough information to work out where the best-focus position definitely is, and we come back and do a single strip of images at that best-focus position later. Either way, it's many fewer images than the planned method, and we might even get done in a single day.
Turns out, though, that this is the wrong time for the creative approach. In this case, Rob actually wants the whole 7-stack, including the out-of-focus images, because the terrain has some relief that he wants to be able to study in detail. Best-focus in one image is out-of-focus in another in a case like this. So that brilliant idea is off the table -- this time. But maybe next time.
So we get started down the Yellow Brick Road. (In keeping with the theme, I naturally push for calling our intermediate targets "Dorothy" and "Tin Man." Whee, the fun we have!) As we go along, we keep in touch with Rob, who requested this observation and is now calling in from the road on the way to a family reunion. We get to reminiscing about the nominal mission, when Rob -- one of the few who was even more hard-core than I -- practically tried to stay up 24 hours a day for the whole thing. "I used to roll from rover to rover and just pass out on the floor in the MI room," he laughs. "Hey, we should gather pictures of everyone sleeping!"
Sometimes I kind of feel sorry for the new kids -- such as Antonio, who's shadowing today -- who missed out on the overwhelming fun and excitement of the nominal mission. But at the end of the day, I overhear him on his cell phone, excitedly telling his wife that today he wrote his first sequence for the rover. The bloom isn't off the rose yet.
[Next post: sol 910 (Opportunity sol 890), July 25.]
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