The Opportunity rover on Mars has been wheeled into position to begin up-close surveys of exposed rock within a crater at Meridiani Planum.
Controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) commanded Opportunity yesterday into today to carry out several tasks.
A Microscopic Imager was utilized to further investigate the intriguing soil under Opportunitys wheels. The rover then maneuvered a few feet in bursts of short moves and a turn -- in the direction of a rock now tagged as "Snout". That rock is on the northeast edge of the outcrop in the Meridiani crater.
The next day of work with Opportunity has it deploying its robotic arm and taking several images of Snout with its Microscopic Imager. That would be followed by putting the robots Mssbauer spectrometer down on the rock. This scientific tool looks for the composition and abundance of iron-bearing minerals in soil and rock.
Snout will also be analyzed by an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) designed to ascertain elements that make up rocks and soils.
Arcing traverse
Within the next couple of days, Opportunity is to start an arcing traverse around the lower edge of the rock outcrop, said Matt Wallace, JPLs Opportunity Mission Manager.
Over several days time, engineers and scientists are to work hand-in-hand driving Opportunity in such a way as to carefully examine the rock outcrop. That assessment is expected to help piece together the geologic history of Meridiani and discern the role of water on the red planet.
"The science team is deciding how many bus stops we want to hit along the way," Wallace told reporters today during a telephone briefing. The number of stops now varies between three to seven, he said.
The total traverse that Opportunity would make as it parallels the rock outcrop is on the order of 100 feet (30 meters), Wallace said. In start-stop fashion, the robot would wheel itself as much as 20 feet (6 meter) per drive.
Slippery nature of crater driving
Wallace told SPACE.com that driving Opportunity on the side of the crater wall -- where the rock outcrop can be meticulously analyzed -- will be "somewhat challenging."
The slippery nature of up hill and down hill roving, as well as moving laterally across crater wall slopes is to be carefully monitored.
"We have a pretty good understanding of how this particular soil is behaving," Wallace added. "Its going to be challenging as we go around in this arcing fashionbut I am pretty confident we will be able to it," he concluded.
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