[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: March 25-30, 2015

[Ron Baalke]

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Rover Explores 'The Spirit of St. Louis' Crater - 
sols 3970-3975, March 25, 2015-March 30, 2015:

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater near the entrance of 
"Marathon Valley," a putative location for abundant clay minerals. The 
rover has driven around the feature called "The Spirit of St. Louis" crater 
and approached a light-toned rock outcrop. 

On Sol 3970 (March 25, 2015), Opportunity started the in-situ (contact) 
examination of the rock outcrop with a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic 
followed by the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) 
for a multi-hour integration. On the next sol, the rover performed a small 
turn to reach other targets with the instruments on the robotic arm. After 
assessing that those new targets were not accessible, the rover bumped 
again on the next sol. With good targets now within reach, Opportunity 
used the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) to brush another surface target and 
followed that with the collection of a MI mosaic and the placement of 
the APXS for another multi-hour integration. 

Although the Flash files system has been functioning since the reformat 
and masking of Bank 7 back on Sol 3964 (March 19, 2015), a single amnesia 
event did occur at the rover wake up on the evening of Sol 3969 (March 
24, 2015). The amnesia event was benign and did not impact rover operations 
nor result in any loss of science data. The project continues to investigate 
this. 

As of Sol 3975 (March 30, 2015), the solar array energy production was 
562 watt-hours with an elevated atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.010 and 
a solar array dust factor of 0.744. 

Total odometry is 26.24 miles (42.23 kilometers).