NASA Mars Exploration Rover Status 10 June 2005

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Opportunity is out! – sol 484-489, June 10, 2005:

Success! Opportunity made forward progress to free itself from the Purgatory Dune! Another exciting achievement for the week was the healthy return of data from the Mini-TES instrument, which the mission team turned back on for the first time in 47 sols. The rover also returned pancam and navcam images, and the team is now planning the rover’s next drive on sol 490.

Sol Details:

Sol 484: 20 meters (65.62 feet) commanded; 14 meters (45.93 feet) executed, 98.4 centimeters (38.74 inches) progress. Opportunity is out of Purgatory Dune!

Sol 485: This was the second sol of a 2-sol plan. The team planned to drive, but didn’t send the drive sequences to the rover because the rover was already out of the dune.

Sol 486: This was the third sol of a 3-sol plan. Again, the team planned to drive, but didn’t send the drive sequences because Opportunity were already out of the dune. The team took post-drive imaging, including a navcam of the trench.

Sol 487: The team took a pancam of the tracks and then turned on the Mini-TES for the first time after the sol 440 anomaly. Mini-TES rasters were taken of of Purgatory Dune and Ante-Purgatory Dune. The team was excited to receive healthy data products from this activity!

Sol 488: On this remote-sensing sol, the rover took a 360-degree navcam panorama and a pancam image of the magnets, and then deep slept for the night.

Sol 489: On this remote-sensing sol, the rover took a 13-filter pancam image of Purgatory tracks and deep slept for the night.

As of sol 489, distance traveled is 5347.89 meters (3.32 miles).