At the end of the sol, the rover succeeded in putting 14.13 meters (about 46.35 feet) of the planned 18 meters, in the rear view mirror, bringing her total odometry up to 44,871.13 meters (44.87 kilometers or 27.88 miles). All things considered, Opportunity is still the ultimate trooper rover and still willing to keep on keepin’ on. “Unfortunately we have limited telemetry that reports how the front struts are coping with the added stress of tank turns, but so far so good,” said Bellutta. What this all means is that so far on good terrain, the driving capability is not too bad. Rocky or sandy terrain might be a different thing.” Time will tell.

Even though the driving was good, the team faced yet another challenge as Opportunity tried to drive north from station 3 to station 4. “As we drive to the north, given the fall season, the difficulty is that the times in which the vehicle is awake and has the energy to drive, we’re looking directly into the Sun,” said Arvidson. “So we’re getting a lot of glare on the Hazcams and Pancam images as we shoot to the north.

On Sol 4767 (June 21, 2017), the team adjusted and Opportunity headed a little more “westerly” to try and ensure that the drive images would not be totally washed out as a result of driving into the late afternoon Sun,” said Nelson. Using tank steering only – which does not require the use of the steering actuators but rather differentially runs the wheels on either side of the rover – the robot drove 14.04 meters (46.06 feet) and closed in on the chosen area the scientists had chosen at station 4, Then, as usual, she took the usual end of drive images that, thankfully, are less washed out.

After spending Sol 4768 (June 22, 2017) taking images because of due a lack of RP support, Opportunity drove another 10.07 meters (33.03 feet) on Sol 4769 (June 23, 2017), employing "tank steering," just like the previous drive. She stopped on the edge of the channel or trough at station 4. There, the robot took images with her Navcam and Pancam, documenting the southern wall of Perseverance Valley.

“The southern and northern walls are minor walls, but there is still some relief and still some rocks outcropping,” said Arvidson. “We’re looking to see what’s on the walls, what kind of rocks are there and have they been transported or are they weathered dikes – or whatever.”

On Sol 4772 (June 26, 2017) Opportunity drove 8.1 meters to the center of the channel, “where we look back at the wall on the southern margin of the valley and image that wall and the floor of this putative channel,” said Arvidson. This time, she used her rear steering actuators to perform a gentle arc and finished the drive with a turn-in-place that toes-in both rear wheels.

The following sol, the rover drove inside the large channel or trough and put another 12.15 meters (39.86 feet) in the rear view mirror, stopping at a position just in front of the north wall, not quite to station 5. That same sol, Opportunity worked with the MER engineers trying to see if she could straighten her right front wheel, the wheel that has been stuck inward about 8 degrees since Sol 433 (April 12, 2005) when it jammed during an end-of-drive turn after a long 151-meter (495-foot) drive southward from Voyager Crater.

“Who knows? After dragging and pushing the stuck right front wheel over rocks and sand, uphill and down, maybe whatever jammed the steering in 2005 has finally been dislodged,” said Nelson. “So we're going to try some small wheel wiggles just to see if anything has changed. If the wheel could be straightened, of course, it would be easier to drive, and more accurately, too, without the constant unpredictable yaw from an angled wheel."

“Why not?” agreed Squyres. “The right front steering actuator has not gone through a whole lot of an insanely large number of turns, however it still has gone through 4700 thermal cycles – hot-cold, hot-cold, hot-cold – thousands of times. And all of the actuators and everything on the vehicle have been through that,” he said. “We could lose other parts of at any time. But this rover has surprised us so many times, I don’t what it’s capable of at this point.”

When all was said and wiggled, “[t]he wheel seems to have moved about 0.1 degree, but we are still confirming this,” said Bellutta. The team will try it again in coming sols.

Opportunity drove up to station 5 on Sol 4774 (June 28, 2017), the final stop on her walkabout. There, at the northern wall of the possible channel, the robot field geologist took the routine end of drive images with her Navcam and Pancam. She continued her next imaging assignment and ended up shooting out of June. “We want to image the north wall of this shallow depression for a nice mosaic,” said Fraeman.