[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: November 17-22, 2011

[Ron Baalke]

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

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE:  Scouting Sites for the Winter - sols 2778-2783, 
November 17-22, 2011:

In preparing for positioning Opportunity for the coming winter, the project 
has been scouting sites with favorable northerly tilt on the north end of 
Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater.

There are two candidate sites for winter havens that indicate sufficient 
northerly tilt. Opportunity is investigating one of those two sites with 
the plan to spend the Thanksgiving holiday there. Because of the coming holiday, 
the project implemented multi-sol plans for the last three planning days before 
Thanksgiving.

On Sol 2778 (Nov. 17, 2011), the rover moved just under 39 feet (12 meters) to the 
south approaching the candidate location. Rover attitude increased to 10 degrees of 
northerly tilt. On Sol 2780 (Nov. 19, 2011), an atmospheric argon measurement was made 
with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). On Sol 2781 (Nov. 20, 2011), Opportunity 
bumped just under 10 feet (3 meters) to reach an interesting surface target with improved 
rover tilt. The northerly tilt increased to about 12 degrees.

On Sol 2783 (Nov. 22, 2011), Opportunity made a very small turn to move a surface target 
within the work volume of the robotic arm. Another atmospheric argon measurement was 
collected with the APXS later that sol. The plan ahead is to spend Thanksgiving at this 
location and to collect Microscopic Imager (MI) images of this new surface target, called 
"Transvaal" along with an APXS measure of the same.

As of Sol 2783 (Nov. 22, 2011), solar array energy production was 297 watt-hours with an 
atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.661 and a solar array dust factor of 0.463.

Total odometry is 21.34 miles (34,342.70 meters or 34.44 kilometers).