ASHITEY TREBI-OLLENNU: And with blind drive, the way we count progress is the number of wheel turns.
ROB MANNING: So, the wheels had turned on the drive, but to our shock, Oppy hadn’t moved at all.
ILM SFX ANIMATION: MCU: of Oppy (solar panels and head)
from slightly lower angle: Oppy looks confident as she treks along. She moves lower in the frame, it appears as if she’s moving downhill. ILM SFX ANIMATION: Reveal of Oppy: We see now that she’s stuck in the sand. PRODUCTION ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE: JPL Mission Control: “Point to exactly where it got stuck. It literally didn’t make much more progress after about this point. But the rover thought it was executing its plan as though it were all the way down here.” VANDI VERMA: So, the entire day, Opportunity was just spinning its wheels in place, and was digging itself deeper and deeper and deeper.
GFX 2D TIMELAPSE: Oppy’s wheels stuck in the sand.
GFX ROVER MESSAGE: NASA: STOP DRIVING.
GFX ROVER MESSAGE: OPPY: OKAY. OPPY: DRIVE STOPPED.
DOUG ELLISON: There’s no book that’s, “Chapter four, extracting Mars rovers from sand dunes.” And so we built a copy of the sand dune at JPL, stuck a rover in it. ASHITEY TREBI-OLLENNU: From an engineering perspective, it was exciting because we like a challenge. It was almost like quicksand. And we spent six weeks trying to learn how to extricate Opportunity.
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