Restart shuttle: Fwd: With memory restored, Opportunity rover completes marathon on Mars

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: March 25, 2015 at 9:57:18 AM CDT
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: With memory restored, Opportunity rover completes marathon on Mars

March 24, 2015
NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover Passes Marathon Distance
There was no tape draped across a finish line, but NASA is celebrating a win. The agency's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon Tuesday -- 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) - with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.
"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "A first time happens only once."
The rover team at JPL plans a marathon-length relay run at the laboratory next week to celebrate.
The long-lived rover surpassed the marathon mark during a drive of 153 feet (46.5 meters). Last year, Opportunity became the long-distance champion of all off-Earth vehicles when it topped the previous record set by the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover.
"This mission isn't about setting distance records, of course; it's about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more," said Steve Squyres, Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool."
Opportunity's original three-month prime mission in 2004 yielded evidence of environments with liquid water soaking the ground and flowing on planet's surface. As the rover continued to operate far beyond expectations for its lifespan, scientists chose the rim of Endeavour Crater as a long-term destination. Since 2011, examinations of Endeavour's rim have provided information about ancient wet conditions less acidic, and more favorable for microbial life, than the environment that left clues found earlier in the mission.
JPL manages the Mars rover projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Mars Exploration Rover Project, NASA's newer Curiosity Mars rover, and three active NASA Mars orbiters are part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, which seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing the human spaceflight capabilities needed for its journey to Mars.
For more information about Opportunity, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
Follow the project on social media at:
http://twitter.com/MarsRovers
http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers

Media Contact
Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

2015-097

With memory restored, Opportunity rover completes marathon on Mars
March 25, 2015 by Stephen Clark
This self-portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows effects of wind events that had cleaned much of the accumulated dust off the rover's solar panels. The image combines multiple frames taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera in March 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.
NASA's Opportunity rover trekking across Mars completed a marathon's worth of driving Tuesday, extending its record-setting exploration of the red planet as engineers installed a software fix to overcome a problem with the aging robot's flash memory.
The rover has been operating without the use of its flash memory since December 2014, when ground controllers briefly lost communications with Opportunity as its computer had trouble writing data to a section of on-board non-volatile flash memory.
The flash memory retains data when the solar-powered rover powers down at night, and a separate random access memory system stores data only when the vehicle is powered up. When Opportunity's long-term data archive became unreliable, ground controllers commanded the rover to send back all the information it collected each day before going to sleep at sunset.
Officials coaxed the rover along without flash memory while engineers wrote new code to beam up to Opportunity to bypass one of the vehicle's seven banks of memory most responsible for the problems.
Opportunity's ground team received confirmation March 20 that the memory reformatting completed successfully, structuring the rover's computer to avoid writing data on Bank 7 of the flash memory archive, NASA said in a press release.
"Opportunity can work productively without use of flash memory, as we have shown for the past three months, but with flash we have more flexibility for operations," said John Callas, Opportunity's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "The rover can collect more data than can be returned to Earth on any one day. The flash memory allows data from intensive science activities to be returned over several days."
This view taken March 13 from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows part of Marathon Valley, a destination on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, as seen from an overlook north of the valley. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.
There is a limit to how many times the computer can write and erase data in flash memory, and the latest fault is simply a sign of the rover's age, officials said.
NASA has not guaranteed it can afford to keep Opportunity operating on Mars beyond this year. The agency's budget request submitted to Congress for 2016 calls for no funding for the Opportunity mission, but NASA officials and lawmakers are optimistic the final spending plan will include money for the rover.
Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 24, 2004, and has outlived its 90-day life expectancy more than 45 times.
The six-wheeled robot's odometer passed 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) Tuesday — the equivalent length of a marathon on Earth — after 11 years and two months on Mars.
"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," Callas said in a press release. "A first time happens only once."
NASA says Opportunity achieved the marathon feat with a drive of 153 feet (46.5 meters) Tuesday.
The gold line traces Opportunity's path from its landing inside Eagle Crater in January 2004 through its 153-foot drive March 24. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NMMNHS
Opportunity is currently exploring a region named Marathon Valley on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, a vast impact basin stretching 14 miles across. The rover has surveyed the rim of the crater since it arrived at the destination in 2011.
The long-lived vehicle has recently spotted a bizarre rock outcrop at an overlook of Marathon Valley, which could contain more clues from the red planet's ancient past, when conditions were favorable for life billions of years ago.
Opportunity broke the record for long-distance driving on another world last year when it passed the mark set by the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover.
For comparison, NASA's Curiosity rover has logged more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) on Mars since it landed in August 2012.
"This mission isn't about setting distance records, of course; it's about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more," said Steve Squyres, Opportunity's principal investigator at Cornell University. "Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool."

© 2015 Spaceflight Now Inc.

NASA's Opportunity Rover Wins 1st Marathon on Mars
by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | March 24, 2015 06:01pm ET

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity achieved a cumulative driving distance surpassing that of a marathon race on March 24, 2015, as the rover neared a destination called "Marathon Valley," seen in the middle ground of this image taken in early March.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech View full size image
NASA's Opportunity rover has completed the first-ever Mars marathon, clocking in with a winning time of 11 years and 2 months.
The golf-cart-size Opportunity rover has now traveled 26.221 miles (42.198 kilometers) since touching down on the Red Planet on Jan. 24, 2004, NASA officials announced today (March 24). The length of a marathon race is 26.219 miles (42.195 km).
"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a statement. "A first time happens only once." [Inside Opportunity's Record-Setting Mars Marathon (Infographic)]
Eleven years and two months after landing on Mars, NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has driven in total further than the length of a marathon race: 26.219 miles (42.195 km.).
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona
View full size image
Opportunity reached the milestone with a 153-foot (46.5 meters) drive today that took it close to a location dubbed Marathon Valley, located on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The six-wheeled robot has been exploring the 14-mile-wide (22 km) crater's western rim since August 2011.
Opportunity adds to its off-world driving record with every turn of its wheels. Second place belongs to the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover, which covered 24.2 miles (39 km) on the moon back in 1973.
"This mission isn't about setting distance records, of course. It's about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more," Steve Squyres, Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said in the same statement. "Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool."
On Mars since January 2004, NASA's Opportunity Mars rover passed the distance of a marathon race in total driving on March 24, 2015.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/NMMNHS
View full size image
Opportunity landed three weeks after its twin, Spirit, on a mission to search for signs of past water activity on Mars. Both rovers found plenty of such evidence, fundamentally reshaping scientists' understanding of Red Planet history, and the rovers then kept chugging along.
Spirit stopped communicating with Earth after getting bogged down in some loose sand in 2010 and was declared dead a year later. Opportunity remains active, though it has been showing signs of its advanced age. The rover's robotic arm is arthritic, for example, and engineers recently installed a software upgrade to deal with a memory issue that had been afflicting Opportunity since late 2014.
Opportunity is currently studying a small crater called Spirit of St. Louis, which lies just west of Marathon Valley. NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted signs of clay minerals, an indication of a wet past environment, in Marathon Valley, and the rover team plans to check out these deposits soon.
Opportunity team members will hold a marathon-length relay race next week at JPL to celebrate the driving milestone, NASA officials said.

Inside Opportunity's Record-Setting Marathon Drive on Mars (Infographic)
By Karl Tate, Infographics Artist | March 24, 2015 06:06pm ET

After 11 years and 2 months, NASA's Opportunity rover has completed a record 26.2-mile (42.2 kilometers) drive across Mars. Some highlights along the way:
1. EAGLE CRATER:
After landing, Opportunity found signs of acidic water in Mars' ancient past.

2. ENDURANCE CRATER:
Rock layers indicated this area was wet only from time to time. Any microbes would have had a tough time surviving.

3. VICTORIA CRATER:
Findings at this site made scientists wonder: "Was the water of ancient Mars too salty for life?"

4. ENDEAVOUR CRATER:
Opportunity finally discovered signs of past water that would have been hospitable to life.

5. NEXT, MARATHON VALLEY:
Opportunity will explore clay that suggests Mars might have made a good habitat for life in the past.

A marathon is a traditional running event dating back to the legends of the ancient Greeks.

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