The odd thing is, images from Opportunity are updated daily, Spirit seems to get left behind.

The outcrop surface looks like that this was a bottom of a lake which was drained and left dry it for long a time, the land start to crack due to dry land and later it is covered by sands. One interesting is that there is a direction of crack, It seems that the water has flown on a constant direction during its draining process.

About minicraters, I don't think so. Under the minicraters, must have some kind of big fisures where the sand sinks.

Rodolfo.

Well run on over to the Spirit pages! They got stuff up thru Sol 574 now. Hills, plains, dust devils, movement, the works.

A panoramic view on Sol 553.

Taken with the L2 Pancam.

jvandriel

Mmm, interesting...

Usually they take a set of pancam pics in the direction they plan the next movement. However, all pics taken on sol 553 are to the left (east) --- looking to the Erebus Highway --- instead of straight-ahead (south).

Let's see what happens.

Jvandriel, I combined the last two panoramas you made in this vertical projection (10cm/pixel):
Click to view attachment
From comparison with satellite image, it seems that bright, central part of highway is hidden, probably due to high dunes and depressed level of outcrops making it...
Click to view attachment

Came to the same conclusion too.

Even outcrops that were fully seen on previous panoramas are now partially hidden due to the nearby dunes.

Dilo,

great combos.

I have no problems with using my pano,s.

The pictures are from JPL and the American taxpayer.


jvandriel

An updated status report on MER website:

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Opportunity Entering Cobble Field - sol 544-551,
July 18, 2005

Opportunity had a busy week! The rover has been using the rock abrasion tool ...


Edited: July 18?

Edited again: ... and I think that I have the answer to this:



"The planning team wants to ensure that Opportunity has enough flash memory for next week's operations since the plan calls for a continuation of the drive toward "Erebus." The general consensus is that the rover will take the easterly route to the Erebus highway. This route is longer by about 100 meters (328 feet), but should result in much more access to outcrop during the drive. The outcrop is attractive both for rover footing and for science targeting."

Can we like, launch a 4GB memory stick to Mars? Those things are getting so cheap now, just send it there, plug it into the rover's USB port, and it's good to go. Right?

Of course, there would have to be some way to get the data back to Earth!

I volunteer to go pick it up! Can I pick up anything for anyone while I"m in the neighborhood?

How about bringing me back Sojourner? It would look great on my living room coffee table.

Here's a great view back the way we came on Sol 553. Endurance Crater and the heatshield can easily be seen (amazingly).

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...D4P2690L6M1.JPG

Some context.

mhoward: That IS amazing -- I didn't realize the images had eoungh resolution that we could enlarge a portion and still see the heatshield (albeit as a speck) and Endurance Crater. Perhaps OPPY was on a slight rise when it took the photo?

Looking around the panorama, I believe we are on a very gradual rise as we approach Erebus, which is probably why we can see Endurance again. I think I read or heard something to that effect in one of the mission updates somewhere too, but I can't find it at the moment.

Yea they released sometime this grafic in a PDF: http://www.greuti.ch/oppy/profile_oppys_terrain.jpg

It's interesting in this Pancam pic around Endurance one see the same brighter plane as in these east views. So I guess now we can say thats probably due to the lack of dunes.

How did they get such a detailed profile? There are dips up ahead that Oppy cannot image yet. Mars Express perhaps?

MOLA could do something like that - 250m sampling roughly

Doug

With Spirit now near/at the summit, the news about what is happening on the other side of Mars are left on a secondary plane...

Oppy drove (backwards) on sol 561 and another drive is planned for today. She may be moving now or in a few hours.

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...DLP1212L0M1.JPG


From http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/merweb/merweb.pl:
Expected EDRs by sequence number and image type:

Sol Seq.Ver ETH ESF EDN EFF ERP Tot Description
--- -------- --- --- --- --- --- ---- -----------
562 p1205.03 2 0 0 2 0 4 front_haz_penultimate_0.5_bpp_pri18
562 p1214.05 2 0 0 2 0 4 front_haz_ultimate_4bpp_pri15
562 p1311.05 2 0 0 2 0 4 rear_haz_ultimate_1_bpp_pri24
562 p1875.00 10 0 0 10 0 20 navcam_5x1_az_90_3_bpp
562 p1876.00 10 0 0 10 0 20 navcam_5x1_az_270_1_bpp
562 p1877.00 20 0 0 20 0 40 navcam_360_start_LVL_AZ_18_1_bpp
562 p1960.00 4 0 0 4 0 8 navcam_lower_2x1_RVR_AZ_0_2_bpp
562 p2102.13 3 0 3 0 1 7 pancam_isc_voc_cal_L267
562 p2104.10 3 0 3 0 1 7 pancam_mtes_cal_target_L267
562 p2354.06 10 0 0 10 2 22 pancam_drive_direction_2bpp_L7R1

I'm amazed at how clean those wheels are. Is this the same Oppy that was half buried in a sandy quagmire a few months ago?!

You know, the cleaning service on Mars is top notch

It isn't like what I'd expect on Earth.. I imagine the lack of moisture on Mars makes everything easily just fall off and/or blow away. Quite counter-intuitive.

Right, no moisture, no sticking. And yet some folks were swearing that the soil was muddy! But mud behaves quite differently from dry powder. I took a lot of criticism in another place for daring to say the soil was dry. Oh well, that's life!

Phil

I know where and what you mean Phil "There was frost - it must be wet"



This stuff is like talc or cement dust - dry but strangely adhesive at time.

Doug

There have been some images where the upturned dust/dirt/whatever in the tracks of one rover or another (Spirit?) looked suspiciously 'gooey'. And I suppose it's possible that water could liquify every once in a great while. Alternately, I suppose there could be the tiniest amount of water present everywhere, tiniest as in very, very, very tiny (so tiny as to be meaningless, except insofar as the amount is not 'actually' zero, except that it might as well be, but IT'S NOT).

In general, though, Mars is clearly quite dry, unlike as in that 1960s-era film I saw in science class, where the floating cartoon character said there could be life on Mars and flowers sprouted everywhere.. the cartoon character was wearing glasses, though. That's gotta count for something.. maybe the flowers only sprout every once in a while.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2354R1M1.JPG


Could this be we are coming up to a ridge?? where the terrain finally starts going down hill.?

(or could we be looking into the dip of Erebus?) It looks a lot larger than Erebus

I have cropped and increased in size a little the above picture to enhance it a little

Oppy has been driving up a topographic high for a while and we're starting to be able to see beyond this "Sea of Dunes" to the (less dune-y) plain to the East and also back to Endurance and the plains to the North. After she gets past Erebus/TerraNova she should "crest the hill" and the Victoria rim may become visible.

--Bill

A 360 degree panoramic view of Opportunity.

Taken on Sol 562 with the L0 Navcam


jvandriel

Nice panorama! That's my version of your panoramic view.

http://xs44.xs.to/pics/05351/Opportunity_Sol_550_Rover.jpg (287.5 KB)

I have made another version of jvandriel's new pan, sol 562:

Click to view attachment

I did two things to it: first I removed most of the shading between frames, and the azimuthal shading variation, by using a simple Photoshop trick. It's not perfect, but it works with other streaky images like Lunar Orbiter and some MOC raw images.

1. duplicate the image layer. 2. shrink it to one pixel high. 3. expand back to full image height. 4. invert the layer (make it a negative). 5. Make it 50% transparent. 6. flatten and enhance contrast.

This just averages out the shading variations and removes them.

Then, of course, I made it circular using 'polar coordinates' and the foreground-compression routine I described earlier.

Incidentally, with what I believe people used to call 'a bit of a mind-flip' you can see this area, not as dunes (ripples) with patches of rock between them, but as a continuous rock surface with dunes superimposed on it. I imagine that as we get into the bigger etched terrain exposures that will be increasingly apparent.

Phil

Incredible kitchen recital: Photoshop Sphere!. The image is superb for many purposes inclusive it is a perfect picture for remote driving.

Rodolfo

Oppy does not appear to be dead-- she's transferring data and is doing a lot of downsampled Navcams, evidently plotting a new route on the Erebus Highway onramp. No more word (AFAIK) on the 'puter reboot.

One odd series of images-- she seems to have done some back-and-forth-and-over driving across a dune crest, does not seem to be the usual post-drive uplink positioning maneuver:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...WGF0006L0M1.JPG

I'm looking forward to getting on the wide bedrock exposures of the Highway...

--Bill

That's an old image from Soll 511, just after getting out of Purgatory Dune.

James

Ah! That's right, I remember that maneuver. She must be flushing her flash memory.

--Bill

Drive on sol 569 planned. Opportunity is OK, I hope.

Expected EDRs by sequence number and image type:
Sol Seq.Ver ETH ESF EDN EFF ERP Tot Description
--- -------- --- --- --- --- --- ---- -----------
569 p1205.03 2 0 0 2 0 4 front_haz_penultimate_0.5_bpp_pri18
569 p1214.05 2 0 0 2 0 4 front_haz_ultimate_4bpp_pri15
569 p1235.04 2 0 0 2 0 4 front_hazcam_stumble_0.5_bpp_pri_56
569 p1311.06 2 0 0 2 0 4 rear_haz_ultimate_1_bpp_crit18
569 p1335.03 2 0 0 2 0 4 rear_hazcam_stumble_0.5_bpp_pri_56
569 p1916.05 12 0 0 12 0 24 navcam_6x1_lvlaz_103_3bpp_crit
569 p2111.05 13 13 0 0 2 28 pancam_cal_targ_L234567Rall
569 p2357.06 10 0 0 10 2 22 pancam_drv_dir_5x1_L2R2
569 p2530.10 13 0 0 13 2 28 pancam_skidmark_L234567Rall
569 p2531.10 13 13 0 0 2 28 pancam_wreckage_L234567Rall
569 p2599.09 5 0 0 5 2 12 pancam_ripple_fender_L257R12

....stumble, skidmark, wreckage? lol... what's that all about?

Different features seen on the bedrock, I would say.
They used "funny" names also some days ago (sol 565, 566?).

'Skidmark' is probably the point at which Oppy came to a halt with that reset

Doug

"Skidmark" could also be used to describe what was in our some of our shorts after Oppy abruptly came to a halt yet again...

Seems the engineers consider that some problem with the miniTES that was responsible.

'Engineers believe Opportunity is in good health, although the team will refrain from using the miniature thermal emission spectrometer pending further analysis of the software reset.'

Nice view off onto the plains: Sol 569 Pancam mosaic

And it seems that the dark "un-dune-y" area on the horizon is getting broader, so we are making progress. And I think I can make out the Erebus Highway ahead of us.

--Bill

Yes, but see that Oppy still has to dodge a lot dunes on the way to the Highway.

Actually, she is now facing NE (check the pancam images on mhoward's post) so it seems that the MER team are planning some zig-zag.

This is what I think is a possible path to the highway, superimposed on sol 569 navcam panorama (heavily compressed).
Click to view attachment