Sol 931 was indeed a drive fault - there is some DSN hogging going on so they'll be short of a few uplinks over the next few sols.

Expect IDD work over the w'end, and Victoria by the w'end after

Doug

Any details on the nature of the drive fault? I have a bet riding on it (Not really. I'm just curious - especially since it looks like I'm going to lose my bet on the far rim/far far rim debate. It would be nice to be right about something.)

There are a lot of interesting features in the bowl of Victoria. The PIA08477 adaption of the MOC image pales in comparision to the "raw" image which we should be able to get our grubby hands on next month.

Going back a year or two, this reminds me of the excitement of seeing the interior of Endurance. There were a lot of interesting slumps, slips and slides there. Look back in the NASA/JPL image archive (or Slinted's site) for Oppy images starting around Sol 100 and going up to the 300's. That will be a good practice run for looking at Vickie's goodies...

--Bill

I think they're gonna just sit around until the DSN issues are sorted out before doing the IDD work on that rock, which will be next Tue/Wed. Then hop over to the rim by Fri/Sat. (imho)

What is the DSN issue?

Not sure if this is what you're asking, but for any who don't know, DSN would be Deep Space Network, a shared and global network of big ol' dishes.

Others will have to address the specifics of this particular glitch or traffic jam.

Hey! I googled images for 'cleft', trying to understand what it means, and that did not amused me...

While we are waiting for the final steps towards Victoria I did the following exercise trying to identify two far rim features (A and seen on sol 931 pancams with their counterparts on a MOC image. Yes, this has been already done by Pando (for , but I've got different results.

Comparing this identification with Pando's, there is a difference of just 2 degrees in the absolute heading of the feature I identified as B and the one identified by him (slightly to the NE). The problem is that if I rotate the polar projection and the heading lines by those 2 degrees counter-clockwise, the near rim features I used as reference don't match (specially the one to the right of and the pancam pointing information (taken from the PCDT web) would be off by those 2 degrees too.

We should know the "ground truth" in few days, hopefully after only one driving sol, but meanwhile I would like to know your comments.

cleft1  /
–noun 1. a space or opening made by cleavage; a split.
2. a division formed by cleaving.
3. a hollow area or indentation: a chin with a cleft.
4. Veterinary Pathology. a crack on the bend of the pastern of a horse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Origin: 1300–50; ME clift, OE (ge)clyft split, cracked; c. OHG, ON kluft; akin to cleave2]

—Synonyms 1. fissure, crevice, crack, rift, cranny, chasm, crevasse.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

The Deep Space Network (DSN) communicates with nearly all spacecraft flying throughout our solar system. About 28 spacecraft are cruising in space, observing Jupiter, the sun, asteroids, and comets, and even more spacecraft are traveling to Saturn and the outer reaches of our solar system. The DSN antennas are extremely busy trying to track all of these space missions at once. The Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft must therefore share time on the DSN antennas. A sophisticated scheduling system with a team of hundreds of negotiators around the world ensures that each mission´s priorities are met.

The rovers´ downlink sessions (when the rovers send information back to Earth) will generally be limited to a couple of hours at a stretch, with perhaps two downlink sessions per Martian day (sol) per rover. MSPA allows only one spacecraft at a time to have the uplink, and it is expected that the rovers will command early in each sol (Martian day) for roughly an hour each to provide the instructions for that sol's activities.

You can find much more information at http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/features/index.html

Rodolfo

Just to bring RN's info up to date

Virtually no data is returned to Earth directly to DSN at this stage in the mission - it's all relayed via Odyssey and then on to the DSN from there.

The morning uplink containing one or more sols worth of instructions are uploaded, from the DSN to the rovers High Gain Antenna.

Once the rover has recieved this, and transitioned to the new command sequence - it will 'beep' the low gain antenna for 10 minutes.

Downlink is almost all conductied via one or more Mars Odyssey UHF relay passes in the afternoon.

The current problem as I understand it is that there is something of a bottleneck when it comes to uplinking to Mars, and thus one either has to upload several sols of commands when the chance exists ( multiple restricted sols ) and/or use the UHF relay passes to uplink data to the rovers, which has quite a long lead time ( several hours ).

Doug
(oops - edited to make it a bit more obvious what I meant w.r.t DTE vs UHF)

I think you mean that almost no data is returned to Earth directly via the DSN. All of the data comes back via the DSN one way or another, it's just that almost all of it is relayed via Odyssey.

Tesheiner, you're awesome I wasn't trying to make mine perfect (it was done only minutes after I got the images), so there's always room for improvement. Carry on...

EDIT: Actually, going back thru the messages for past few days, I would also like to credit jamescanvin who correctly identified it in this post very early after the images were down (which I missed while fiddling with the images myself).

I did the same, and got the same answer as you. But when I identified that feature on the 'old' victoria image (the one Pando just credited) I got the the same position as Pando. I think maybe this comes back to what you and I have discussed before about the map not being quite linear (image wasn't taken from *directly* above), hence we can't necessarily draw straight lines to get accurate headings.



It is hard keeping up with all this speculation at the moment isn't it! Thanks for the credit.

James

I asked this question a long time ago regarding Victoria but wanted to see if anyone knows or can show me what direstion the meteor that created Victoria came in at?

Bobby, it's impossible to tell. Victoria has none of the characteristics of a low oblique impact (elliptical shape, "butterfly" ejecta pattern). There's no information about the direction of the projectile other than that it was not a low oblique impact.

Phil

You may be right about that. I have been doing some line-of-sight stuff with several of the MOC images and the results seem to vary from image to image. I promised myself I wouldn't say anything until I was sure, but I have to say something.

Your comment made me feel more confident in the map projected gif images I had from the MOC. Those should work for mapping, right? I took a slightly different approach from others. I think we can all agree that we are looking at these features through the keyhole formed by the elevated ramparts on either side of the entry ramp (boat ramp). I think those ramparts are clearly visible on the C-PROTO MOC, and less so on others. Drawing line-of-sight vectors from Opportunity's location and across the inside edges of the ramparts defines the fov of the opposite rim that we can see. The keyhole gives us a fov of roughly 12 degrees according to MMB, which uses the pancam tracking database info, and that agrees with the angles I measure from the MOC map vectors.

The map projected gif seems to put feature B closer to Sofi or the promontory before it, than the Cleft, otherwise known as the gap between le grande tetons. That's about as far out on a limb as I care to go tonight.

I had once thought the impactor had come in from the SE, though at a fairly normal angle, because the central ripple field is somewhat offset to the NW. But if this really is an exhumed crater, all bets are off.

Oh, has anyone noticed that the trench and scuff pancams have finally come home? Good stuff.

SOL 936 is a driving sol



That's Monday if i'm not wrong. Wonder where we'll go?

Opps, I just missed your previous post.
Sorry James.

---

On a different issue, tosol's imaging plan includes a 4x2 color panorama of Emma Dean.




Edited: I'm missing to many things! I've just missed your previous post, dot.dk!!!

I think that'll be the small movement necessary to put the rock into IDD's reach. Once that's done can we expect to drive to the rim.

Don't worry, when I did (almost exactly) what you posted, I got so confused over the differences between the results from using different MOC images that I decided not to post it. So you didn't miss that!

As long as all all those that were on the 'beacon on the far rim' team don't miss the fact that it was a 'near rimmer' that first spotted a *real* far rim beacon! (here in case you did)

OK James. I started this near/far rim topic regarding Beacon. So is it far or near???

I think we all know where the Beacon is by now don't we?

Although to be fair to the far rimmers now we *can* see the far rim through a gap in the near rim it is brighter than the real beacon. See here. Beacon on the left - far rim on the right.

James

The fact that we now know the near rim to be at least 7m higher than the far rim dictates that way back at Beagle and Before, we couldn't have been seing the Far Rim.

Doug

Not necessarily. Before, Beagle Oppy was also higher in elevation and could have seen the south rim. Note that the largest, brightest area as we approach the rim is at the far rim, visible through a windgap. We've not ruled anything out, yet.

--Bill

2km back up at Erebus - we would have had to be 20m higher to see it. Is that a realistic figure?

Doug

Hi Stu. I'm pretty certain you are right that they are boulders and skree (the intermediate part of the crater seems quite steep judging by the way the fines have slumped down -- just a guess though) that have fallen down into the pit (or saucer or whatever is apt) as the rim disintigrates. What I find interesting is that there are very few of them considering the degree of erosion apparent in the crater rim which must, when formed, have been a nice neat circle. This might indicate there is an enormous amount of dust in the crater which has buried the boulders and other large-grained material that has fallen in over time. Perhaps there was some massive dust event or era in the ancient past which buried the entire crater but the dust is now in the process of being blown out, exhuming the very old crater. I had a look at the paper claiming Vic was once a buried crater and was a bit skeptical of the claim, however perhaps there is something to it. The plain around the crater also is above the top of the crater rim which I think must be quite unusual for a relatively young crater.

Whatever the case may be, 'Queen' Vic may just be the Grandmother of Meridiani with many secrets to reveal. How nice that we get ringside seats when her veil is drawn aside.

Indeed...

Thanks Mark. I think the interior of VC is going to be a fascinating place, I'm already looking forward to the over-my-head discussions between the rockheads here!

Some features worthy of our attention as the view opens up over the coming week...

Click to view attachment

The Space Shuttle Atlantis is up and safe. What a great week to come. The Shuttle joins the International Space Station and Oppy gets to Victoria. Time to celebrate. Party at Jamescanvin place

Gorgeous use of colour in that. The scuff has nicely smeared the "blue" stuff off the blueberries and streaked the far end of the trench with hematite. There are are obviously tons of blueberries here similar to Eagle. The APXS has sampled the bright and dark soil by the look of it and those results when they are in will be fascinating. I still find it amazing how the dark fine stuff has been somehow winnowed from the dust inside to form the fascinating streaks that fan out from the north rim. What makes it so much lighter/finer?

Here's some catchup stuff:

Sol 931 Navcam equirectanglar
Sol 931 combined Navcam/Pancam equirectangular - reduced size
Sol 931 combined Navcam/Pancam equirectangular - 14000x7000 pixel version
Sol 931 Pancam drive-direction mosaic

I guess I'll post this in this thread, even though most of the speculation about it was in the other thread, just to try to consolidate things here.

The Pancam tracking pointing info seems to be updated on Sol 931, as opposed to Sol 929. In particular, the hill-like object on the horizon is now at azimuth 131 degrees, not azimuth 124 degrees - and this difference is too large to be explained by Opportunity moving a couple meters. Counting pixels on the JPL route map, I get a heading of 130.88 degrees to the craterlet we've dubbed 'Sofi'. Perfect match - the feature on the horizon is 'Sofi'. Advantage: far-rimmers. (vs. far-far-rimmers) ( )

Okay, I'm confused now... would that mean that the bright features "beneath" 'Sofi' are actually on the crater floor then? i.e. the farside of the dune rippled area..?

Could really use an annotated chart of what's going on...

Which hill-like object on the horizon are you referring to??

...cos if that big rocky scab on the horizon really IS the raised rim of "Sofi" then that suggests the view from the edge across to t'other side of VC is going to be... disappointing...

The big one. But never mind - somehow I got my readings backwards. The bearing was 131 degrees on sol 929, and 123 degrees on Sol 931. The data was obviously not correct for one of those days, but I'm not sure which one anymore. Forget I said anything...



Oh, I wouldn't say that, anyway.

I do get a heading of 131 degrees to 'Sofi' based on the JPL route map - somebody tell me if I am wrong.

**slap on head**

Don't DO that to us!! (Stu pauses for heart to start again...) If you'd been right that would have meant that Sofi's rim was the tallest feature "over there" and there's b****r all of that!

Phew...

Well, I could still be right, you know. I'm just not sure. Victoria remains mysterious to me.

Yeah, you're right... Victoria's not going to give up her, um, secrets easily...

Seriously tho, don't you think that if that big feature on the horizon was Sofi's rim it would be a bit of a blow? Surely it would mean no tall outcrops or walls would be visible over there?

What fascinates me particularly is the possibility of actually catching something falling away from the edge and tumbling or, more likely, sliding down into the crater. Wouldn't that be something?

Not necessarily the same thing, but there is something strange on the pointing data for those two sols.
The "drive-direction" pancam shots taken on those two sols are centered on 140º (per the PCDT web), however there is a clear displacement (about 2º) on the far-far features and that can't be accounted by parallax effects; the drive was too short.
Maybe something related to the aborted drive, who knows...

By next week we should have the answers to all this speculation.

Two polars from mhoward's recent sol 931 posting...

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

As long as it is not Oppy herself...

I wasn't going to be the first one to say that....

Stunning polars, Phil! In the second one, the eroded crater Zeta finally looks like a crater! Many other features are identifiable with the orbital images.

I was just noticing the same thing. This type of projection seems to have lot's of advantages over the planar projection approach, even Emma Dean and her Shadow look realistically round, and this is the clearest perspective on Zeta that I've seen. Down side is that it's a bit tricky to overlay onto the Route Map, but that may be less of a problem then I'd thought previously.

It rather seems that the multiple craters in this region, barring Zeta, may have been the result of a single fragmented impactor... the mutual proximity seems statistically unlikely otherwise.

To overlay my "extreme polars" on the route map, you really need rubber-sheeting (or georectification) software. I would use the various craters and other recognizable features as control points to warp from my view to the map view. I do this at work all the time using GIS software - PCI is what I usually use. But for home use I could really use a free or inexpensive rubbersheeting program. If anyone ever finds one please let me know. (open memo to PCI marketing team: just sell your GCPWorks module as a stand-alone routine for non-GIS-users!)

Phil

I think we'd be better off celebrating just down the road at Astro0's place. That is almost certainly where the first 'Oppy at Vicky' images are going to be received.

How about using a free GIS system like GRASS. It is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Take a look at http://cemml.carleton.ca:8080/OGUG/Members...logical-mapping.

You can find GRASS at http://grass.itc.it/