Mars Exploration Rover Update - April 12, 2005

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Opportunity visits 'Viking' and 'Voyager' craters -
sol 421-429, April 12, 2005

Opportunity drove to "Viking Crater," then continued to "Voyager
Crater." The rover took panoramas of each crater. While this was
happening on the surface, the Mars Odyssey orbiter had gone into safe
mode. Relay operations were suspended. With no post-drive imaging from
the weekend, and very little data volume available in flash,
Opportunity
executed a few sols of low-volume remote sensing. Driving resumed on
sol
428 with data downlinked via the direct-to-Earth link. With the
exception of the miniature thermal emission spectrometer (analysis is
still in progress), Opportunity is in excellent health.

Sol-by-sol summaries:

Sol 421 (March 31, 2005): Opportunity stowed its robotic arm
(instrument
deployment device) and drove 71.2 meters (234 feet) to Viking Crater.

Sol 422: On this restricted sol, only remote sensing was conducted. A
panoramic camera mosaic of Viking Crater was acquired.

Sol 423: Opportunity drove 109.2 meters (358 feet) to Voyager Crater.

Sol 424: The rover used autonomous navigation to drive south 2.6 meters
(about 9 feet). The drive ended early because the tilt limit of 12
degrees was reached, with Opportunity perched on the rim of Voyager
Crater.

Sol 425: Before this remote-sensing-only plan kicked off, the rover
team
learned that its main communication link, Mars Odyssey, had gone into
safe mode and the latest data available was from the afternoon of sol
422. On April 2, Odyssey entered "safe mode," which is a protective
state a spacecraft automatically enters when onboard fault protection
software instructs the spacecraft to disregard its onboard sequence of
commands and wait for instructions from the ground. As a result, relay
communication with the rovers was suspended. The rover team was able to
add a direct-to-Earth session to the plan, which confirmed that
Opportunity was healthy.

Sol 426: After a 90-minute direct-to-Earth pass, Opportunity performed
a
small amount of remote sensing. Operations were restricted because
post-drive imaging had not yet been transmitted to Earth, and the team
wanted to save the small amount of volume in flash memory for an
eventual drive.

Sol 427: Still operating in restricted mode, Opportunity again
collected
a small amount of remote-sensing data. It used the panoramic camera to
assess the clarity of the atmosphere, tested the miniature thermal
emission spectrometer and took a reading of air with the alpha particle
X-ray spectrometer. A 90-minute direct-to-Earth pass during the day
returned data for future planning. The Odyssey team brought the orbiter
back on-line, and the Opportunity team received 50 megabits of data.
The
Odyssey team is investigating the cause behind the fault protection
software sending the orbiter into safe mode.

Sol 428: The sol 427 direct-to-Earth pass returned enough data to plan
a
long drive. Opportunity drove 48.4 meters (159 feet), which put it over
the 5-kilometer mark. The odometry total after this drive is 5,044
meters (3.13 miles).

Sol 429 (April 8, 2005): Restricted sol; remote science only.