Martian dune buggies, the MER's arn't (with video)

[Jon P. Inghram]

After having sat on top of a little dune for a while now Opportunity has finally spun it's wheels and moved a tiny bit:

112 kB .avi showing the rover virtually leaping across the martian landscape.

Opportunity rotated its wheels on sol 463 for the first time since the rover dug itself into a sand dune more than two weeks earlier. The wheels made about two and a half rotations, as commanded, and the results were a good match for what was expected from tests on Earth. In the loose footing, the rover advanced 2.8 centimeters (1.1 inch) forward, 4.8 millimeters (0.19 inch) sideways and 4.6 millimeters (0.18 inch) downward. After further analysis of the results, the rover team will decide whether to repeat the same careful movement again on sol 465. Meanwhile Opportunity's main tasks for sol 464 were remote-sensing observations.