Mark Adler

State from Sol 10:

• The spacecraft is in good health. All activities are allowed. After consultation with the spacecraft team, the mission manager decided that both arm and mast deploys and restows will be permitted before approach, with an (allegedly) very small risk of not performing the approach due to a failure to restow. Rover is 206 cm from "flat" portion of Kaibab that will be IDD target.

Sol 11 is an Approach Sol:

• The key activity is the approach to 105 cm from target, with a traverse distance of 101 cm. The choice was made based on considerations of the rocky terrain, an uphill traverse, and the closest and farthest arm workspace ranges. The choice was exactly halfway on the arm workspace. Hazcam was sequenced at the end and at about halfway through the traverse at 156 cm from target. A sequenced Pancam mosaic covers the potential target area and context. The rover approach direction was chosen to be assure safety relative to Kaibab's overhang.
• We may need to do another approach on Sol 12. However, if this approach on Sol 11 allows IDD on Sol 12, then we will want to do a long traverse to Bonnevile on Sol 13, of about 25m. To support that possibility, we sequenced the Navcam on Sol 11 that is required to support the long traverse to Bonneville, and that data will be sent on UHF since that will be soon enough for a Sol 13 traverse, and preserved the precious Sol 11 DTE. We cannot wait until Sol 12 for this due to very limited DTE (34m) on Sol 12.

Sequence Development:

• We completed a rather complex sequence design, validation, and approval with a comfortable eight minutes to spare. We almost exactly filled both FIDO time and DTE. Furthermore we very nearly filled UHF. Aside from a comment below on the content of one of the science observations, this was a nearly perfect sequence development in terms of resource utilization and sequence development time.
• New activity: this is the first touch and go, where an IDD operation is immediately followed by traverse. An arm contingency is in place to diagnose an abort due to an arm failure, such as a failure to stow. There is no safety concern, since the traverse will be aborted if there is a problem. As was mentioned, the mission manager accepted that risk of an aborted traverse before the SOWG.

Sol 12 Considerations:

• Most importantly, determine if the work volume of IDD supports target operations on Sol 12, or if Sol 12 needs to be another approach day. Make sure enough data products available to support both engineering and science selection of the IDD target. Determine the availability of the Bonneville traverse Navcam on UHF. Do not leave Kaibab on Sol 12—this is a high priority science target, and so we need to assure that IDD placement was successful in Sol 12 DTE before departing, no earlier than Sol 13.

Comments:

• One science request was not correctly recorded during SOWG, and we instead implemented different version of the observation. This resulted in too many resources being applied to that observation that could have been used to do an atmospheric observation that had to be dropped. The SOWG chair must record and read back the decided upon observations for confirmation.
• We should note where we actually end up on the approach to adjust expectation for future approaches. I wonder whether halfway is the right choice, since there is probably a bias one way or the other based on the terrain characteristics.
• We have only gone a little over 38m so far. 200m mission success will not be met without very aggressive driving after Bonneville. We will need to define a long traverse over terrain so flat and obstacle free that we can safely turn off hazard avoidance. (This is probably a note for me on Sols 15-18.)
• We should change the FIDO timeline to document how this seems to be really working:

Is:

• 15 minute Sequencing Team Meeting
• 60 minute Build and Validate Sequence
• 15 minute Review and Approve Sequence

Should be:

• 70 minute Sequence Design
• 10 minute Sequence Validation
• 10 minute Sequence Approval

In addition, another 30 minutes of meetings follow at least the morning uplink at 10:30 am:

• SOWG debrief to summarize what they did and didn't get in the sequence development
• Selection of PIO image or other releases, and assignment to science team for creation and story writing
• Squyres debrief on science team performance and recommendations

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