Your proposal Introduction makes an enticing case, DVD. Such potential might even entice the PIs. On the practical side of a Methods section, though, what specific, eye-opening observations would you imagine Oppy could make in Beagle, relevant to your hypothesis, that could justify the loss of equivalent time spent scanning the far older walls of Victoria? Oppy's remaining lifespan must have limits.
Someone in JPL would have to answer this question. Wanna try?

My "predict" is that they're going to stop at Beagle, take a good set of panoramic data, possibly a second set (maybe monochrome only) from a second point, then go on to Victoria.

Victoria's the "mission climactic prize"... we're just not plausibly ever going to get to something more spectacular or scientifically valuable.

But ... once we've "done Victoria", there's a lot of work to do in the vicinity. Mars Recon pics will show the etched terrain in far more useful detail than we can currently see it, and in color. It'll be possible to identify all sorts of targets in the vicinity of Victoria and plot geologically meaningful traverses based on the pics, something we can BARELY do now. I expect we'll return to Beagle, then do some carefuly planned traverses to etched terrain targets, then maybe circumnavigate Victoria and "do" it's other side.

Why? Remember that for the small crater Fram, Oppy has taken a color pic (okay, a long time ago...). But, why not?

We even had a colour mosaic up at Naturaliste - I'd say a 5x2 or a 6x3 or something like that at Corner...with Victoria in the bgrnd.

Doug

Ah cannae wait..... Ah'm frothin' at the mooth wi' excitement a'ready....
Kenny

Here is the pancam L2 view in the drive direction on Sol 853.

jvandriel

and the left Navcam view from Sol 853.

jvandriel

Very good, Jan. That outcrop area ahead is the southern rim of the paleocrater we've been skirting and is our first encounter with the etched plain close to Victoria. Hopefully Oppy will take more than a cursory look at this outcrop. And the darker and smoother/muted area to the west of this outcrop may be Oppy's first encounter with a plume or ray from Victoria's ejecta blanket. Again, maybe we'll get a peek.

--Bill

Is today a driving day? or rather should we expect an advance in the pictures that will come down today? TIA

I like the mini-beacon, about 445 pixels from the left, and 96 down from the top, that jvandriel's got on his image. It's on both of the left source images that make up this pan, so it seems to exist, and it's much clearer on the originals. Probably it's a scout sent out by the main beacon in Victoria.

...But much more likely to be part of the evaporite to the west of Beagle Crater that surrounds the other old crater there (the lowest one in yellow in this image), the last outbreak of this stuff before Oppy's/our long haul across the dark ejecta...

Andy G

No move is planned; JPL said already they are in "restricted sols" again. Given last driving sol was 853 (Sunday), I would expect moves on 855 (Tuesday) and 857 (Thursday).

Based on JvD's Sol 853 Pancam view here is a 5x vertical exaggeration of the southern rim of the paleocrater, which stretches diagonally across the lower part of the image. Corner Crater is in the upper left and at the base of the ripple left of center you can see coarse, dark material which I believe is an outlying plume of Victoria's ejecta blanket.

There are a few other albedo and topographic features visible in this stretched image.

--Bill


EDIT: meant to say left of center instead of right

Images from Opportunity's new position after sol 855 move are available. The rover is now positioned on top of the rock outcrop.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...cam/2006-06-20/

I suppose the remaining ones should be there on the following site update(s).

Bill, Would you tell us about why there are some outcrops which are not totally covered by sand as the others parts? These outcrops might have something special which repels any sand grain to sit on these outcrops?

Rodolfo

Ninety- and sixty-degree wide views from Opportunity Sol 855 (combined Navcam and Pancam):

And we finally got those backward navcams from sol 847. Not as bad as I thought.

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...78P1605L0M1.JPG

And this one gives a nice perspective on the rise they were trying to climb when they got "embedded".

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...78P1605L0M1.JPG

Brian

Let's all hope the ones in front of us now are "kinder and gentler".

I don't think that there is anything special about the outcrop rocks; sand naturally tends to collect in drifts and dunes, much like this spot in Syrtis. I doubt that there is anything more than weathered basalt bedrock and basaltic sand here.

--Bill

Given that one wheel no longer steers - you have to credit the rover drivers job here...excellent navigation in terrain that must offer huge variations in potential wheel slip.

Doug

The view in the drive direction on Sol 855.

Taken with the L2 pancam.

jvandriel

I don't know... in the view from sol 847 it looks to me like they just plowed headlong into a big old hill. Still, can't complain about the driving after that.

Sol 857 is planned for driving.

Interesting to note in Bill's stretched image from a few days ago that you can plainly see that the dune (er, ripple) field ends at Corner Crater. Look how abruptly the horizon gets smoother.

Sol 857 post-drive images are already available, including this navcam image.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P0705L0M1.JPG

Based on that, I pinpointed the rover's position around this point in the below pancam mosaic from sol 855.

Click to view attachment

Here is the 360 degree panoramic view from Sol 853 and Sol 854.

Taken with the R0 Navcam.

jvandriel

Interesting thing here:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2434L2M1.JPG

It looks like a chunk of evaporite sitting on the side of a dune, although the shading of the sand is possibly misleading. What strikes me is that it doesn't seem to have disturbed the sand.

Chris

Looks like with the Sol 857 move they decided not to try to follow the exposed surface rock but to continue directly south -- into the Wilderness. Hopefully this traverse won't take forty years of wandering! Assuming no more Purgatory-like events, it should be two or three more drives before Opportunity sees anything but sand and sky. By then Beagle should be looming pretty large.

I believe that following the ripple through southward is a wise path. From the MOC imagery we don't see any "fluffy" sand for the next 200 metres and by then we can sidestep eastward to intersect Beagle. For the most part, the sand pavement has been quite firm and trouble-free.

--Bill

Notice these big boulders near the Beagle crater.
How big are they ?

http://static.flickr.com/45/173257388_a7fc410954_o.jpg

When is Opportunity moving again? I understand that it is on restricted Sols because of the position of the orbit of the communication link (MGS?) but I don't really know if the weekends have an impact. Opportunity drove yesterday, and can't today, but tomorrow is Saturday. Will it drive?

It's not the position of the orbiting relay ( and they use Odyssey, not MGS ) it's that the Martian Sol has driften so out of sync with the Earth Day that the two don't match up and the rover data from Sol 1 isn't available in time to prepare the commands for Sol 2...so they can't command tomorrow based on todays data....

However - they will have 'thursdays' data to work with today...so they can program tomorrow to be a driving sol.

Doug

As discussed previously, they don't do any meaningful work at JPL on weekends. Just one person is left to mind the store. They'll likely be at the beach. It's been over 100 all week here in California (nearly 40C), and it looks like that will continue through the weekend.

But the writing of a sequence for Sat will occur today - so whilst there may not be much happening at JPL over the weekend ( and you are unduly harsh in that respect ) - both rovers will be busy.

Doug

I seem to recall plenty of drives being done over weekends.

Well hey, I've got to work on weekends (and sometimes my "weekend" is cut short by one or both days) in an un-air-conditioned warehouse for $10/hr. If I can do that, they can go into their fancy office and play with their expensive robot toys.

Walked 20 miles in the snow, without boots, uphill both ways, etc etc....you know the whole schtick.

Jeff7:

Luxury. Why, in my day I 'ad ter get oop for work three hours before I went to bed... ....wasn't actually a bed, was just a hole in the ground. In t' middle of t' road...

Bob Shaw

The view in the drive direction on Sol 857.

Taken with the L2 pancam.

jvandriel

Yeah, the evidence continues to mount that the dunes have been lightly frozen against the wind in their present state for countless eons, predating all the strewn cobbles and the similarly displaced evaporite chunk shown here.

...but not to worry, mystery abides and Mars further perplexes at every turn.
The block looks as if it could have been strewn about by a crater impact, so then where is the damage to the drift surface that was surely done when it plopped down (and one would think it would have rolled a few paces more before finally coming to rest)? well okay there is a similarly sized and potentially related mark above it.. could it be all filled in? if so i would expect the dark sands to have filled it, as with the minicraters, but all i see is a light wind-tail of dust. ..maybe it just happened by luck to come to rest lightly and not disturb the soil at all.. ..somehow. ...and come to think of it, i don't recall seeing any such disturbances near any of the cobbles in any other pictures as well... and if there were enough sand blowing around to fill in any such stitzmarks, then why come none of them are half-buried in sand as would be expected? as far as ive seen, they all look high and dry (otherwise, please link a rebuttal image).

This all suggests more and more that the dune surface was covered by some heavy (or thin and hard) frost layer of CO2 or maybe H20 when some of these craters were formed, maybe even Victoria, flinging cobbles and evaporite all around, falling to come to rest on the icy protective layer creating no damage to the underlying sand dunes, the ice later sublimated away (so as not to leave any damage from a liquid state), gently resting the ejecta fragments in their current placement on the dunes. No dune altering activity has occrred since then, except for some erosionally insignifficant dark and light dusts blowing in from abroad or from local weathering.

Bob--

You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.

--Bill

Septic tank...


LUXURY


etc

Doug

How one envies you -- amongst oneselves, arising before noon was simply not done, and then one had to allow the help to dress one in proper attire to the evening ball whilst memorizing the proper forms to be used in addressing the Duke of Edinburgh. One remembers with horror the stench of the caviare, and the offensive slickness of the pâté de foie gras, and the loathsome giddiness of the Veuve Clicquot.

....6,285 bottles of beer on the wall...

We've got a nice scenario from Doug about what to do once we get to Beagle.
Regarding Victoria, it has been a long time since we didn't talk about what to do when we'll get there. I guess we all admit it will be winter by then ( arround sol 935) so we'll have only short driving possibilities and the necessity to stay on North facing slopes. My guess is now that the best thing to do after basic analysis with all the instrument to shot for the equivalent Mc Murdo pan. Let's go for a FULL RESOLUTION VICTORIA PAN

Looks like JPL has started updating the flight software to the rovers.

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity

From the status report, it looks like the plan is to uplink the files over several weeks before actualy installing and activating it.

Reminds me of some idle speculation I encountered, a long time back...

We all know that Francis Scott Key's "The Star-Spangled Banner" was written to be sung to the tune of an old British drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven." The idle speculation was, what if it were written to the tune of some *other* drinking song? What we got was this:

"Thirteen stars and bars on the flag,
Thirteen stars and bars!
Rockets red glare,
One less there,
Twelve stars and bars on the flag..."

Good thing they didn't go with that one -- it takes forever for a baseball game to start as it is.

-the other Doug

Oppy seems still not need to tilt its solar panel to north facing for its so low batteries. Last week there were sol restricted. How soon will there be the turn of batteries restricted? Hope, Oppy will barely arrive at Beagle crater to help to rise a little the batterie with its sun north facing tilt.

About the suggested route, I see two possibles routes. The blue (right side) is safest and the orange (left side) is also possible but requires a precise manouvering to skip over a small slope of crest. However, both route will meet again at 30 meters south.

Click to view attachment

Does anyone can tell us about the tidbits of new software command changes to Oppy. What are the changes of the new version X Release Y?

According to the JPL Mars Rovers speech, Oppy will continue to have restricted communications until next week, Thursday June 29 to resume the daily UHF-band communication as well as via the X-Band high gain antenna. Thus, I suppose that from tomorrou until next Wednesday June 28, there will be at least 2 more soles of driving.

Rodolfo

Here is an L257 Pancam of a bedrock exposure from Sol 850. The general appearance of the evaporite hasn't changed greatly during the trek South.

--Bill

The bedding/lamination has been mosly planar recently, thus removing the likelihood of encountering more of those nasty festoons. I haven't quite figured it out yet, but for some reason they seem to be detrimental to forward progress.

Just checked than on the tracking web; it'll be on sol 860.

A side note: I'll be travelling for most of the week so probably (almost sure) won't have time to follow next moves and update the route map 'till mid/end next week.