Opportunity woke up to 2018 with 45.08 kilometers (28.01 miles) on her odometer and spent New Year’s Day Sol 4956 (January 1, 2018), recharging, just like many of her human colleagues on Earth.
Although the winter solstice came and went last November, winter still rules at Endeavour. The rover was producing a decent 420 watt-hours of power with a solar array dust factor of 0.663, meaning she was utilizing about 66% of the sunlight hitting her solar arrays. Overhead, the skies were slightly hazy with atmospheric opacity or Tau gauged to be around 0.483, about normal for winter.
Parked just ‘upstream’ of a fork in the primary trough or channel in Perseverance, Opportunity was waiting for her human colleagues to decide which fork she would take. The south fork featured some unusual looking rocks that were textured and streaked and within easy reach. The north fork offered a richer bounty of geological features, including more of the intriguingly textured outcrops. “But every rock we see is of interest to somebody,” reminded Arvidson.
As Opportunity took images of one of those intriguingly textured outcrops on the north edge of the north fork, the team named San Miguel and came to a decision. On Sol 4958 (January 3, 2018), the robot put it into gear and drove just 4 meters (13.12 feet) down the uncharted path of the north fork. “When we encounter one of these rocks that we can approach relatively easily, we’ll likely do APXS and MI, but in the meantime, the rover is focusing mainly Pancam and Navcam imaging to characterize the colors the spectra and the morphology and the topography of the valley from this site,” Arvidson said.
The robot geologist spent most of the rest of the first week in January taking images, though on Sol 4961 (January 6, 2018) used her Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) to check out a target of opportunity within reach.
