Mars rover begins final approach to massive Victoria Crater

Huh?

 

I agree to a point, but when we get closer to the major formations it will get better. These cliffs are massive -- much larger than they appear in the image.




The coolest place we could go on Mars would be Valles Marineris -- it is so deep that the air pressure is strong enough to form thick clouds. Liquid water..?

 

That's strange. Is everyone having this problem?



Victoria Cliffs direct link



Valles Marineris direct link



Victoria colorized direct link

 

Are you kidding? You have to click on the thumbnail and it will expand in a new window.

 

Wrong rover...
_____

Massive storm on Mars downs NASA’s Opportunity Rover after 14 years on the red planet

NASA recently held a press conference about the current status of the Opportunity Rover (or Oppy, as it is fondly called), which is weathering a massive storm covering a quarter of the Red Planet’s surface. According to NASA, communication with Opportunity remains down as of date, though the space agency is optimistic that the 14-year-old rover can still make it through the storm.

The massive storm currently affecting Mars covers 15.8 million square miles (41 million square kilometers), which is roughly the size of North America and Russia combined. The intensity of the storm has effectively blocked the sunlight on Mars’ surface, preventing Opportunity to charge its batteries. The rover is currently near the center of the storm, inside the Red Planet’s Perseverance Valley. NASA is under the assumption that Opportunity’s batteries have dipped below 24 volts, causing the machine to enter low power fault mode. In this state, all of Opportunity’s subsystems except its mission clock are turned off. During NASA’s press conference, John Callas, Opportunity’s project manager, stated that the rover’s present state invokes concern.

“The analogy I would use right now is it’s like you have a loved one in a coma in the hospital. The doctors are telling you that you’ve just got to give it time and she’ll wake up, all the vital signs are good, so it’s just waiting it out — but you know, if it’s your 97-year-old grandmother you’re going to be very concerned. And we are. By no means are we out of the woods here,” he said.

Opportunity has been on the Red Planet for close to 15 years, far more than the duration of its original 90-day mission. As of January 2018, the rover has managed to cover a distance of 45.09 kilometers (28.02 miles), studying Mars’ terrain and laying the foundations for missions to come. Opportunity was sent to the Red Planet with its sister rover, Spirit. While both machines were able to last far beyond their initial 90-day mission, Spirit ultimately fell silent in 2010, six years into its exploration of the Martian landscape.

https://www.teslarati.com/nasa-opportunity-rover-mars-storm/

 

The only picture from this old thread with a working link.

 

This is what Opportunity was headed for a decade ago.

 

Will we hear from Opportunity soon?

Mars opposition has come and gone, with the Red Planet enshrouded in a global dust storm first detected by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) May 30. The storm has kicked up levels of dust never before seen by instruments on the planet, and darkened the skies enough that NASA’s 14-year-old solar-powered Mars Exploration Rover (MER), Opportunity, has been silent since June 10. When the sky grew too dark to charge the rover’s panels, Opportunity went to sleep, operating in low-power mode until the chance to charge up the onboard batteries reappears.

And after two months, the storm may now be lifting. Dust that was hoisted into the air, obscuring the Sun from view on the surface and the planet’s features from eager astronomers on Earth, is finally falling back to the ground and the sky is slowly lightening, albeit “in fits and starts,” according to the MER mission website.

What does this mean for the sleeping rover? The mission team, which has been eagerly pinging Opportunity using NASA’s Deep Space Network several times a week since it went to sleep, is now more hopeful than ever that they will soon hear back as the rover’s location clears enough to allow the solar panels to begin collecting power once more.

But what has two months of darkness and dust wrought on the go-kart-sized rover, which has already outlasted its planned warranty of 90 days almost 60 times over? Opportunity’s engineering team expects she has experienced several “faults,” which are situations caused by lack of power that require the rover to take independent action to maintain functionality. The first of these, which the team believes occurred on or shortly after June 10, is a low-power fault. This fault means the rover can’t access adequate sunlight to recharge, and enters hibernation until the solar panels again have the coverage they need to juice up the batteries.

The second fault Opportunity likely experienced is a clock fault. Though the rover maintains an internal clock even when powered down, too little power will cause this internal clock to fail. In this case, the rover can’t tell how much time has passed, nor does it know the date or when to expect check-ins from Earth or when to send out scheduled signals for engineers to receive. In this case, once power is restored, Opportunity can instead use clues such as light levels to determine whether it’s day or night and regain a rudimentary sense of time.

A third fault that engineers expect has occurred is an uploss fault, in which the rover may think its onboard communications equipment is malfunctioning. This occurs if the rover, based on loss of accurate timekeeping, doesn’t receive signals from Earth and instead thinks it’s due to an equipment problem, rather than what is essentially a missed appointment. According to a recent report, the rover’s timer for this fault has expired, meaning it’s most likely occurred. In this state, once power is restored Opportunity will begin checking its communications equipment and scroll through a list of possible ways to re-establish communication with Earth.

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2018/08/will-we-hear-from-opportunity-soon