Happy Seventh Anniversary Oppy!
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On January 25th 2004, the Opportunity rover landed on the Meridiani Planum region of Mars.
Originally slated for a three month mission, Opportunity has been delivering new and exciting scientific discoveries for the past seven years. NASA recently released this panoramic image to celebrate Opportunity’s seventh anniversary on Mars.
Panorama of 'Santa Maria' Crater for Opportunity's Anniversary (False Color)
This scene looks eastward across the crater. Portions of the rim of a much larger crater, Endurance, appear on the horizon. The panorama spans 125 compass degrees, from north-northwest on the left to south-southwest on the right. It has been assembled from multiple frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 2,453rd and 2,454th Martian days, or sols, of the rover’s work on Mars (Dec. 18 and 19, 2010).
The view is presented in false color to emphasize differences among materials in the rocks and the soils. It combines images taken through three different Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). Seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.
Color Panorama of 'Santa Maria' Crater for Opportunity's Anniversary Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU
The team operating NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity will temporarily suspend commanding for 16 days after the rover’s seventh anniversary next week, but the rover will stay busy. For the fourth time since Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, the planets’ orbits will put Mars almost directly behind the sun from Earth’s perspective.
During the days surrounding such an alignment, called a solar conjunction, the sun can disrupt radio transmissions between Earth and Mars. To avoid the chance of a command being corrupted by the sun and harming a spacecraft, NASA temporarily refrains from sending commands from Earth to Mars spacecraft in orbit and on the surface. This year, the commanding moratorium will be Jan. 27 to Feb. 11 for Opportunity, with similar periods for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey orbiter.
Downlinks from Mars spacecraft will continue during the conjunction period, though at a much reduced rate. Mars-to-Earth communication does not present risk to spacecraft safety, even if transmissions are corrupted by the sun.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will scale back its observations of Mars during the conjunction period due to reduced capability to download data to Earth and a limit on how much can be stored onboard.
Opportunity will continue sending data daily to the Odyssey orbiter for relay to Earth. “Overall, we expect to receive a smaller volume of daily data from Opportunity and none at all during the deepest four days of conjunction,” said Alfonso Herrera, a rover mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The rover team has developed a set of commands to be sent to Opportunity in advance so that the rover can continue science activities during the command moratorium.
Opportunity and Spirit, which landed three weeks apart, successfully completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004, then began years of bonus extended missions. Both have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit’s most recent communication was on March 22, 2010. On the possibility that Spirit may yet awaken from a low-power hibernation status, NASA engineers continue to listen for a signal from that rover.
Source(s):NASA/JPL Press Release, MER Mission Page
Ray Sanders is a Sci-Fi geek, astronomer and blogger. Currently researching variable stars at Arizona State University, he writes for Universe Today, The Planetary Society blog, and his own blog, Dear Astronomer
2012-12-04 08:05:39
Source: http://www.dearastronomer.com/2011/01/25/happy-seventh-anniversary-oppy/
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