Opportunity is halfway down in "Perseverance Valley" on the west rim of Endeavour Crater.

The science team is pursuing several hypotheses as to the origin of the valley. The rover is still positioned near some tabular rocks that are the subject of an in-situ (contact) investigation. Over several days (sols), the Panoramic Camera (Pancam) has been employed to collect extensive imagery of various targets with wide, multi-color panoramas and targeted 13-filter images.

On Sol 5094 (May 23, 2018), the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) collected measurements of rock chemistry from the current target set, referred to as "La Joya." On Sol 5097 (May 26, 2018), the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the end of the robotic arm (IDD) was used to brush the surface target "La Joya 1."

On the next sol, the IDD was to use the Microscopic Imager (MI) to collect a close-in mosaic of the brushed spot. However, the arm movement stopped prematurely because the rover's software thought the rover had moved. The software incorrectly estimated a 360-degree rotation of the rover, a meaningless change from -180 degrees of yaw to 180 degrees of yaw (the same position).

This is a known idiosyncrasy of the software that emerges whenever the rover is oriented with a yaw near 180 degrees (or, equivalently -180 degrees). The rover is otherwise healthy and the plan moving forward is to disable this motion check whenever the rover is near 180 and it is safe to do so.

As of Sol 5100 (May , 2018), the solar array energy production was 652 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.640 and a solar array dust factor of 0.772.

Total odometry is 28.06 miles (45.16 kilometers).

Related Links
Opportunity Archive
Mars News and Information at MarsDaily.com
Lunar Dreams and more

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Opportunity Mars rover ready to study rock targets up close
Moscow (Sputnik) May 31, 2018
Opportunity is halfway down in "Perseverance Valley" on the west rim of Endeavour Crater, pursuing hypotheses as to the origin of the valley. The rover is still positioned near some tabular rocks that are the subject of an in-situ (contact) investigation. On Sol 5087 (May 16, 2018), the robotic arm (IDD) performed a "salute" to move it out of the way of the cameras so the Panoramic Camera (Pancam) could take a 13-filter targeted image of the tabular rock target named, "La Joya." More 13-filt ... read more