Daily Updates - September 9, 2004
Opportunity Status at end of sol 211-214

Opportunity is healthy and continuing to explore a rock called "Escher" on the southwestern slope of "Endurance Crater."

Sol 211: Opportunity awoke from deep sleep at 7 a.m. local solar time. It re-enabled survival heaters on its miniature thermal emission spectrometer and re-started a Moessbauer spectrometer examination of a target called "Kirchner." The rover made observations with its panoramic camera and its miniature thermal emission spectrometer from about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. local solar time, focusing on getting thermal inertia measurement of the dunes at different times of day. A planned tool change to the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer in the afternoon failed due to a sequencing error in retracting the Moessbauer spectrometer from the surface. A conditional sequencing check prevented the overnight alpha particle X-ray spectrometer integration from occurring as desired in such fault cases.

Sol 212: A calibration of the rock abrasion tool calibration was completed successfully. The tool is healthy and ready for action! An aggressive plan acquired 80 microscopic images of the rock Escher. As part of the team's efforts to increase operational flexibility, a test was conducted involving operating the miniature thermal emission spectrometer in parallel with arm operations. Unfortunately, this resulted in some corrupted data from the miniature thermal emission spectrometer due to vibrations as the rover arm moved. The rover used its Moessbauer spectrometer in the afternoon before going into deep sleep overnight.

Sol 213: Opportunity awoke from deep sleep and re-started the Moessbauer integration. The rover performed some remote sensing during the day and then changed tools to the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer for an overnight integration. Later it completed a midnight thermal inertia observation with the miniature thermal emission spectrometer, which required an hour of actuator preheating.

Sol 214: Opportunity completed the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer observation and successfully used the rock abrasion tool to brush clean two targets on Escher ("EmilNolde" and "Kirchner_RAT"). Then it made observations with its microscopic imager, hazard-avoidance camera and panoramic camera. The Moessbauer spectrometer was then positioned on Kirchner_RAT, where it analyzed the rock's mineral composition until the rover went into deep sleep overnight. Sol 214 ended on Aug. 31.

Opportunity Daily Update Archive