NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Update: October 10-16, 2013

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE:  Maintaining Favorable Tilt for Sunshine – sols 3453-3459, Oct. 10, 2013-Oct. 16, 2013:

Opportunity is ascending the northern edge of ‘Solander Point’ at the rim of Endeavour Crater.

The rover is maintaining favorable northerly tilts for improved energy production as winter approaches. On Sol 3453 (Oct. 10, 2013), the Opportunity rover performed color Panoramic Camera (Pancam) remote sensing and collected an atmospheric argon measurement with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).

After completing a few sols of remote sensing, the rover headed south on Sol 3457 (Oct. 14, 2013), ascending up Solander Point with a 77 feet (23.5-meter) drive heading towards an outcrop named ‘Kangaroo Paw.’

On the next sol, Opportunity bumped towards the target outcrop with an 11 feet (3.5 meter) move. On the next sol, a bump of 24 inches (60 centimeters) was performed to put the surface science targets within reach of the rover’s robotic arm.

As of Sol 3459 (Oct. 16, 2013), the solar array energy production was 334 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.685 and an approximate solar array dust factor of 0.527.

Total odometry is 23.89 miles (38.45 kilometers).