I'll vote for Cabo Frio. Looks like the better lookout for a first panorama.

As I remember, the Mossbauer has been taking longer due to the age of the instrument. So if they follow up the RAT with readings, as they should, they'll probably be Mossbauering through the weekend, I'd guess.

http://images.google.com/images?q=cabo+fri...es&ct=title



(Sorry, I couldn't resist!)

I'm happy for you too Tesheiner...
And for the hipothesis of having the Island of Good Signs and the Valley Without Peril on Victoria too...

I guess Mr. Squyres wrote that update because on my e-mail followed the "riot" news...
Nothing like a bit of pressure...

It will be interesting if we can see and learn anything about the gully that is so prominently visible from orbit at 'Alcove'. If Oppy can drive down the Alcove, even for just the first few meters, we would be right on top of the origin of a Martian gully. That would be something!

No doubt about this

QUOTE(Tesheiner @ Sep 15 2006, 12:30 PM)
I'm happy too! Cabo Frio is located in Brazil, where I'm from.
This is the RIGHT place for 2007's UMSF meeting

BTW, this year, you're both doing better on THIS than in soccer (sorry, I couldn't resist either), and I do appreciate this both ways.

Well done ustrax, nice to have some official names for our armchair navigation! I love the idea of a "Valley Without Peril" at Victoria... but a little voice inside is saying it's poking Fate in the eye with a pointy stick by suggesting there's somewhere on spaceprobe-gobbling Mars "without peril"... just the kind of claim to make the Great Martian Ghoul think Ha, right, I'll show you how little peril there is here... !!

Cape Verde or bust!

As I wrote just above, that's the highest part of the entire rim.

And, yes, I want to set our wheels on that darned beacon!

Tesheiner, I'm thinking about doing a detailed map of Victoria (for personal pleasure... ), something like this:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustr...victoriamap.jpg

I've to questions for you:

Where's the best image of Victoria to do it and if my indication of Cabo Verde and Cabo Frio is correct...

Great zoom in tesh, thanks... here are some "comments" as requested... whaddya think?

Click to view attachment

Fascinated at the prospect of Oppy creeping towards then peering over the edge of Cabo Frio and seing that dark "gully" or landslip or dust avalanche beneath it... but the view over the edge from Cape Verde seems to offer a "mini abyss" there for our Portuguese friend...

Best pic I've seen so far Ustrax...

Victoria

> Ustrax: Where's the best image of Victoria to do it and if my indication of Cabo Verde and Cabo Frio is correct...

Stu was quicker and gave you already the link. Just to add that if you want an image without annotations I remember Dilo made a "clean-up" version this week and posted it on this same thread (IIRC).

> Stu: Great zoom in tesh, thanks... here are some "comments" as requested... whaddya think?

Well, VC will be the big-prize, with or without any of those features. But if we find one of them, well... BIG-BIG-prize.

We don't need to find them, they're there! I was just highlighting features already visible on the picture. Ok, there's some interpretation/speculation (the "debris aprons", "dust-filled hollow" etc) but the "gully" is obviously a real feature, just not sure exactly what it is yet... the "landslide" is real... and that is definitely a "steep outcrop" just going by its shadow...

Stu--I assume that Cape Verde is the point from the boat ramp to mini abyss?

It is several past the expected posting of sol 939 Oppertunity images at Exploratorium. Spirit images for Septmber 15 have arrived http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/pancam/2006-09-15/

Hey Floyd,

Going by Tesh's pic, I think Cape Verde is the jutting promontory to the left of the dark spludge I've nicknamed "mini abyss", and not that whole "coastline" area...

I was thinking on the whole coastline to the left of the boat ramp.
The reason is because SS named it talking about a place to take the big panorama and imo the first promontory just before the beacon won't have a good view to the NW part of Victoria. The rover should go maybe right to the beacon to get the best view.

Perhaps I should modify my route map to say 'Cape Verde (aka "beacon")'.

Get 'em while they're hot. Some pictures are down for sols 937-939.

Yes indeed on the exploratorium web site for September 15 pictures from Oppy

She's Alive

How did Spirit get in here?

That rover is waaaaay to dirty to be allowed in here

Nice... the parallax between the bright outcrop and the darker foreground (produced by the last little move) clearly shows that the outcrop, glimpsed between the two large mounds, has to be the top of the far rim cliffs.

Phil

Well, unless Oppy just did a really big drive, that ground shot looks like Spirit...

Edit: should've been quicker...

See - nice load of 937-8-9 images just came down

Panic over?

Doug

Ah, right... yes, that makes sense I guess, looking at it again. Sorry Floyd, I may have misled you there, my apologies ...

As we approach Victoria's edge, a quote by John Muir, the great naturalist, seems appropriate. he was writing about Yosemite, but these words seem fitting for VC...

"It is a vast wilderness of rocks in a sea of light, colored and glowing like oak and maple woods in autumn, when the sun gold is richest." ( from 'STEEP TRAILS' )

We're like drug junkies now. The constant data flow stopped abruptly. Paranoia is one possible symptom of severe withdrawl.

We will have to see when the Mer team posts a map, but I bet on the named sites being the jutting promontories (>5 degrees) rather than large chunks of coast (20-30 degrees).

Have you noted on today pictures that there's a kind of 2 parralel rims a few meter appart on the right corrected left of Capo Frio that we also can see on MGS' pictures?
I put 2 red lines inside a blue rectangular to show you them on the MGS picture.
Click to view attachment

No.
3 front hazcam pics and no movement of the arm. No RAT? Stalled arm again?

A lot of lovely MI images have been taken That's a lotta arm movement.

Doug

(All the MI images on exploratorium pre-grind) + (no change in instruments on arm) = RAT after weekend = another Victoria delay.

Patience everyone, not long now...

Click to view attachment

Great image, Stu! I'm sure someone will say you have Oppy on the wrong side of Victoria though...

sol 939 anaglyph:

Stu : your rover is very deformed. Something wrong with the rover integrity after reaching Victoria?

I see Oppy moved to the left, to here is "long" baseline animated GIF:

One frame is sol 931, the other is 939.

Now how did Oppy get to Arizona Stu? Is the sky red there because of all the Fires in the West???

I haven't seen anybody else talk about this, so pardon if this is duplicated information:

Steve Squyres was on NPR's Science Friday today and talked about Oppy's journey to Victoria: He predicted that Oppy would reach the crater rim late next week at the earliest.

The reason is that they have apparently completed the unlink of the new software and will be spending some time doing a shake down on it. Also they are very interested in the composition of the material on the annulus, which they think may have been blasted up from deep in the crater.

Here is the XML link in case you're interested: http://www.sciencefriday.com/audio/scifriaudio.xml & here's the ITunes subscribe link: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_det...?siteId=4822271

That to me seems like a really risky maneuver to do at this moment
With new software you always have the risk of something going bad. Even if they tested it on the ground a 1000 times or more and the probability of something going wrong is probably extremely low, it's still there! Can't they just drive to rim and play with new software? The new software has been on the rovers for quite some time now why of all times do they wan't to load it with 1-2 drives left before Victoria??

Remember it was a faulty command that ended the life for one of the Vikings! Wouldn't want that to happen!

Thanks for the heads up on the long baseline view, MaxSt.

Here's my own anaglyph 3x vertical stretch version:
Click to view attachment
And a cross-eyed version suitable for viewing with stereo photomaker:
Click to view attachment
There's a bit of rotation between the two frames, but I didn't correct for it as it seems to worsen the image quality somewhat. I hope this doesn't cause too many headaches!

We can now make out considerable real detail on the far rim (detail visible in both frames) - it's starting to actually look like an inner crater rim. I leave it to others to ID those details with the orbital images...

Oh they really did that now also? A bit suprising this close to opposition. I noted that several of the images at exploratorium was garbled, which might be a hint that communication are getting hard.

But the new software has *this* feature and *that* feature. We got to get it up now! ~~ oh those software programmers ~~ wait - I am one.

I dunno - its probably a pretty safe place to do it. They arent precariously near an edge or rolling over difficult terrain right now. A few days with the new software here and the drive to the rim should give them confidence. And heck, spending time here maybe collecting science before we all get wrapped up in the photo parade. So long as they dont break the darn thing I guess I can wait.

Just a humble amateur's effort to give people a smile. Sorry it's not up to the high standards of others' creations.

I'm sure there are many people here who can and will create such an image a lot better, and I'm looking forward to seeing them in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, when Oppy reaches the edge that is what that moment of arrival will feel like to me, having followed this amazing adventure avidly from day one (day one being the day the mission was approved, not landing day). Sometimes people forget how incredible her story has been, and continues to be.

So you are arguing that the edge of a precipice is a better place to have software go buggy?

I wish people would stop imagining these doomsday scenarios. You don't get this far past expected end of life without having procedural safeguards in place. Relax, and let the people who are paid to do this go about their business. End of mission is unlikely to happen because someone wrote a bad line of code that somehow escaped detection during the many hours of testing on Earth. It will most likely come suddenly when a critical component or connection fails in the extreme environment in which it has been forced to operate for years.

Or funding runs out.

Brian

UMSF'ers analysis is getting very powerfull. I was also thinking that it was not the right time to re-boot to new software, you know, just in case. But now, I realy agree that one or two drives and a week away from Vicky is realy a nice and safe idea. Thanks you all for your differents analysis and conclusions

Here is a mosaic of a wheeltrack with 2 imprints.

Taken with the L2 pancam on Sol 929.

jvandriel

They've done it twice before remember - and it will be a very valuable set of new tools to have on board - why would it be any more risky now than in, say, 7 days time?

The actual rover software has been ready to go for several weeks (check the flight director reports at JPL to see when they finished uploading it all) - and the testing has been of the ground systems to support the stuff the rover will be producing with it.

It wouldn't suprise me to see something like this.....

Finish IDD work
One long drive to Victoria and Navcam frames to downlink for the choice between the two Capes
Boot to new software

So...those of you complaining about doing it - you might get your way.... do the software update with victoria properly in view....and imagine how you'll feel if the update has a couple of sols of kinks to iron out after being turned on...you'll be FURIOUS.. "THEY'RE RIGHT AT THE RIM AND NOW THEY START USING NEW FLIGHT SOFTWARE.. OMFG WHAT ARE THEY DOING" . It doesn't matter if they change to the new flight software today, next week, next month, next year. There is a risk of a couple of sols of fixing kinks, but safeguards are in place to ensure the long term health of the vehicle and once sorted, this new software will make the rover more efficient at collecting science data. Go-and-touch will save dozens of sols during the exploration of Victoria I have no doubt - as will the ability to detect change within images for cloud observations etc etc. Given that the software will make the vehicle more scientifically efficient - it would be madness to do anything other than get it deployed and working at the first possible opportunity.

Again - for the upteenth time - people are jumping to conclusions and making criticism of planning and sequencing when they are privy to about 0.00001% of the information it requires to run these things. I'm getting tired of it and frankly, it reflects badly on all of us. If people start with the hysteria again, I'll be getting my two big boots ready called "delete" and "warning".

dot.dk and others - you have been warned.

Doug

The update for Opportunity has been released http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/sta...tml#opportunity

Cape Faraday was succesfully ground and examined with MI and the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on sol 939 . It was examined with the Moessbauer spectrometer on sol 940. Progress is being made even though we havent seen all the front hazcams yet.

Do you know if they can still reboot with the older software if there turns out to be a problem?

Given that the vehicle has both flight software versions onboard right now - I can't imagine a reason why you couldn't boot back to the old one.

A bit like having Win98 and WinXP installed on the same partition

Doug

0.00001% or rather 0.000001% ?!

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

That "update" doesn't say a thing!!

That 'update' tells us what the rover has done in the last week. It's been a hard week for scheduling so it's not exactly a packed week - but it's an accurate retelling of what's gone on.

Doug