NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Update: June 12-17, 2014

Imaging Mars’ Moon Phobos – sols 3691-3696, June 12, 2014-June 17, 2014

Opportunity is exploring the west rim of Endeavour Crater. On Sol 3691 (June 12, 2014), the rover continued south along the ridgeline of the crater rim, completing a 66-feet (20-meter) drive.

On the evening of Sol 3693 (June 14, 2014), a Flash memory amnesia event (where Flash memory fails to mount after a wake up) occurred. There were no impacts to operations and no loss of science data. On Sol 3696 (June 17, 2014), Opportunity continued the southward progress with a 115-feet (35-meter) drive. The rover is also documenting the current terrain with targeted multi-color Panoramic Camera (Pancam) images and Navigation Camera (Navcam) panoramas.

With abundant energy and the need to condition the batteries, Opportunity has been waking late at night and collecting atmospheric argon measurements with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). These late wake ups have also created opportunities to image Mars’ moon Phobos. The martian moon along with its putative dust torus will be imaged on the evening of Sol 3697 (June 18, 2014). Wheel currents continue to be very well behaved. And, no Flash-induced resets have occurred in this reporting period.

As of Sol 3696 (June 17, 2014), the solar array energy production was 706 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.617 and a solar array dust factor of 0.864.

Total odometry is 24.57 miles (39.4 kilometers).