Those rover drives do incredible things with these machines. I wouldn't be surprised if they take another path to the left of your orange proposal. I added that (in cyan) to your mosaic.

Here is a clip from my "planning" map. The last Oppy location shown is from Sol 855 and shows the proposed route (green), the actual route (red), soft sand (yellow), and cobble patches (blue). The approach seems fairly straight forward.

--Bill

I have another question about how these restricted Sols work. It is now sunset on a drive day during restricted Sols. How long should it take before we have imaging from that drive?

The proposed route (green) crosses many sand crest in order to arrive as directly as possible to Beagle Crater. That is good route only for a more capable surface navigation rover.

However, in the practical way, the proposed route would most probably be desired if that goes southward with few and timely sand crest crossings. That is to arrive first at a mini-crater at West of Beagle Crater and from this, turn on left to East where is BC by driving mostly on outcrop.

Just a tought.

Rodolfo

I'll try and cover for you Tesh.

Actuallly the "proposed" route should be thought of as a "preliminary approximate" route. It's not meant to be exact, but shows the general path. Oppy will continue to travel along the ripple troughs and skip over when possible.

--Bill

Today, at sol 859 (MER-B is at about 9pm, there is no driving plan but just navcam pictures on sky and pancam on soil and tau measures.



Sol 860, tomorrow, will be a driving sol pointing to 180 degree (South),



Rodolfo

They are in the channel, and although it has a few twists and turns ahead, the practical route is straight ahead. We've passed several areas where the orbital imagery has suggested a possible outcrop-rich path pointing to the left, but each time, they have followed the texture.

These drivers know what they are doing. It will not be long, now...

The Suits In Ithaca have decided, and rightfully so, that the evaporite is consistent enough to not require close looks along the way. I'm not in 100% agreement since I'm a big believer in facies changes and I would have liked to have had more close looks at outcrops as well as some chemistry (especially!).

But Oppy is in the groove and making good progress, and I'm sure that we'll look closely at Beagle when we get to _that_ roadcut.

--Bill

I quite agree with your opinion Bill. I've always agreed on the "pedal to the metal and stop for analysis when realy necessary" principle, but now, I guess we are approching different "VC disturbed" terrain so I'd like they stop, say every 100 meters from now on till Beagle then again till VC. They could either take "advantage" of restricted sols or not driving week-ends.

Here is the 360 degree panoramic view from Sol 857 and Sol 858.

Taken with the L0 navcam.

jvandriel

Thanks Jvandriel. Your stiching pictures has helped us much to localize where the MER-B is localized.

The distance between the crest send is aprox 2-3 meters (as reference, the MER has 1.00 meter width and 1.25 meter longitudinal). The width of crest of that zone helps much to MER as a roving rail.

Bill, I have understand with your aclaration. Recently, Oppy's drivers seems that Oppy has no plenty time to do geological cores as necessary. It seems that that zone has no much or substancial change of geological traces and the great awarness of power level of Oppy which is not so comfortable (see the other topic with Helvic's post : Whr Figures http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=59677

Helvic's post Minimum: 339whr from Sol 937 to Sol 965..

It seems like if the power levels are so low at sol's mentioned above, I am afraid that Oppy would be sitting on Beagle Crater doing lots searching like Spirit on Winter Quarters for a long time until the power level raises again to permit to rover to Victoria Crater. Maybe, it is a coincidence that when Oppy arrives at BC, its power levels will be at her minimum levels and at the same time, Oppy will take the advantage to do imaging, miniTes and others detailed observations around BC for many soles, maybe between 20-30 soles. That is a just a tougth

Rodolfo

And there is a software update planned for the near future. It seems to me that finding a nice northerly tilted spot on BC would be an ideal spot to park while that was carried out.

The software upload is complete for Opportunity ( check the JPL site )

Doug

That's not how I read it.

They've uploaded some of the update files via some high gain (DTE) sessions already but the bulk\remainder of the uploads will happen via UHF relay beginning next week. Once they've got all the update files they will need to park, run the upgrade and then test everything before hitting the road again.
From what I can see they've had 5 hours of DTE uplink which runs at around 2kbps AFAIK - total upload would be somewhere arounf 4MBytes so far. I seem to recall that the full flight software image is around 32Meg.

Here is an L257 Pancam of the trough surface fromSol 859. The general character of the "sand" hasn't changed much during the trek South, although the size distribution of the Blueberries has skewed towards the smaller size and there are more angular fragments in the mix.

--Bill

Ahh - I misread 'more' as 'most'

iirc - it was 3 essentially 'full' days of DFE uplink for the uploads back in the sol 80ish timeframe - so you're right, plenty left to go.

Doug

Here is the mosaic of the latest trap "Jammerbugt".

Taken with the L7 pancam on Sol 842.

jvandriel

I notice we are now 100 sols into this leg of the trip south to Victoria - if the first post of this thread is anything to go by.

Not yet I have found any detail about the changes of uploaded of new software. The only hint I have is that these new changes of software is for using more the MER high gain antenna in order to use x-band communications directly to Earth's antenna. That seems to be strange since the HGA has more dissadvantages than LGA in many respects:
1) Lower date rate that varies between 3.5 to 12 kbps depending to the distance between Mars and Earth. The UHF works with at constant of 128 kbps
2) x-band communication needs more power (I speculate it since its needs more power to send signals at much greater distance than to MGS up to 400 km above) than UHF communication.
3) x-band has fewer opportunities to communicate with Earth for at most three hours a day due to power and thermal limitations, even though Earth may be in view much longer. LGA have more opportunities to send signals to ODY which orbits around Mars in every 2 hours, thus making about 29.5 longitude degree every orbit. I deduct that means that MER have only up to 2 opportunities to meet with ODY, that is every 12 hours. I hope that someone more knowledge about the ODY orbit, jump on it and correct me.

Then what are the reason of using more HGA? Are ODY or MGS having more troubles with its communication capabilities due to age?

Rodolfo

And of course, the one trough nobody picked to the right of the blue line appears to be the one they are in.

Brian

Yeah. I guess they were trying to avoid that ripple crossing the path into the trough to the left. The path forward looks good so far, but I would have liked to see the Pancams before going to bed. That wil be something to look forward to in the morning.

I didn't pick that up in any of what I read - do you have a reference? I was also looking for more detail on this as I never got to read the NYT article that was posted a while back on the subject.

The other references that I've seen on this indicated that one major update was the inclusion of a feature that would allow both rovers to be more effective when searching for DD activity (and any other dynamic things) by running analysis on board and only downlinking DD search images if they appeared to include any changes.

Beyond that there are a number of minor navigational\orientation bugs that the drivers have been dealing with all through the mission that I'm pretty sure are being patched in this version. I can't find the links right now but if you track down the papers on driving the rovers that the team have published you will find a detailed explanation of some of these and the problems they have caused.

Wheeltracks.

A mosaic of the wheeltracks on Sol 836.

Taken with the L2 pancam.

jvandriel

They're using HGA to UPLINK TO the rover...not downlink from it It's the simplest way to get the data up to the rover as quickly as possible with the least latency as possible. For UHF relay uplink, they have to have the data ready to go at the Odyssey uplink before the overflight, which can be some time.

Doug

It seems they have been uploading the softwate lately but not installing anything. Is this correct?

If so, just how big are these updates that are uploading and what, if any impact may it have on memory resources? Of course they have all this sussed out and there isn't much danger of running into trouble, still curious though

They have to upload ALL of it before they can reboot into the new flight software Compared to the total size of the flash, it's not that big.

Doug

Helvick, good to hear from your comments. So the new software update is not critical unless its of low critical since it is related to improve the selectivity of search operations before to downlink data to Earth

Doug, That sounds logical. Thanks for your comments.

Rodolfo

Closer

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...CNP0705L0M1.JPG

you can just about count the number of dune ridges Oppy has to cross to get to the tangentially closest part of Corner/Beagle Crater.

Technically, not that much of an image; artistically, quite stunning.

Oppy settling down for the night.

--Bill

Oh yes! Just unbelievable to get a new perspective after that many Sols! One of my favorite.

A late afternoon light, is very romantic and relaxing to contemplate as long as the sun disappear under the Mars.

Rodolfo

That image is a beauty - all the more so for the imperfection of the broken dune crest, showing this is an active place. You can almost sense the atmosphere, and a chill light breeze stirring as the temperature drops

Kenny

Here is a navcam view in the drive direction.

Taken on Sol 860 with the L0 navcam.

jvandriel

Sol 860-861

Tiger Dunes.

Great! We're starting to get consistent views of that etched terrain which borders the ejecta blanket. What will tha zone be like? Will it be disturbed and mixed or will it be the same as we've seen since leaving Endurance? There will be so much to see...

--Bill

I know, it's noise, but I finally found a video link of "four yorkshiremen".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo...%20Yorkshiremen

It's just brilliant.

Post was removed. A very old picture has just come today at qt.exploratorium with the date June 27, 2006! They looked alike. Confirmed by the notification of hortonheardawho. Thanks

Rodolfo

Er, 198228896 timestamp is April 13, 2006.

The view in the drive direction on Sol 860.

Taken with the L2 pancam.

jvandriel

How much longer will Opportunity be in restricted sols? Must end soon?

Normally about 2 weeks isnt it?

Doug

JPL' site said on june15th that "next week Oppy will be in restricted sols". I thought it was more around 10 days than 2 weeks so she must be back to normal ops in another 2-3 sols

Sol 862

Here is a manually colorized version of a part of this great Sol862 view
which inspired me to this latest "Alien Landscape" image



Unfortunately, because of my moving to a new accomodation,
I havn't had the time to actively participate in the forum recently ... guess I missed a lot of fun with the Pools (Polls?)

Now the relocation and furnishing (not much left at the local IKEA now
is almost done and the PC equipment installed again and online ...
just in time, as it seems, to follow Oppys final approach to the Great Victoria Crater !

Hopefully I will be proven dead wrong with my Sol 1111 prediction

Greets
Nirgal

From June 29, Oppy will able to start to receive uplink commands daily. AFAIK, I think it is related to the status of uploaded of new version MER mobility operating software for MER. If all goes fine, then the daily uplink commands would start on date.

Rodolfo

Very nice picture , I think it is very unique, nothing similar to ones of Earth since these are very much symethrical that they have no matching!

Rodolfo

From a few days ago: "...The Suits In Ithaca have decided, and rightfully so, that the evaporite is consistent enough to not require close looks along the way. ..."

Victoria is the last and BIGGEST prize available to Opportunity with any realistic chance of reaching it. We have a greater chance of substantially new data from there than anywhere Oppy can reach.

Assuming we have a working, healthy rover when the next martian spring rolls around, we'll presumably have super-high-resolution COLOR imagery of Victoria and the etched terrain surrouinding it. At that point, we'll be able to micro-manage a tour of the etched terrain around Victoria, checking out small craters, unusual evaporite outcrops, "anomalous" areas of whatever kind may show up that we currently see only with marginal resolution from orbit. We might for example find multiple dark patches of debris, varying in color perhaps, corresponding to different patches of meteorite debris or secondary ejecta from around Mars. Some of the small dark spots in the current best image of the area may well be debris fields rather than dune shadows or small crater forms. I just can't tell from the current data. When we have the pics sometime in the fall or winter.... it'll be time to start planning "after Victoria"