Daily Updates - February 21, 2004
Opportunity Status at end of sol 27

On sol 27, ending 12:57 a.m. Saturday, PST, Opportunity successfully "supersized" the measurements of the "El Capitan" area with the panoramic camera, miniature thermal emission spectrometer, and microscopic imager. The rover team is analyzing "super resolution" and "super spectral" observations from the science instruments and currently locating the best spots to place the rock abrasion tool.

Opportunity also drove 33 centimeters (13 inches) closer to "El Capitan" to better poise the robotic arm for use of the rock abrasion tool sometime over the next four or five sols, which will be the first use of the rock abrasion tool by Opportunity.

On sol 28, ending at 1:38 a.m. Sunday, PST, plans call for Opportunity to take extensive microscopic images of "El Capitan," which is a rich science target because it has multiple layers and varied textures on the upper and lower areas of the rocks, implying multiple changes in the geologic history of this area.

The Mars Odyssey orbiter is scheduled to fly over Opportunity during sol 28 with increased data communications capabilities to 256 kilobits per second, which is five times the speed of normal home computer modems.

Opportunity Daily Update Archive