[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: January 7-13, 2015

[Ron Baalke]

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

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Team Working on Strategy to Fix Flash Memory Issue 
- sols 3895-3901, January 7, 2015 - January 13, 2015: 

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

The Flash memory degradation is 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 using instead the volatile 
random access memory (RAM) for temporary storage of telemetry. This requires 
real-time commanding the rover on the first day (sol) of each plan.

Meanwhile, the project has developed the strategy to mask off the troubled 
sector of Flash and resume using the remainder of the Flash file system 
in normal operations. The project plans to implement the masking after 
an independent review is held later this week.

Using RAM storage, Opportunity drove on Sol 3895 (Jan. 7, 2015), to do 
a small turn in place. Since arriving on the summit of "Cape Tribulation" 
on Sol 3894 (Jan. 6, 2015), Opportunity has been collecting a full color, 
360-degree Panoramic Camera (Pancam) panorama.

As of Sol 3901 (Jan. 13, 2015), the solar array energy production was 
395 watt-hours, an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.056 and a solar array 
dust factor of 0.606.

Total odometry is 25.86 miles (41.62 kilometers).