The goal of this kind of testing is to be "conservative"... to test under conditions that are at least as bad as - and preferably worse than - what you're dealing with in reality.

You can see pictures of one of the test setups on the JPL MER web site, though the pictures don't really do justice to all the work that was done, or to all the different kinds of tests that were run.

Then, once we'd done the testing, we brought in a panel of experts from outside the project to give us an independent review of whether we'd done things right or not. Like conservative testing, outside reviews are standard operating procedure in the space biz.

So soon it'll be time to put what we've learned into action on Mars. We've learned quite a bit, and one of the things that we've learned is that it can take a lot of wheel turns to move the rover from a configuration like the one we're in.

And while it's tempting to go for it all in one shot, the smart approach is to be cautious about it and do the job in small steps. So that's what we're going to do.

And here's something to keep in mind: The early steps in the extraction process don't look like much. The wheels turn and turn, and even though you're making crucial progress, moving soil bit by bit beneath the wheels, the rover itself hardly moves... sometimes for quite awhile.

So when we do begin the extraction process and you see lots of evidence for wheels turning on Mars but not much movement by Opportunity, don't worry... that's exactly what we're expecting. Like the testing, this is going to take awhile.

Over at Gusev, we've finished up our work on Methuselah and done a nifty, complicated little one-sol drive over to a close standoff distance from Jibsheet.

The purpose of the standoff is to let us take some good Pancam images over the weekend to plan our attack, just like we did a couple of weeks ago with Methuselah. (And, in the meantime, it also lets us do some IDD work on soil, which we haven't done in quite awhile.)

After that, we'll see what we see. Jibsheet is a much tougher target than Methuselah was... tall, rugged, and with a steep and slippery-looking sand slope below it. The Monday morning Spirit SOWG meeting will be an interesting one.

Related Links
Mars Rovers at JPL
Mars Rovers at Cornell
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