May 3, 2017: Opportunity closes in on Perseverance Valley: Opportunity spent the month of April 2017 outside the western rim of Endeavour Crater, cruising toward Cape Byron and Perseverance Valley, the centerpiece of the Mars Explorations Rovers (MER) tenth extended mission.
The veteran robot field geologist worked hard to pick up the pace during the last month, logging 10 drives and covering about a quarter of a mile. “We are now within striking distance of Perseverance Valley,” said MER Project Manager John Callas, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), at April’s end. (…)
“There is a building excitement,” said MER Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson, of Washington University St. Louis. “It won’t be long now before we will be looking into Perseverance Valley.”
After being confined to roving around in relatively small areas compared to the open expanse of the Meridiani Plains that she spent so many years crossing, Opportunity and her drivers finally had the chance in April to put pedal to the metal and just drive. “We’ve been making astonishing progress,” said MER Rover Planner Ashley Stroupe, of JPL, the birthplace of all NASA’s Mars rovers. “We’ve been on much smoother terrain and it’s been much easier to drive.”
In fact, on one drive Opportunity sprinted for more than 130 meters (about 430 feet) in a dash the likes of which she hadn’t done probably since leaving Cape York about four years ago. It made drivers on Curiosity duty, well, a little envious.
“It was a heck of a drive,” said MER Lead Flight Director Mike Seibert, of JPL, who split driving shifts that day with MER Rover Planner Paolo Bellutta, the rover robotics expert who has charted Opportunity’s routes since Victoria Crater. “The driving has been going incredibly well,” he concluded.
Averaging two to three drives each week, Opportunity, by all accounts, made impressive progress to Perseverance Valley while also taking care of the other routine business of roving Mars, and packing in a few science investigations along the way. One outcrop puzzled the science team, being, as it turned out, bedrock with a somewhat familiar composition, but one that did not neatly match any strata the mission has found so far. “Mars still surprises us,” said Arvidson. [More at link]