The Space Stuff thread

"If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the Sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover," said Callas.

"At that point our active phase of reaching out to Opportunity will be at an end.

"However, in the unlikely chance that there is a large amount of dust sitting on the solar arrays that is blocking the Sun's energy, we will continue passive listening efforts for several months".

But not everyone agrees with this plan. The former Opportunity flight director Mike Seibert has called the strategy "100% Grade A B.S." on Twitter.

100% Grade A B.S. the amount of time given to recover Opportunity is woefully insufficient. Whomever made this decision is a coward. NASA JPL on Twitter:
— Mike Seibert (@mikeseibert) August 30, 2018

Source of both Quotes

As for the 45day countdown it hasn't "officially" started yet because of a difference of opinion on Tau which is a measurement of the haziness of the skies on Mars see lowest quote, but NASA wants to forget about Opportunity by the end of this year; Sept. 7th 2018 to Dec. 31st 2018 = 116 days away. The team wants to keep actively listening until Nov. 2019.

• Actively: Means sending a signal to Opportunity and then wait for a response.
• Passive: Means the team is not allowed to use the resources at JPL to send a signal, all they can do is passively listen and wait for Opportunity to work out its problems and send a signal on its own.

It is easy to see why the team and former team members are upset, when a Tool that was to only last 90days but survives for 14years is given the heave ho under "new rules" something stinks and I have to agree with Mike Seibert see twitter quote below for source:

Someone in the MER Project, Mars Program or elsewhere has to be trying to kill the mission for non-technical reasons.

The source of this next quote may be easier to read here: NASA to soon start 45-day campaign to revive the Opportunity Mars rover Make sure to check out the twitter links by Mike Seibert and Scott Maxwell this is not a happy camp.

In an Aug. 30 statement, NASA said it would begin a 45-day campaign of active efforts to restore communications with Opportunity once skies above the rover cleared to a sufficient level. The rover has been out of contact since early June, when a major dust storm deprived the rover of solar power.

That dust storm, which at one point encircled the planet, is fading. “The dust haze produced by the Martian global dust storm of 2018 is one of the most extensive on record, but all indications are it is finally coming to a close,” said Rich Zurek, project scientist for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been monitoring the storm. Zurek said in the statement that there had been no signs of dust storms within 3,000 kilometers of Opportunity “for some time.”

In the statement, NASA said that once the skies above Opportunity clear to a sufficient degree, it will begin a communications campaign to restore contact with the rover by sending commands to it. “Assuming that we hear back from Opportunity, we will begin the process of discerning its status and bringing it back online,” John Callas, Opportunity project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.

That effort will begin once the optical depth, a measure of the haziness of the skies, drops below 1.5. That optical depth, also known as tau, is typically around 0.5 under normal conditions. At the time contact was lost with Opportunity in early June, tau has risen to 10.8, a record high value that indicated that the sun was almost completely obscured by the dust storm.

In its statement, NASA did not publish an updated value of tau. In a mid-August update, JPL stated that tau had dropped to 2.1, then rose again to 2.5. In subsequent Opportunity mission updates, JPL said that tau was decreasing, but did not give a specific figure.

The announcement, though, attracted criticism because it limited the active part of the recovery to 45 days. “You have to be kidding me. 45 days after a Tau of 1.5. This can’t be based on any real analysis of the situation,” tweeted Mike Seibert, a former flight director and rover driver for Opportunity who is no longer at JPL. He said that JPL attempted “active listening” of Spirit, the twin of Opportunity, for 10 months in 2010 and 2011 when that rover stopped transmitting before giving up.

From Twitter:
You have to be kidding me. 45 days after a Tau of 1.5. This can't be based on any real analysis of the situation.

Someone in the MER Project, Mars Program or elsewhere has to be trying to kill the mission for non-technical reasons.#SaveOppy #WakeUpOppyhttps://t.co/Zill7w0Gmx

— Mike Seibert (@mikeseibert) August 30, 2018

“I’ll be blunt: 45 days is absurdly short, and certainly arbitrary,” Scott Maxwell, another former Opportunity rover driver, said. Starting those efforts while tau was still as high as 1.5 is “not nearly as generous as our trusty, faithful, brave Opportunity deserves,” arguing that the project should wait until tau drops to around 0.7.

From Twitter:

I'll be blunt: 45 days is absurdly short, and certainly arbitrary. And starting the clock from when tau (atmospheric opacity) reaches 1.5 is … let's say it's not nearly as generous as our trusty, faithful, brave Opportunity deserves. (Tau ~ 0.7 — half that — more reasonable.) Emily Lakdawalla on Twitter:

— Scott Maxwell (@marsroverdriver) August 31, 2018

Those currently working on the Opportunity mission are also disappointed and surprised by the 45-day limit to listening efforts, according to project sources not authorized to speak on the record.

Callas, in the statement, argued that if Opportunity did not respond to communications attempts after that 45-day campaign, it likely meant the spacecraft had suffered a mission-ending malfunction. “If we do not hear back after 45 days, the team will be forced to conclude that the sun-blocking dust and the Martian cold have conspired to cause some type of fault from which the rover will more than likely not recover,” he said.

“The 45-day active listening period was decided based on input from across the team,” JPL spokesman DC Agle said Aug. 31. “The 45-day period, which has not started yet, is meant to span the most likely time to hear from the rover; that is, when the skies clear and there is the most amount of sunlight.”

I better stop here because I don't want this to turn into a rant. "Input from across the team"? I guess the spokesman and his team didn't want to "Listen".


Clear Skies for Opportunity! Remember, I'm pulling for ya. We're all in this together! Red Green

I agree.

Thanks for the heads up Cliff I'll try to spot it, I don't believe my chances would be too bad with a +7magnitude.
But, we have the remnants of Gordon tomorrow with up to 4" of rain and then Florence around the 12th-13th the NWS is hinting of doubling or tripling that 4" I don't hold much hope