[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update - January 10-16, 2013

[Ron Baalke]

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

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE:  Investigating Light-toned Veins in Rock Outcrop - 
sols 3187-3193, Jan. 10, 2013-Jan. 16, 2013:

Opportunity is on the inboard edge of "Cape York" on the rim of Endeavour 
Crater, now engaged in in-situ (contact) science investigation of veins 
in the light-toned outcrop "Whitewater Lake," a place the rover visited 
previously.

On Sol 3187 (Jan. 10, 2013), the rover bumped a little over a meter to 
reach the vein targets in the outcrop, named "Ortiz." On Sol 3189 
(Jan. 12, 2013), Opportunity, using her robotic arm, collected a large 
Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic of the vein targets. This was followed by 
the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) for an 
overnight integration. On Sol 3191 (Jan. 14, 2013), the rover collected 
more MI mosaics of a target offset from the first and completed this 
with placing the APXS on the new target.

Opportunity started exhibiting memory symptoms this month similar to 
events seen with Spirit in 2009. This is not a health and safety concern, 
but can cause loss of some data intended for downlink. It can be avoided 
for more important data by downlinking before any rover nap. The suspect 
cause is corruption in the flash file system used by the rover for 
non-volatile telemetry storage. The project implemented a detection 
diagnostic on Sol 3189 (Jan. 12, 2013) to flag the occurrence of these 
events in separate non-volatile memory. No events have occurred since 
Sol 3183 (Jan. 6, 2013), and the rover remains in good health.

As of Sol 3193 (Jan. 16, 2013), the solar array energy production was 
498 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.08 and a solar 
array dust factor of 0.623.

Total odometry is 22.03 miles (35455.34 meters).