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Several Drives Push Opportunity Over 41-Kilometer Mark

by Staff Writers Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 19, 2014 JPL

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater heading towards "Marathon Valley," a putative location for abundant clay minerals about a mile (1.4 kilometers) to the south.

The rover has begun to pick up the pace. Sol 3836 (Nov. 8, 2014), was the first sol of a 2-sol "Touch 'n Go" using the robotic arm to gather information of a target of opportunity within the arm work volume from the last drive.

Opportunity collected a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic of the surface soil target, called "Rock Creek," then placed the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on the same for a multi-hour integration. On the next sol, the rover drove about 226 feet (69 meters) to the south, passing 25.48 miles (41 kilometers) of odometry.

On Sol 3839 (Nov. 11, 2014), Opportunity continued the fast-pace push to the south with over 371 feet (113 meters) of driving.

The first portion was driven blind with the final part using guarded (autonomous) motion. Both drives involved collecting pre-drive targeted imaging and post-drive panoramas. An atmospheric argon measurement with the APXS was performed on Sol 3835 (Nov. 7, 2014). The rover is in good health.

As of Sol 3839 (Nov. 11, 2014), the solar array energy production was 516 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 1.474 and a solar array dust factor of 0.713.

Total odometry is 25.56 miles (41.14 kilometers).

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