[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: December 10-17, 2014

[Ron Baalke]

http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/mission/status.html#opportunity

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE:  Rover No-Flash Mode  - sols 3868-3874, 
December 10, 2014-December 17, 2014:

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater heading towards 'Marathon 
Valley,' a location assumed to have abundant clay minerals only about 
a half-mile (800 meters) to the south.

With the continuing Flash memory problems on the rover, the project has 
chosen to operate the rover without using the non-volatile Flash storage 
system and instead rely on the volatile random access memory (RAM) for 
temporary storage of telemetry, or rover data. Longer term, the project 
will implement a strategy to mask off the troubled sector of Flash and 
resume using the remainder of the Flash file system in normal operations.

Using RAM memory for data storage, Opportunity drove on Sols 3868, 3870 
and 3873 (Dec. 10, 12 and 16, 2014), totaling over 361 feet (110 meters). 
Engineers collected drive direction imagery and atmospheric observations 
on the same sol of each drive. Drivers are developing sets of multi-sol 
plans, some containing drives, to carry the rover's activities through 
the coming holidays.

As of Sol 3874 (Dec. 17, 2014), the solar array energy production was 
494 watt-hours, an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.189 and a solar array 
dust factor of 0.646.

Total odometry is 25.73 miles (41.42 kilometers).