Opportunity Update: Sols 1492-1494

Opportunity is still making her laborious way over to Cape Verde. This weekend we had a drive planned, but the wheels slipped too much in the loose sand that we’re driving on, so just to be safe, the drive was cut short. The good news is that this week Opportunity will be driving every day, so we should make better time.

More good news is that we got some pretty pictures down over the weekend. First and foremost, the full-res frames of the false color mosaic of Cape Verde finally came down. Check it out (click for full-res):

We also got some nice false color images of the “scuff” marks that the wheels made in the sand last week. These pictures are really useful in determining the physical properties of the soil, which is interesting both from the scientific perspective of understanding what soil on Mars is like and the engineering perspective of “how do we drive on this stuff?”

And finally, we got a “drive direction” pair of images, showing our destination at the base of the cliff:

I won’t be on rover duty for another few weeks, so rover updates will be less frequent until then. I’ll try to keep an eye out for anything really spectacular though. Meanwhile, I have a series of posts about Life on Mars planned… Stay tuned!

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