[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: December 18, 2014 - January 6, 2015

[Ron Baalke]

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Rover Reaches the Summit of 'Cape Tribulation' 
After Several Drives this Week - sols 3875-3894, December 18, 2014 
- January 6, 2015: 

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater heading towards "Marathon 
Valley," a putative location for abundant clay minerals now only about 
1,969 feet (600 meters) to the south.

The Flash memory continues to degrade causing multiple resets of the rover 
on each wake-up. To mitigate this, the project is operating the rover 
without using the non-volatile Flash storage system, and instead relies 
on the volatile random access memory (RAM) for temporary storage of telemetry. 
This requires real-time commanding the rover on the first sol of each 
plan. Meanwhile, the project is developing 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 storage, Opportunity drove on Sols 3875, 3881, 3893 and 3894 
(Dec. 18, 24, 2014 and Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2015), totaling over 656 feet 
(200 meters). With the drive on Sol 3894 (Jan. 6, 2015), Opportunity is 
now on the summit of "Cape Tribulation," the highest point so far on the 
western rim of Endeavour Crater. This point is 443 feet (135 meters) above 
the plain of "Botany Bay" before the rover started climbing the rim.

As of Sol 3894 (Jan. 6, 2015), the solar array energy production was 438 
watt-hours, an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.041 and a solar array dust 
factor of 0.631.

Total odometry is 25.86 miles (41.62 kilometers).