A note to all you Opportunity fans: Get used to the current scenery, because we're going to be here awhile.
We are very optimistic that we'll be able to get out of here, but we're really going to take our time doing it. The first rule in a situation like this is "do no harm", which means that you don't rush anything.
We're going to take lots of pictures of all the terrain around the vehicle, to get a very complete picture of the situation. We're going to do lots of testing with the rovers that we have on the ground to simulate the situation on Mars.
This testing will be aimed not just at finding a plan that will work, but at finding the very best plan that will work. We may try quite a few small maneuvers with Opportunity that aren't intended to do anything other then help us gather more information… perhaps followed by even more testing.
All of this is going to take a lot of time. But this is a very precious vehicle up there, in excellent health, and there's no reason to rush anything.
I'll try to provide updates as the process moves forward, but the main message for now is to be very, very patient. No apparent progress in the images doesn't mean anything other than that we're being very careful to do our jobs right.
earlier report
