If you add that the sudden brigthness is due to different sun angle between near and far rim, i agrre with you James : we see the top of far rim.

I think this is what we're now seeing:

Wow... ...while I still worry that massive dust accumulation might have obscured the most interesting strata, it looks like the whole history of primary evaporites as well as some (hopefully!!!) much older sedimentary features may well be right there in plain sight. Cleaning events RULE!!! (And, what does this say about the electrostatic properties of the soil in this region?)

BTW, and slightly off-topic, can anyone think of a good reason why Meridiani should not be the preferred site for the first manned landing some fine day? Seems like it's got it all: easy landing topography, ready access to geologically important crustal cross-sections, and a (relatively) benign climate. Unless Mars Express, MRO, or a future remote sensor finds significantly more interesting minerology elsewhere that is equally accessible, I see no contest.

This is getting very exciting, we're exploring again, seeing something new opening up before our eyes a little more each day again..!

That far rim is fascinating. I actually started another thread ("Victoria Ahead") suggesting it as a place to discuss the crater as it "opened up" ahead of us, but no-one's bothered with it so I'll just stay here.

If everyone's right about what we've seen so far then we're going to see some pretty cool features in the next few days. I cobbled together a kind of map of the far rim, identifying a few features, and if we're heading where I think we're heading then we're going to see 1. a "cleft" in the far wall, 2. an outcrop, 3. the raised rim of Sofi Crater, 4. a "mini boat ramp" and 5. a very narrow dark streak/gully running down the slope towards the floor, tho that might have gone now, erased by winds etc since the image my map is based on was taken. Looking forward particularly to seeing "1" and "2"

Hi Stu,

I think the map/key would be better if it was moved to the 'left'. As it is now I think that numbers 7 oward are going to be obscured by closer stuff on the SW rim, but loads of features further around than '1' are going to be visible. I think the glimpses we are getting even now, extend from Sofi to quite away off the left edge of your diagram.

James

Folks,

I'm now convinced that the new distant feature we saw on the horizon a couple of days ago is related to the 35-km crater to the south-east. I've cropped and stretched one of the latest navcam images and highlighted the twin peaks (left arrow) and new distant feature (right arrow). They appear to be related as parts of that crater rim, but I admit that this could be wrong from this distance.

Click to view attachment

I also agree that the bright line that has appeared is the top of the far rim of Victoria coming into view. We should know more soon. The bright feature on the far left of my image is presumably "The Beacon".

Castor

RE the far rim discussion, I just can't see anaglyphs , but switching between the sol 929 and 931 pancam mosaics centered on that heading we can see the different parallax effects on the near rim features, horizon features, AND far rim ones.

I'm looking forward the NEXT drive.



As expected.
We are on restricted sols again --sol 931 images were available to the JPL guys late in the evening, too late to plan 932 based on the results of 931-- and they never plan two driving sols in a row without knowing the results of the first.

vertical projection SOL 931 1cm/pix

Click to view attachment

Excellent reprojection. Keep 'em coming they are much appreciated. Very impressive intergration of the PANCAM images with the NAVCAMS

The level of detail is impressive.

I did this comparision between your projection and Emma Dean/Epsilon as seen on MOC image R15-00822 (the one I use on my route map covering most of the path). Both are at the same scale (10cm/pix).

Click to view attachment

I agree with you Pando.
From this distance, I can see a difference between VC and Endurance.The edge of the rim is elevated in both of them (exept places like the boat ramp) but while on Endurance the elevation decreased smoothly while going outside the crater, it looks to me that this decrease is more abrupt here in VC. If true, can this due to different angle of attack of the bolide that crashed of different soil composition? Else ? BTW, does somebody get an idea of the heigth of the lips of the rim we can see right in front of us?

the beeb has picked up the JPL release about Oppy's approach to Victoria. I think once she gets there we can expect some major MSM coverage for couple of days.

Some far rim detail?

Click to view attachment

Now that we have a glimpse of the far rim I was trying to figure how would this view change once we start driving directly towards the entry ramp. Hope I did my math correcly.

The picture below tries to represent the vertical profile from Emma Dean/Epsilon up to that crater on the far rim (Sofi?). Assuming h=1.5m (pancam height), d=150m (distance up to the entry ramp), and D=700m (distance from the entry ramp up to the far rim), and given we have just started to see the far rim at/around that little crater, it means that the far rim is about 7m below the near rim (not including the section we are currently seeing).

If we move on this same direction about 50m, our view of the far rim would extend vertically another 2m (10 pixels in a pancam image); if we move 100m instead of 50m, the visible height would be about 12.5m (65 pixels).

Click to view attachment

So, I think the view will dramatically change in the next couple driving sols.

Click to view attachment

Good idea James, thanks...

Thanks, Pando! What a great graphic!

This type of serration of the front of the rim is of the sort that some of us (notably far-rimmers) were speculating would be present.

If you note that "tabled" appearance on the right-hand side of the far rim, I would presume that it is from the raised lip of the mini-crater at that location. I've also been speculating for a while that we've been resolving that raised lip of the small crater on the far rim of Victoria in some of the images of "the" beacon (see for example this link.)

This kind of picture is fantastic since it is of another view which helps much for navigation purposes. Keep improving!

Rodolfo

Sad to say, I'm pretty firmly in your camp of thinking here, Castor.

The "beacon" on the rim we once fought over might have been a distant mirage appearing and dissapearing as atmospheric conditions changed. (Where "distant mirage" gets translated into "far off much larger rock")

I dig up an old post here to show you how this relate to a place we know better, Columbia Hills.
Click to view attachment
Circle is the same size as Victoria and, well, height of CH is 110 m IIRC while VC "could be" 70 m. Any of the Mc Murdo pan will give you a pretty good idea of what we'll see at best on far rim ov Vicky.

The view in the drive direction on Sol 931.

Taken with the R2 pancam.

jvandriel

A question here. As your messurement is done through the boat ramp and, if I refer to terragen pictures, the boat ramp is closer to Oppy than the medium rim diameter by may be 10 meters (10% the distance), can this change your results?

What SS have said: "Emma Dean should be our last stop before we reach the rim of Victoria crater," Squyres told SPACE.com. "It's an important target, because it may excavate into material that was ejected from Victoria crater. As such, it may offer one of the best near-term chances we'll have to sample such material. Once we're done with Emma Dean, we're going to sprint for the rim of Victoria."

Tomorrow (sol 933) ain't going to be a driving day.



Rodolfo

To early to say. From what I have observed sequences show up at the PC tracking site in late afternoon PDT.
Give it a few more hours

Surely they are gonna do more than a "pancam_sky_spot_L234567R34567"

Don't think so. The distances I used were directly taken from the route map; that "d=150m" isn't the distance to the mean diameter but actually the distance to the ramp on the same heading as the mini-crater at the far rim.

Anyway, what I was looking for with this exercise was an answer to "will we see a change by moving 50m or will we need to drive up to the rim?" And I think the answer is the former.

Thanks Tesheiner, as usual, you ask the rigth question and once again your answer is consistant. I was just trying to push a little bit in order to imagine what will be seen of the interior of VC on Sol 935 .
BTW it's good to know that we'll not be there with another drive but we'll see more and more details instead. It's facinating to see how calm Oppy's managers seams to be. May be "methodical" will be more appropriate since I can't imagine they'll think at anything else than Victoria this week-end. Just imagine how good will be their next monday . You come to work knowing that in a few hours/days a truly new world is going to show up. It's a kind of landing without an EDL and they can even make a count down when they'll know when images will be received (Astro0, you're may be the luckiest guy in the world!). So let me make a proposition here : when we'll know the plan by monday or so and when we will agree when Oppy will get to the rim and send back pictures, LET START A LIVE COUNTDOWN here at UMSF. There will be NO such BIG event for the rest of the mission... (at least for the following 1 or 2 years )

Tesheiner, Your analysis is thought provoking. You are absolutely right that we see the far rim. This is confirmed (if anyone still doubts it) using Joe's parallax distance calculator for the pancam. (see attachment) Granted, over 100m, distances are subject to error, but I am pretty confident that the bright streak in the image is much further away from the camera than the rock at the near rim.


Click to view attachment

The thing to bear in mind wrt the relative height of the far rim compared to the near rim is that the long arms of your very acute triangle (camera sensor to far rim) move quite significantly depending on the height of the camera and the distance to the part of the northern rim which is obscuring the south rim. You'd need centimetre accuracy on the camera height and meter accuracy on the range to the obscuring outcrop to make a reasonable assessment. You could say 7m +/- 20m perhaps!


This is no criticism. Your approach is great and you are spot on about the change in view. We will be certain to see much more of the far rim over the next few drives because the crater is so wide compared to Endurance. Can't wait. If my guess of 80+ m deep is accurate, and the exposed outcrop is at least a third of that, whoa we are in for a treat. My hope is we don't see the dunes until the rover is almost at the rim.

When I was doing my math I was just wondering: "what if the error is greater then the measurement (like on parallax to objects far away)?". And here is the answer.

I believe we only see the near rim right now.

Well, Pando's gif animation some messages back shows without any doubt that its the far rim coming up. There is no other explanation for that sort of parallax behaviour.

And the stuff beyond that is indeed the far plains. I'm just amazed how clearly the rim of the Big Crater is visible at the horizon. The atmosphere must be very clear at the moment. It's also strange seeing such a prominent feature at Meridiani :-)

I was wondering why we're not doing 'much'at the moment....perhaps the shift to the new flight software has been scheduled for the next few days? I remember them wanting to get it in before conjunction, and thus probably better now rather than when we're at victoria.

doug

A week ago SS said that they were ready on the vehicules but not here on Earth on the ground. Not sure of the actual status.

I'm still believing it's related to the late arrival of those sol 931 fhaz images.
If the idea was to do some IDD work on 933 and further sols, they need images of the workspace in order to plan the IDD movements. Without those images your planning work is somehow stopped.

Anyway, it's only 03:20am at Meridiani. When would be the next uplink session?

Typically 1000 local - 5 hrs from now when it'll only be 1200 EDT - so the sequences would have had to have been done yesterday.

Over at Gusev they're about to do capture magnet MI (and I assume Mossbauer/APXS) work - perhaps the same is scheduled here.

Doug

Wouldn't it be preferrable to reach the rim first before doing any further "administrative" stuff ?
I also interpret Steve's statement in the latest interview ("as soon as we're done with Ema Dean, we're going to sprint to the rim ...) that way that reaching the rim must have absolute priority with the
one exception of Ema Dean crater.
The rim will be the perfect place of overview over a huge area to rest and plan any future activities
whereas the place we are now (basically seeing nothing of our main target and only one sriving sol away
from the best of all vantage points

I'm also a little bit anxious about the software upgrade (being a software engineer myself
that after the re-boot in a new software, there is always the risk that something might not work any longer as expected ... the old, but true saying "never touch a running system;)"
(after all the old software has been very reliably proven and working for hundreds of sols in the real world
of mars environment... compared to which any simulated testing possibilties of the new software are limited.

Question to the Rover Experts: Does the rover's Operating System has a real "safe mode" fallback, such that it would be possible to boot, communicate and re-install the old software again if the new software should fail in some way ? (not that I think it will fail, I'm very confident that it will go all well, no worries ... just to make sure that there is a fallback for the very improbable case

Maybe they have a routine that captures a screenshot if a BSOD appears and sends it back to Earth for analysis.

INIT_CRIPPLED

They uploaded new flight software on...

Sols 75,76,77
and Sols 374,375,376

They're quite good at it

Doug

Also known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics...

I'm not an expert, but I've worked with VxWorks many years ago.
I think there would be no problem with a bug in the new software because we are speaking of a new "application sw" and not a change in the kernel.
Remember Spirit and the flash-memory full problems; they (MER team) seems to have mechanisms (think of "back-door") to access the O.S. even if main application tasks can't run.

Yeah - if that fallback didn't exist, we wouldn't be talking about it now. The mission (at least Spirit's) would have ended over 900 sols ago.

Wasn't it only to by-path flash memory ?

I keep changing my mind about where some things are - like my car keys - but this image shows what I'm thinking now:

Click to view attachment

It's a vertical stretch of the latest drive direction pan, kindly posted by... I can't remember right now - but thanks anyway!

The distant hill - I posted earlier saying it couldn't be distant because it showed so much contrast, but I can't reconcile that with this view. The very bright streak - at first I thought it was near-rim, but it must be far rim, the first view we've ever had of it - as others have already said.

Phil

A bit of a 'glyphe

A classical view toward the horizon, centered on the two features and the entry ramp.
Click to view attachment

And from the first image, a horizontal reduction about 0,25. We really have the feeling to be on a slope.
Click to view attachment

Ah that's what I wanted to know Thanks a lot Tesheiner !
So it will be possible to just boot the raw OS to establish the basic tasks like
mars-earth-communication and software installation any time :-)



Yes ! remarkably good, I have to say.
... while other software often already runs into trouble when installed at another customer site,
they do the trick flawlessly on another planet !

Big hats-off to the software people at JPL !

I think it's a combination of restricted sols, a failed Sol-931 drive to put the rock into the IDD reach, downlink issues, etc. Looks like we're staying here up until mid next week, attempt to rat the rock, and then get to the rim by next weekend. At least that's how the whole situation looks to me. I don't think there's any problem with the vehicle which is good.

While we pause for a moment to collect our breath before our final approach, the mystery men have returned to assist us in appreciating the scale of our current (sol 931) view:
Click to view attachment
I've placed two men on the near rim, at about 115 and 230 metres distance, at the locations indicated by the black dots in this map crop:
Click to view attachment
The third man is standing on the bit of far rim just coming into view at about 810 metres. Thanks to a mystery poster for the pancam mosaic I used. I think my image identifications agree with those of most posters here.

fredk, I think if the second man was on that section 230m away he would be peaking out from behind the other side of the right hillock (Look at Tesheiner's sight lines).

Here's where I think he is standing in your image.


Click to view attachment

Looks like the mast is out of the way!

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...23P1214L0M1.JPG

When was that picture taken?


(answer - earlier on sol 931 than the images which show the IDD deployed)

Doug

The mystery men stand corrected! After studying the images and doing some measurements, I agree with your location for man #2. I was originally led astray by the morphology alone - I thought the dark crater/collapse feature between men #2 and #3 in my mosaic was far too dramatic to be the faint little feature immediately north of your man #2 location in your map, so I assumed it was the Victoria cliff. What this means is clear: when we finally do see the real cliffs of Victoria, the view's going to knock our socks off!

So here's the corrected mosiac:
Click to view attachment
and location map:
Click to view attachment
The distances are 115, 132, and 810 metres for men #1, 2, and 3.