Well - the orig plan was for a ratting - and we've not had that so far. I don't know if they hang around and try again though.

Doug

Interesting "dimples" in the ground on the new pics...

Click to view attachment

What's up with this "update" then?

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/status.html#opportunity



Do they know what they are doing?

Not a new image though - quite an old one - just took a while to come down the pipe Nice colours though - and fascinating layering of the dune material - reminds me of those toys you can get. A tank with water in it, and different types of sand. You shake the whole thing up and the sand layers its way up from the bottom.

Doug

SOL 942
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...23P1151R0M1.JPG

SOL 936
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...23P1151R0M1.JPG

Not even a slight change in the RAT position!

Did the RAT not feel good contact and aborted the grind?

PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSttttttttttttttttfffffffffffffffffffppppppppppppppppppp.
... (sound of Stu's balloon bursting...)

VVVVVVVVVVVVVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCTTTTTTTTTTTTTTOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRR
RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !! Do you feel better, Stu?

I think they simply forgot to put in "Plans called for...." - because I think it was written before that sequence would have occured.

Doug

very nice colors, Stu

They retrieved mostly old data. Looks like they are clearing out some memory for new pics

Sol Clock Day*
939 21154 Sep 15
940 21163 Sep 16
941 21172 Sep 17
942 21180 Sep 18

*Earliest day to get data

Maybe we will get more data in 1/2 hour.

RAT or no RAT, we're outta here!

Hmmh - whats a "1_R92preboot" sequence for? Looks to me like we are loading up the new S/W rev not moving.

"preboot" is the key here I think

Yup - I'd say tomorrosol is thus...

Targetted Navcam on Kitty Clydes Sister ( 5 x 1 )
IDD document arm.
Drive
Penultimate haz's
Final haz's
A full 360 navcam pan

And then...I guess reboot into the new software the sol thereafter.

Doug

Yes, unless "preboot" is an outcrop's name!
BTW I'm trying to identify Kitty Clydes Sister without success. As I believe they give names to features not so far from were Oppy is, I guess we'll have another short drive. Any clue where Kitty Clydes Sister is?

Regarding the new software.
I understand that, part of it, (if I realy simplify) will help to detect "changes" by comparing pictures. I wonder if it can work the other way around say, he tells Oppy : "You're supposed to move, please take pictures and confirm". In case of big slipage (sand trap), she'll detect NO movment = she'll stop. I understand that with poor references as in Meridianii it can be hard to compare pictures.
I also wonder if she'll be able to detect over run, as opposed to slipage, in case the soil will go away when entering VC.

I’ll risk a question that I think a lot of us newbies have had for the last week or so but are afraid to ask... Namely, cutting through the “pre-boot”, “hazcam” etc. jargon, when WILL we get to Victoria? Is it a matter of a day, a few days, a week, two weeks? That's not been clear from the posts of the last week or so (at least, clear to a newbie...)

From last Friday's interview on NPR's "Science Friday", Steve said that it would be "late next week at the earliest". So a conservative guess would be 1-2 weeks - but maybe we'll be surprised.

Fingers crossed, waiting patiently

Can't be as a 10x1 Navcam pan is a standard 360.

I agree with Doug's reading to the letter.



We just don't know, the drive tosol could take us to within 10m of the rim or it could just be repositioning us for a new target at Emma Dean. We'll just have to wait and see what we see.

Isn't it exciting!

James

I'll guess that any "drive" is a repositioning for best communications during and after reboot. After that, a few days of testing for the new software before driving resumes.

I'm as eager to see Victoria as anyone, but I suspect that the overall plan calls for patience. If I were on the drive team, I think I'd plan to reach Victoria's rim and get a good panorama as a goal to achieve before the solar conjunction, with the panorama to be used for planning post-conjunction activities. I certainly wouldn't expect anything more ambitious until they've had time to analyze the ground-view, and plenty of time to complete any next steps without the rush of (solar conjunction) deadlines.

So we may have a nice view around Columbus day, but we may spend more time on the rim than we did at Endurance.

There's an understatement. It's 2500 m around the crater (> 25% of the total so far) and I'd bet dollars to donuts they're gonna go round at least one circumference before jumping off the edge. (Great post Diane btw).

Back to thumb twiddling and armchair roving ...

Well 'Kitty Clyde's Sister' is one of the boats in the Powell expedition so it must be one of the other nearby craters (probably Zeta?)

I don't want to get anybodys hopes up prematurely but...

The fact that the pan of 'Kitty Clydes Sister' is a 5x1 navcam (180 degrees) would imply that it's going to be taken from right next to it, and the fact that there is another 10x1 navcam implies that KCS is not the end of the drive.

So my guess from that is: Todays drive will be quite a long one, the closest point of Zeta on the way to Victoria is about 40m away, so at least that, and could be quite a lot more!

Just remember - don't get your hopes up *too* much this is still very much a guess using *very* limited data!

James

I just checked exploratorium....looks like we're getting forward hazcams, navcam, pancam pics in now. No rear hazcams yet.

Front Hazcam Pic - Is this Kitty Clyde?

No, those are all old images so far - that one you linked is from 941 - Cape Faraday.

I'm not expecting any 943 images for 4-5 hours *at least* even if everything is working properly again now (which I don't think it is )

James

Ahh, gotcha, thanks. Just checked marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and the local time at Meridiani is close to 1 PM, so that makes sense. As far as "everything working properly" do you mean DSN/Odyssey communications issues? I thought I read some chatter on here about that.

What I mean is, over the past week none of the images/data appaers to be making it to Exploritorium or the Pancam data tracking site as it normally does. Instead we've had one or two big updates several sols late. The reason I'm still not sure it is fixed is that there is still a lot of data missing from the tracking site (even though a lot of the images have made it to Exploratorium). I really hope that's just a backlog problem and tosols make it through - I don't think I can stand the suspense!




Here is a quick diagram of what I think is going to happen tosol based on that Kitty Clyde's Sister navcam sequence.

Click to view attachment

Cyan line is the predicted path - swinging by Zeta (KCS) for a quick 5x1 navcam pan (green) before moving on toward the rim.

James

That 5x1 of Kitty Clyde's Sister really had me scratching my head. I don't have anything better to suggest, but it sure seems odd that they would target 5 navcams on zeta when it can already be better seen in the pancams from here. However, your proposed site for that sequence is pretty darn close to the yellow brick road in that C-PROTO map that Pando posted a while back, which has been pretty much dead-on since leaving Beagle. I was probably reading too much into the "sister" part of the name when guessing KCS was the small crater just off to our left.

Playing with tiny bits of information is one of the things this forum does well. I can't wait to see some new imagery, but I think your guess is the better one. If I had my druthers, I'd drive into Emma Dean and get to work, but as minimal as the risk appears, I doubt they'd take that chance at this point.

That's been done for a year or more. It's called 'visidom' and it's why you see lots of down-sized Navcam images from time to time.

-Long drive ( a couple of metres )
-Navcam images
-short drive ( a few 10's of cm's )
-Navcam images
-compare first and second Navcam images to estimate distance covered in short drive
-Compare distance covered with distance commanded to calculate slip
-Continue or halt drive.

This flight software will improve that code to make it faster and more efficient (true for much mobility), and also let it 'track' distance targets. Combined with the 'go and touch' I guess that could reduce the 'par' for target approaches by a sol or two

With the new flight software - I would be expecting a couple of things

- The drive NOT being right up to the rim..several 10's of M short to give them 'play room' to try the new features without driving straight over a cliff.
- The images NOT being too quick down the pipeline. They've have drouble with the image pipeline for a couple of days a couple of times recently - and tie that in with the flight software update and I would be cautious when hopiing for images too soon
- If you thought the crater-fever was bad now - imagine what it'll be like with a few days of flight software testing that much closer to the rim. I would suggest medicinal therapy to manage the stress.

Doug

Oh Yes, I think I need a therapy too since I knew about visidom! (in French we say something like : he has invented the weel again). Anyway, it's nice to have a status now, it'll help to update the one that didn't know (ok, that's a very bad excuse ((why did I ask for something I knew, eh? Why did I ask?)).

Finaly I must admit I luv those weeks in the sense that they are very JPL-like : do one step after the other, be (VERY) patient, stay in your own world, do everything-every analyse so you're sure not to put the vehicule in danger. In the old years, when I knew what happened weeks or months after the action, I was very admirative of the way JPL was doing its job. Nowaday, the Internet has changed the whole game. At work, collegue send you a mail and expect an answer right away. I guess all of us hate this, but we don't mind putting this "pressure" on JPL because they don't go to VC quick enough.
Guys, please, instead of medical therapy, try JPL's. JPL do it right

According to Pancam Data Tracking Site some images from Opportunity are received....

Click to view attachment

Still nothing at exploratorium...
Is there anybody that knows how did the drive went?

Edit:

UPS!!!!
I have mistaken Spirit's and Opportunity's sol 943...aaaaargh!!!
SORRY!

Not too fast Toma.
That report is for MERA (Spirit) some 20 sols ago.

I checked the same one minute before you and found nothing; did the same now and the result is the same.
My feeling is that we won't receive any data until Goldstone takes the handover from Madrid ground station.

You don't know when that should happen?

There won't be another picture update at the exploratorium/pancam site until the 21st of September.

> You don't know when that should happen?

No.
But note it's still 05:00am in California (PDT); too early to have the Goldstone antennas pointed at Mars (quite near the Sun). Yesterday images were available on the Exploratorium at about 11:30PDT so I would expect something similar today.

> There won't be another picture update at the exploratorium/pancam site until the 21st of September.

Sources?

Doug: you said "It's called 'visidom' " - an expression you've used frequently. But shouldn't this be 'visodom'? Visual odometry?

Phil

You know what - you're right. I've always read Visodom, and in my brain it's always sounded 'Visudom' half way between idom and odom - so when I type it - I get it wrong. Well picked up.

Doug

Looks like there is...not much but something
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...cam/2006-09-19/

A look back at Emma Dean...

Click to view attachment

Frankly, my dear, I don't Visadam! (Too much "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" lately... apologies )

I suspect everyone who's asking about the schedule for DSN downlinks, Odyssey passes, the relative time differences between Meridiani and various places on Earth and so on are really all asking the same thing: when will we know when the first post-drive images of the crater will be available? I started trying to keep track of the timezones and DSN schedules, but after breaking a couple of pencils and giving myself a headache I decided to rely on the good offices of the hardcore UMSF brigades.

I'm checking UMSF very frequently nowadays (I'm even posting this from work... eek!) but I'm not looking for
pics. I'm waiting for one of the gurus who can decipher the command sequences soon after they're uploaded to Oppy to announce "At last - Oppy is driving today, we can expect the first images to appear at 0530 GMT" (or whatever.) I will then be very happy to stay up all night (or get up early) and sit monitoring Exploratorium until the first pics of our new home appear. To be honest, despite meditating for days upon the nature of time, the meainglessness of impatience and the importance of extinguishing desire, I too am getting just a little bit tired of the last 10 days' painstaking and methodical activities... not to criticise JPL or anyone else, of course, it's just the same feeling I had as a child trying to get to sleep on Christmas Eve... )

VICTORIA HO!!!

This navcam pic is better the a thousand words.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P1968L0M1.JPG

To use a quaint old English phrase...

GET IN THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mãezinha do Céu!!!

uuuh....

Look like an open BIG mouth with a lot of big teeth !
Thanks Tesheiner

getting there!.

The ground is really opening up now!!

Look at the height difference of the rim here!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P1968L0M1.JPG

Oh, what a tease you are, Vicky!

There's a big chunka something over on the left there...

It looks much smaller than I expected - maybe that's an illusion?? Also, the far-far-rimmers appear to have been correct on the horizon feature. It looks like we have a nice view of the surrounding terrain from here, or will when we do a Pancam pan.



Yeah, where did *that* come from?

Change the subtitle STU, change the subtitle! we're no longer at Emma Dean! Find a good one for us STU