Jennifer Trosper

State from Sol 20:

• The rover is in good health and all subsystems are performing nominally with one exception. We appear to be traversing at a slower rate than expected due to some degradation of the motors. A traverse factor increase will be used in the modelling lenthen the traverse estimates to more accurate durations.
• The trenching and driving activities from the previous sol were successful.
• This is a 70m antenna Sol. The operation time is 80 minutes. DTE this Sol is 9.06 megabits, UHF is 49.1 megabits.

Sol 21 is a long traverse sol:

• This sol is long traverse sol. The main objective is to drive as directly as possible to the target At End Game which is near Camelback.

Sequence Development:

• During the sequence development time, the engineering team was working different solutions in order to accommodate the science team's desire for a studder-step at the end of the long traverse. Ashitey came up with a plan that seemed to be workable but, due to time and data constraints it was not implemented on this sol.

Following is a summary of the sequenced activities:

• Drive 38.26 m
• Front and rear hazcams
• Navcam Mosaic (120 degrees)
• Mini-TES and Aerosol observations

The time and data volume constraints prohibited most science except for the drive. Many requested activities were descoped or deleted during the sequencing meeting.

Sequence Approval:

Resources:

• Time within allocation
• DTE bandwidth within allocation
• UHF bandwidth within allocation
• Power - not modeled
• Thermal - not modeled
• No flight rules or constraints were violated
• No low level commands were used in the sequence
• No discussion of command loss or low power fault protection issues.

Sol 22 Considerations:

• The purpose of Sol 21 to traverse towards Camelback. The desire is to find a black rock on which to do spectroscopy.

Cumulative Comments:

• It is important for the theme groups to sequence their requested observations, and in particular they should sequence their highest priority observations first. On Sol 15, the highest priority Pancam was not sequenced by the theme group, but the second and third were.
• Given extra time during sequence development, it is worthwhile to review the science priorities as well as to review, in sequence order, the visualizations of the image and remote spectroscopy requests.
• The modeling for IPS points needs to be updated. Ground testing should be performed to determine the duration of IPS measurements as a function of coadds. In addition, the modeling for Navcam images needs to be updated, since they appear to take up twice as much space in the resource modeling as they should at 16:1 image compression after a 12:8 pixel compression.
• The tools do not provide a means to determine the actual length of planned traverse segments. Furthermore, there are no good estimates with uncertainty of the meters per minute that the rover (with hazard avoidance on) can traverse as a function of the terrain type. Finally, there is limited information on the dead reckoning capability of the rover on gyros with respect to heading errors. Overall, there was no way to estimate the traverse duration or error based on the traverse design and terrain expectations, other than the experience of spacecraft team eyeballing the situation. This would not be acceptable in a real mission.
• We need to request a change control board to adjust the Hazcam data volume in the command dictionary from 2.1 to 1.05 Mbits.
• Clarification from PI: we have a mission success location if a) use two out of three in situ instruments, and b) the PI is willing to advocate that the science is new and different enough to make it a location.
• We need a ruling from the test director on whether we need Hazcam from one meter back and Hazcam at the current location in order to perform an arm operation. This may be affected by FIDO's ability to implement a stop one meter short after a long traverse. If not, we may not ever be able to do targets of opportunity after a long traverse.
• Before this Sol, we are at 2 out of 3 locations, zero trenches, and approximately 142 meters. After this Sol, we should have a trench (and another few meters). On Sol 19, we should be able to IDD the trench, which would provide the third mission success location. If that all works out, then all we need to do for mission success is drive another 60 meters. That could easily be done in two Sols, and more than that has been done in one Sol. There are eight Sols left.
• This was this mission manager's last Sol in this test. It has been a pleasure to work with the team. Good luck for the remainder of the test.

Special Notes:

• Starting on Sol 16 and on all subsequent sols, the afternoon sol will begin at 12:15 PM with all subsequent events shifting later by 15 minutes.
• Updated sequence development schedule starting at 0900 and 1415:
• 70 minute Sequence Design
• 10 minute Sequence Validation
• 10 minute Sequence Approval

We have a test director flight rule to not use approach moves (hazard avoidance off) for total moves of more than three meters.

Back to top