Hmm.... give us some free comm time, a little training, and I bet a group of the folks here would volunteer to keep Oppy going for several years.

If you stay in one spot you are almost sure to find nothing new, but you never know what you might find if you keep roving.

Yes, I would rather see Oppy die in the middle of nowhere while trying to do something, than retire in place, running down to nothing for no purpose.

"Rove until Death!"

I cannot conceive of them cutting off funding on either rover if they're still working and in reasonably good health.

The instruments are *already* on Mars, and have worked extraordinarily well. Just the Pancam images, with all their filters, are highly valuable, even if the mini-TES and the IDD sensors break.

Does it make sense to spend the money on platforms that are already performing on Mars, or on platforms that we hope will successfully land there someday? (Yes, we ought to do both -- but I can't see foresaking working explorers to put the money into another program that might possibly end up elsewhere from where they're targeted, like the bottom of the Atlantic...)

-the other Doug

Couldn't agree more.
This babies are of a...roving kind, I'd rather see them proudly getting silence while on duty.
Sending us a last image as a farewell from somewhere ahead, beyond Victoria.
Opportunity (and Spirit...) are the perfect ambassadors of human nature, by saying that our adventure on Mars won't stop where predicted but when the last breath is taken.

Likewise, I like to imagine Opportinunity on her final trek across the great desert beyond, going until she can't go any further...

....sort of like the cartoon of an alien, crawling across desert sands, away from ?his? crashed flying saucer, and saying: "Ammonia! Ammonia!"

Pity that Big Crater fell just out of the scope of yesterday's MRO imaging.

LOL - 'just' - you'd need another two HiRISE images to get across to it.

Doug

LOL?

Laugh Out Loud

Sorry, Doug. I should have explained it better. I know what LOL means, I just didn't get the joke. NNTR.

I was laughing at the thought that 'Big Crater' was just outside that HiRISE image...which it isn't. You would need another two swathes widths to get there.

Doug

Oops,
The orientation of the .._1780 image was upside down compared to images I normally see of Victoria/ Big Crater


Which brings me back to my orginal question:
is there some time line/ planning what parts of Mars are being imaged by MRO? Or is it for outsiders purely coincidental what images become available?

As far as I know, MRO will take pictures landing sites for Phoenix as the highest priority since the spring in the northern hemisphere is approaching soon and that seasson will be a problem with the increase of dust density in the atmosphere. Later, the other priorities is around the Chasmas as the one of the favorites MSL landing sities.

Rodolfo

Preachin' to the choir, here...I used to do avionics maintenance on C-5s & C-141s. Whenever a malfunction would abruptly disappear for no apparent reason, we'd call it a "Lockheed fix"...

What did they have to do with HESSI? (which was nearly trashed by an inhouse test accident at JPL.)

You mean this one?

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Stephen

Almost certainly the same one... though my memory is sort of the mirror image.. crawling off to the right...but that memory is many many years old.

Grin!

EXCELLENT! I knew the drawing from the description - it was in a compilation of classic New Yorker cartoons that accompanied me through my childhood - but I hadn't seen it for about thirty years. Until Today.

Marvellous, and many thanks Stephen,

Andy

I bow to your mad google skills - I gave up after a few minutes of false hits.
I saw this cartoon as a kid IIRC in the TimeLife book series on Life I think...

Oops, wrong accident! I was thinking of the NOAA-N Prime accident, where the satellite fell over, causing millions in damage, because LM personnel did not follow proper procedures.

I tend to agree with edstrick that the image might have been flipped. Then again, the signature are not so I guess tere been two versions of it by the same cartoonist. (And I go smack myself with a brick so I stay on topic from now on)

Heh, Auntie Beeb had me going for a moment there...

I can't see that Oppy would be sent off on a probably fruitless quest for Ithaca/BC, as the value of a motionless rover with broken wheels but working cameras would surely be considerably higher perched on the rim (or inside) VC than stranded out on the plains somewhere between VC and BC. The variable relief would be likely to lead to more useful data on seasonal changes in wind, tau, dust accumulation/removal and so on. Oppy at VC would still be able to do 'fairly remote' sensing of conditions on the plains, but would also have a feature within which to look for microclimates or other localised phenomena.

And since Victoria seems to be eroding, Opportunity can witness the process in action from a high promontory, while watching the seasons pass for several years. I'll bet a couple of chunks will calve off the walls at some point over the next few years. Would certainly be more interesting than watching sand blow across a featureless, flat plain.

The nature of Opportunity is to rove, untill the end.

Does a Mars Exploration Rover have the Ustrax nature?

MER was born luckly with wheels so she is very lucky to be able to rover to the end toward the Ithaca crossing any permissible road.

Rodolfo

“On the day you say yourself "Enough!" , you are already dead.
You shall always endure, you shall always go onward, you shall always walk.
Don't stop on the way, do not withdraw, don't leave the way.
That one that does not advance, stays behind”

Saint Augustine
(Translated by me, can someone please find a correct english version?...)

Wouldn't it be great to multiply Victoria's "WOWs" 20 times?
We would need a XXL swear box...

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

The realy interesting thing about big crater, to me, is that it appears to predate the evaporite layers that opportunity has been investigating. The sediments seem to drap over the crater and the original rim is poking through in some spots. If we could investigate those peaks, we might see unaltered rock that pre-date the evaporite layers.

That would be exciting...

ed

Of course, nobody will know what interesting things are over there unless and until Opportunity actually goes.

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Stephen