Opportunity drove forward into Perseverance. “Since we managed to straighten the left front wheel, it is safe for us to drive forward using the rear wheels to steer,” said Bellutta. In fact, he added, there are two advantages to having the rover drive forward into the valley. “One reason is that the mast is in front of the vehicle; therefore, we have a better view of the terrain nearby,” he said. “When we point the camera toward the back of the vehicle, anything that is closer than about two and a half meters is only visible is using the Hazcams. But when the rover is facing forward, we can use Navcam and Pancam and have the maximum resolution that you can get with this vehicle.”

The other advantage is that if Opportunity should have to exit the valley for any reason, she would actually be in a better position to drive out backwards. Interestingly, the rover has “a slightly better performance” driving uphill backwards, “because it can climb slightly higher slowly,” Bellutta explained. There is no plan to drive out of the valley, but the rover had not yet passed the point of no return, and just in case, he said, “we want to have that option available to us.”

Opportunity’s arrival inside Perseverance Valley is a huge achievement. But there was no time to celebrate in July. “Everybody was really focused on getting to a northerly tilt and then getting the plans in place to keep the rover safe and toasty and enough to make observations over conjunction,” said Arvidson.

And, Bellutta wanted to take another look at the gentle slope on the southern wall of the valley where the team planned to have the rover park for solar conjunction. “We knew not only from orbital imagery and from previous images taken on the surface that we had a good spot to park the vehicle, but we wanted to recheck that from a different vantage point,” he explained.

Barely inside Perseverance, Opportunity snapped and delivered more images of the chosen knoll. The spot looked just as good from the new vantage point and it was all systems go. And so on Sol 4782 (July 7, 2017) — the 14th anniversary of her launch from Cape Canaveral — the rover that loves to rove put another 13.8 meters (45.27 feet) in the rear view mirror, cruising right up onto the gentle slope. And then she put it in park.

During the previous several weeks, MER Power Team Lead Jennifer Herman had crunched all the numbers and requested that Opportunity settle in for conjunction on a slope of at least 5 degrees to ensure there would be no issues with energy during conjunction. “She wanted at least 5 degrees but 10 degrees would be better,” Bellutta said with a smile. “We try to please Jennifer when we can.”

When the telemetry came down, Opportunity had pushed her odometer to 44.97 kilometers (27.94 miles) and was parked at 9.4-degrees on the knoll, her solar arrays angled toward the Sun. “That is what we wanted and so we were happy,” said Bellutta.

With that, the robot field geologist was in place for conjunction and ready to ride Mars behind the Sun. “We parked early and said, ‘we’re here and don’t want to move,’” said Arvidson. But the robot had about a week and half or so to do some science and look around before the moratorium began. “We were fortunate to have a little bit of broken outcrop under the IDD [Instrument Deployment Device] when we stopped,” said Golombek. “We think the rock is Shoemaker, but we still have some more imaging and analysis to know for sure.”

Opportunity took a well-deserved break on Sol 4783 (July 8, 2017) to recharge and prepare for her next assignments. She woke up late in the evening on Sol 4784 (July 9, 2017) to link up with MAVEN. As long as she was awake, the robot looked to the night sky and took some pictures of the stars, and then measured the argon in the atmosphere with her Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS).

“The science team is overjoyed of course that the wheel is fixed and very happy that we’re getting on with things,” Golombek said then.