Spirit's amnesia-like symptoms return; Opportunity's southbound progress
Mon Nov 2, 2009 at 08:22 UTC
Spirit has experienced another complication. On Sol 2065 (Oct. 24, 2009), Spirit experienced a reset event and a problem with mounting its non-volatile flash memory.
The rover resumed activities without using its flash memory, instead using its volatile random-access memory (RAM) to store telemetry. When the rover goes to sleep, telemetry stored only in RAM is lost.
The project has instructed the rover to stay awake until its afternoon relay pass with Mars Odyssey to return the day's data before napping.
The project is planning to reformat the rover's flash memory file system to restore it to normal operation. Spirit is otherwise in good health.
As of Sol 2069 (Oct. 28, 2009), Spirit's solar-array energy production was 411 watt-hours. On Sol 2064 (Oct. 23, 2009), atmospheric opacity (tau) was 0.599. Total odometry remains at 7,729.97 meters (4.80 miles).
Opportunity has been making good progress driving. After completing a survey of meteorites recently, Opportunity has turned south around the point of a large ripple field. Eventually, the rover will resume heading east towards Endeavour crater.
The rover drove southward on sols 2043, 2045, 2047, 2048 and 2049 (Oct. 22, 25, 27, 28 and 29, 2009), totaling over 280 meters (918 feet). The rover commands the miniature thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES) elevation mirror open each sol in an attempt to clear some of the putative dust off the elevation mirror. To date, no improvement in the Mini-TES has been observed.
As of Sol 2049 (Oct. 29, 2009), Opportunity's solar-array energy production is 419 watt-hours, with an atmospheric opacity (tau) of 0.580 and a dust factor of 0.571. Total odometry is 18,622.44 meters (11.57 miles).
| Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory | |
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