Opportunity Puts The Arm On Ted

The arm's position can be manipulated for full use of all the tools on the arm despite symptoms that suggest a broken wire in the winding of a shoulder-joint motor of the arm. The choice of a new position for carrying the arm during drives is a precaution against having the arm stuck in a stowed position if that motor becomes unusable in the future.

Opportunity's recent activities have included imaging of Jupiter, observing the atmosphere on every sol, progress on a multi-filter panorama of "Erebus Crater," and long integrations with the Moessbauer spectrometer and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on targets "Ted" and "Hunt."

Sol-by-sol summaries

Sols 681 to 683 (Dec. 23 to Dec. 25, 2005): Moessbauer spectrometer integration on - Ted, panoramic camera observations and atmospheric observations.

Sol 684: Post-brush microscopic image of Ted and Moessbauer integration on Ted.

Sol 685: Moessbauer integration on Ted and panoramic camera images of targets "Claypool," "Paulden" and "Vernon".

Sol 686: Arm move to Hunt plus microscopic image of Hunt and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer integration.

Sols 687 to 690: Moessbauer integration on Hunt and remote sensing.

Sol 691: Rock abrasion tool grind of Ted, post-grind microscopic imaging of Ted, and Moessbauer integration on Ted.

Sols 692 to 694 (Jan. 3 to Jan. 5, 2006): Continued Moessbauer integration on Ted and more images for the Erebus panorama.

Copyright 2006 by Space Daily, Distributed United Press International