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Opportunity
built 647 days ago
Opportunity International is committed to solving global poverty. Serving over one million poor entrepreneurs in 28 developing countries, Opportunity International is a pioneer in offering small business loans, savings, insurance and training in basic business practices to women and men living in chronic poverty. Founded in 1971 as one of the first microcredit lenders, Opportunity International provides small loans - sometimes as little as $50 - and other services that allow poor entrepreneurs to start or expand a business, develop a steady income, provide for their families and create jobs for their neighbors. Opportunity International is motivated by Jesus Christ's call to serve the poor and maintains a network of offices across the globe, with U.S. offices in Oak Brook, Ill. and San Diego. For more information, visit http://www.opportunity.org/.
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Opportunity made the curving, 15.8-meter (52-foot) drive during its 1,160th Martian day, or sol (April 29, 2007). It was testing a navigational capability called "Field D-star," which enables the rover to plan optimal long-range drives around any obstacles in order to travel the most direct safe route to the drive's designated destination. Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, did not have this capability until the third year after their January 2004 landings on Mars. Earlier, they could recognize hazards when they approached them closely, then back away and try another angle, but could not always find a safe route away from hazards. Field D-Star and several other upgrades were part of new onboard software uploaded from Earth in 2006. The Sol 1,160 drive by Opportunity was a Martian field test of Field D-Star and ... used several other features of autonomy, including visual odometry to track the rover's actual position after each segment of the drive, avoidance of designated keep-out zones, and combining information from two sets of stereo images to consider a wide swath of terrain in analyzing the route.
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Opportunity cost contrasts to accounting cost in that accounting costs do not consider forgone opportunities. Consider the case of an MBA student who pays $30,000 per year in tuition and fees at a private university. For a two-year MBA program, the cost of tuition and fees would be $60,000. This is the monetary cost of the education. However, when making the decision to go back to school, one should consider the opportunity cost, which includes the income that the student would have earned if the alternative decision of remaining in his or her job had been made. If the student had been earning $50,000 per year and was expecting a 10% salary increase in one year, $105,000 in salary would be foregone as a result of the decision to return to school.
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The primary surface mission for Opportunity was planned to last 90 sols. The mission has received several extensions and as of November 17, 2006 had passed 1,000 sols. From her initial landing, by chance, into an impact crater amidst an otherwise generally flat plain, Opportunity has successfully investigated soil and rock samples and taken panoramic photos of her landing site. Her sampling allowed NASA scientists to make hypotheses concerning the presence of hematite and past presence of water on the surface of Mars.
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Opportunity International's increasingly vast reach can be attributed to its comprehensive approach to microfinance. Currently, the organization has more than one million active loan clients, 85 percent of whom are women. These clients on average have five financial dependents (children, relatives and adopted orphans) and its research shows that for every two loans made, one new job is created.
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On sol 628 (November 3, 2005) Opportunity woke up in the midst of a mild dust storm that lasted three days. The rover was able to drive in self protective auto-mode during the storm but could not take any post drive images. Less than three weeks later, another cleaning event cleared the dust off of the solar array so as to produce around 720 watt-hours (80% of max). On sol 649 (December 1, 2005), it was discovered the motor used to stow the robotic arm for travel was stalling. This problem took nearly two weeks to fix. Since then, the arm is only stowed for travel and is extended at night to save the arm from getting stuck.
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