Opportunity Is Preparing To Descend Into The Victoria Crater

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Dave,
Please pass along our congrats to the team. Many here in Chicago are very proud of the Rover missions. I bet everyone is hopeful about the unusual strata at the bottom of the crater/lake showing new information.

[dlavery]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Please pass along our congrats to the team. Many here in Chicago are very proud of the Rover missions. I bet everyone is hopeful about the unusual strata at the bottom of the crater/lake showing new information.

Thanks, Al, I will pass it along. The most scientifically interesting part of the crater exploration is likely to be relatively close to the rim. The central part of the crater has been filled in with sand, dust and eroded material that has fallen into the crater. The actual crater floor has been covered by this material, and is inaccessible. Also, this stuff covers the crater floor in soft dunes (clearly visible in the overhead images) that are hazard areas that we try to avoid. Conversely, the inner portions of the crater rim are relatively accessible, and potentially science-rich. The rim area is rife with exposed strata. The ingress path down into the "Duck Bay" alcove will allow the rover to examine layers that could be the original surface that was in place when the crater was formed. All of this should make for an interesting exploration of the crater once we start to drive in.

Originally Posted by Roger

Not if you work down here but your business is up there. If you're on Mars time (like all the rover watchers) you have to keep on the rover's day schedule to stay in the sun. Every day you start work later and later (it's actually 39 minutes 35+ seconds solar day), then eventually get bumped in time to align again, or take time off to realign to Earth time. Your work time is shifted to all hours of the day or night, making for interesting scenarios for family and friends.

The rover operations team works on standard 24-hour Earth time, on a slightly modified 40-hour/week schedule. The major activities all take place during a fairly standard 8-hours/day (daytime), 5-days/week schedule. The team did work on "Mars time" during the early part of the surface operations. But that approach was dropped nearly three years ago. To compensate for the differences between Earth time and local Solar time (defined by a Mars solar day, or sol, which is actually 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35.24409 seconds - but common convention rounds the sol to the nearest minute, so it is most frequently termed 24 hours, 40 minutes) at each rover site, the team has developed a series of procedures that allow them to shift the timing of operations planning activities on a daily basis, while maintaining a relatively standard work schedule.

-dave

[Roger]

I'm glad they dropped that schedule. It probably was a good idea at the start, but to keep it up year in and out got -- well, fill in your own word*. (That's when I heard about it, when it first started.) Does it matter that you don't have to be "live" with the rovers (well, with the time delay), so long as you tell it what to do and come back the next day to see if the task is done? How autonomous are they?

It'll be interesting to see how "layered" Mars ends up being. Judging by a recent Astronomy Pics of the Day here there's a lot to look at.

*My cat has a similar (but opposite) schedule where feeding time is always at least one to two hours ahead of local time, and this is after years of training her that dinner is 6:30pm. What world is she from?

[EricRobodox]

They are very autonomous. I think CMU helped develop a new software to allow MER rovers to go i think 50 meters (which is a good portion of its day, if not all of its day, traveling) autonomously when previous was only a few meters. But I don't find it hard to have someone on the MER rovers at all time. At JPL, there are a lot a workers 24 hours a day and every day. But they are very autonomous, I'm sure of that. A conference room after a seminar i went to there was on that exact topic of mars rover autonomous programs.

[Andy A.]

Originally Posted by Elgin Clock

40 extra minutes per Martian Day?

Sweet! Sign me up to live on the first colony.

In the Mars series (Red, Green and Blue) by Kim Stanely Robison, the humans living on Mars came up with a solution to the extra 40 minutes a day.

They ignored it. Every night at 24:00, clocks stopped for 40 minutes and then started back up. I can't think of a better solution.

[JohnBoucher]

How does NASA fund a program like this that goes way beyond it's expected life span? They has been so productive, but certainly not budgeted for being an open ended mission.

[Roger]

Well, I knew they were autonomous, as in "go over there and do some testing, and call us when you're finished", and the rover would drive x meters avoiding rocks and such, then do some testing on the rocks. I just wasn't sure how much you could tell it to do at one time and go home at night knowing it'll do it by morning.

Originally Posted by Andy A.

...humans living on Mars came up with a solution to the extra 40 minutes a day. They ignored it. Every night at 24:00, clocks stopped for 40 minutes and then started back up. I can't think of a better solution.

That's Amtrak's solution when the time changes. They stop the trains for an hour every fall. (In the spring they're an hour late. Well, an hour more late.) My boss, however, would have found something for me to do for those 40 minutes....

[JaneYoung]

uh oh - bad dust storm(s)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,288254,00.html

[Al Skierkiewicz]

It sounds like the Rover's should point at the sun and charge up while they can and then shut down to minimum power and hope for the best. Maybe the crater can give some shelter from the wind if it gets up close to a wall. Can the rover deploy one of those shiny space blankets and duck and cover?

[EricRobodox]

I think they want the wind. It cleans off the solar panels. Staying close to the walls is dangerous from falling earth (well mars) from winds and planetary movements like earthquakes, if there are earthquakes. Sticking to the middle of the crater i think is best bet as it wont dirty the panels as quickly, as well as allows more sunlight. When needing to sample, that would be the only time i would go near the walls, if that was necessary. Im more concerned as there was rumor that Opportunity has a wheel thats goin bad (but is not bad yet), to which they can not do what they did with Spirit's bad wheel to get out of the crater from the slope. This should be an exciting slow mission.