Sols 4162 and 4164, October 9 and 11, 2015. Mission control is directing Opportunity to explore the Marathon Valley floor for clay minerals before going to its winter haven site. That will lie on the valley’s south wall, thus tipping the rover’s panels north for maximum power.
Above: the view eastward on Sol 4164; at right, a false-color Pancam composite (by Holger Isenberg) on Sol 4162, with one grayscale frame. Click either image to enlarge.
After an inconclusive test of the flash memory, mission control is running Opportunity in RAM mode. This means the rover gets its daily orders early, then takes data and images all day and relays them to Earth before shutting down for the night, which erases the RAM contents. Thus any data not uploaded to Mars Odyssey or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter by the end of the day is lost.
Opportunity raw images, its latest mission status, a location map. and atmospheric opacity, known as tau.