Space Topics: Mars Exploration Rovers
The Year in Pictures: 2005
Opportunity Rover Is Becalmed in a Sea of Dust
The full resolution panorama is available at JPL's
website.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell |
May 14. On April 26, Opportunity
was traveling at high speed across the dune-strewn Meridiani Planum when
something unexpected happened: although
the wheels continued spinning, all forward progress stopped. As the wheels
continued to spin, the only effect was to dig the rover deeper into the soft
trough of the dune. Opportunity
stayed in place for 5 weeks while rover drivers performed extensive research
on Earth using the engineering model of the rover and analog soil materials
to find the optimal method to extricate Opportunity from the ripple that came
to be known as "Purgatory Dune." During that time, Opportunity
captured this panorama, called "Rub al Khali" after the empty quarter
of the Saudi Arabian desert. All that can be seen for 360 degrees is
dunes, dunes, and more dunes, punctuated only by Opportunity's tracks disappearing
to the horizon.
Escape from Purgatory Dune
A week after escaping from its five-week imprisonment in Purgatory Dune, Opportunity looked back at the spot where it had sunk up to its hubcaps in soft soil.
Credit: NASA / JPL
|
Finally, the rover drivers determined that the best exit
strategy was to "put it in reverse and gun it," as Mars Exploration
Rover Principal Investigator Steve Squyres described it. The
rover's wheels turned through 192 meters' worth of revolutions before they
found purchase enough to back out by 1 meter. After performing more analyses on Purgatory
Dune in the hopes of finding identifying characteristics that could help the
rover drivers avoid a future mistake, Opportunity was on its way again toward
Erebus crater.
|
[ what is this? ]