Opportunity is not quite at Victoria yet, but on the horizon is a tantalising goal for the future- the big eroded crater to the south-east, the rim of which is already visible. This is the first 'large scale' topography of the mission so far. Wouldn't it be great if Opportunity could get to these hills and uncover their secrets?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sfjcody2/route_to_big.jpg

I agree that exploring the West Rim of Big Crater would be absolutely amazing, but having seen the first glimpse of Victoria I think that we are going to be here for a very long time. There looks to be enough geology here at VC to keep Opportunity occupied for a year (Earth or Martian!) or more.

Castor

Actually, the "Leg B of the etched terrain" might be feasible unless Oppy gets bogged down in Victoria. That would get us stratigraphically lower and would make for good science but not photo-ops.

--Bill

And I was hesitating on starting talking about this...

Beyond!:

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



EDITED: And for what I'm seing that 'Big Crater' doesn't have a name...yet...

Really nice picture by the way, not sure that I'd seen this one before.

Could those be fossil shorelines in the interior of that big crater? Bearing in mind how wet it's been in Meridiani, I find that easily conceivable.

Prior to committing to a Big Crater campaign, however, I'd want to fill-in the imagery to the southwest. Seems like I recall seeing some interesting dendritic channel terrain off in that direction, as well as some unique topography. The driving conditions off towards Big Crater look pretty boring.

For the love of god don't let a rover driver see this or we'll be attempting to jump Victoria in the rush to get there

Doug

Tempting ain't it?...

Troy will be ours!
And we got the only horse that fits for the journey...

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/troy.jpg

Man...I'm dizzy...

It's based on a THEMIS mosaic I found on the forums, can't remember who made it but thanks whoever you are!

I think the thing to do is to plaster the terrain between Victoria and 'Big Crater' with HIRISE images to determine the most suitable route.

That horizon looks like the one I posted in the mosaic with the synthetic sky...do not rely on the accuracy too much except for the obvious hills marking the rim of the far crater.

The real horizon is more straight and I'm not sure about 'B' ...

Maybe I'll give that horizon another go but honestly, for the moment, I don't give a rat's a** what's beyond Victoria, it's been a long way and I want to see this crater inside out

Nico

Yes, the original image was yours Nico

When we'll be on this promontory on the left, we'll have another perspective of "Troy" from which you'll be able to play around and find new/ confirm structures. I'm sure, we'll have to think about what's behind the horizon once Oppy will be inside VC. I'm sure will get bored sometimes during VC exploration so we'll revive this thread.

So that's what the horizon feature is. I didn't believe it could be that clear from so far away, but it is. Far out.

Since it is so clear, is there any remote science we can do on it from this far away? Would mini-TES tell us anything useful? 'Cause I reckon it's going to be a long time before we get much closer. I think we will be at Victoria for at least a year (Earth or Mars). If Oppy lives forever, maybe we will someday see 'Troy' up close.

It would indeed be nice to be able to explore that crater, but we need to remember the condition of the rover at present, the fact that it's way "out of waranty" at this time, and that it will likely take the better part of a year to explore Victoria in sufficient detail.

It is the project's policy to name craters only as we visit them, and the names used are project-specific - not IAU approved. That crater is 22 kilometers in diameter, and based on the IAU convention for naming craters on Mars would be named after a city on Earth with a population under 100,000. Craters greater than 100 kilometers in diameter are named after famous scientists, at least 3 years after their passing.

The view, though, is quite glorious from here! Wait until we get to the rim!

planetarily,
-Tim.

So...Victoria shouldn't bear a city's name?
Troy was a city...Wasn't it?...
And yes...Reaching one of the promontories it will be a hell of a view we will be previliged to contemplate...

EDITED: Just called it Troy because, at this distance, it would be a mythical battle to get there and to find a tricky way for our horse to penetrate the "city's walls" and contemplate Helen's beauty...
Well...Just foreseing all of us departing Greece and sailing all the way there.

So, "UMSF" will be OK : it's a city under 100,000

This thread remember me an other thread I made a time ago
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=2327

aka the proud and glorious Geeksville!

Well "Elk Grove" is out as of about 2 years ago. I once lived in Bozeman, MT though. That has a nice ring to it. I'll start my naming campaign as soon as we are finished with Victoria.

Mad, mad, mad... you're all completely mad. I love it!

Looking at the large-scale image I thought: those knife-sharp rim hills would look sensational from the north with a low light angle, at dawn or sunset. Hmmm... I wonder how wide that ridgeline really is?

Now... imagine - if you dare - the view from the top of Priam...

It doesn't.


...you guys know that, don't you?

-Tim.

Time to start a poll for the arrival at Big Crater. Let's see, I'll give maybe 400 sols to Victoria if we hurry. So that'll be somewhere around Sol 1350 for departure. It took almost 900 Sols to explore Endurance and then get to Victoria, minus some time at Purgatory. Assuming 1 stopoff at MiniEndurance, and only 100 Sols there.....let me see here.

Leave Sol 1350. Drive days, lots of drive days. No science. 400 days to get to MiniEndurance, Sol 1750. 100 Sols of exploration. 1850. Another 400 to get to Big Crater. 2250.
Add in times for getting stuck, and more time for science stops that really should be made. Maybe push Sol 2500. Plus possible wheel problems similar to Spirit's, Sol 3000.

While I'd love to see it happen, I think that that's pushing it a little.

You're welcome
Here's the original mosaic, if anyone else wants to play with it.

What'll be the definition of arrival then ? The crater is so big!
Anyway, by Sol 3000, MSL will be already there

Whao!
If Endurance is the crater on the uper left and VC on the South of it (in this case I can also see Erebus) we've already have roved half the distance it'll take to get to the first descent big hill.
I just realise it's just NOT impossible
May be one day Oppy will just do what Spirit did : climb a Hill. Umbelievable!!!!

We've covered just under half the distance to the endurance scale crater between here and 'Big Crater' - in terms of getting to Big Crater - we've covered abotu 30% of the distance required.

Doug

Nice diagram Ustrax, a shame it's fiction!

For two reasons - First, most of those features can't be seen in the original images - they are artifacts of Nico's processing. I can only see B, C & F

Here are some 5x vertical + contrast/brightness of the raw 943 pancams:

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachmentClick to view attachmentClick to view attachment

Second, The headings to those features are all wrong, here are the headings of the edges of the three features marked on the themis image.

Click to view attachment

As you can see B & C are the "Twin Peaks" on the north rim of the crater that we have been able to see for a while. As in my earlier work, the only thing in the direction of "F" is the far rim - It's a long way, but nowhere near as far as the Gusev rim is from Spirit so there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to see that far.

As we've found with the MOC images, sometimes the headings don't quite line up over large distances - I've marked (in light blue) the bit of the rim just offset from the derived heading that looks higher and what I consider to be the best candidate for "F"

James

Can anyone tell if the rim is higher than the Columbia Hills ?

If you look at the image I posted back here - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=66855

It's hard to read - but it looks like some of the far rim peaks could be 150+m above the surrounding plains so yes, bigger than the Columbia hills. (And maybe 600-700m above the crater floor!)

Are you trying to start another near-rim far-rim argument?

Oh we've got to stop this I'm getting excited about the sort of view we could have from there - and that's bad because I really can't imagine us getting there, realistically.

Doug

Me n'either, it's just too far. I might believe in it if ;

a - Victoria wasn't waiting here for us
b - The road up there is smooth all the way

Nico

I don't really believe it either, but if Opportunity ever gets to the point where it can be said to have 'done' Victoria crater, and if it is still mobile at that point, and if it's not trapped in the crater it would probably be worthwhile to extend the 'baseline' for measurements of horizontal compositional variation in the Meridiani bedrock by driving a long distance south-east (more or less the opposite direction from Eagle crater). Which just happens to be the direction of 'big crater'...

That's a BIG IF, if you ask me. I dunno, that V thing looks really steep, one has to wonder if Oppy'll be able to safely get in there in the first place!

So far, in Meridianii we only know (or search) "under" the plain. If we can climb this hill, we'll have what we're missing : a view "above" the plain and we'll may be see how deep the standing water has been. This must definately be a goal for MRO...in case Oppy will not reach the hills
Once again, take the distance from Eagle to Vicky, double this i.e about 15km, and you're at the hill. Not "that" far away.

Yeah, but consider how many more months/years that is. Is it really realistic to expect Oppy to live that long? While she's maybe getting smarter with time, she's certainly not getting any younger.

One more reason to be interested in going to this place: the rim of Big Crater (certainly the eastern rim, probably also the western rim, although it's hard to tell at this resolution) is not coated in blueberries- there's no hematite signal there! Whatever kind of bedrock it's made of is not the kind Oppy has seen to date...

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA05154.jpg

On the other hand, way back at Sol 1, or even Sol 90, would any of us have anticipated, realistically, that Opportunity would get as far as Victoria? Even the etched terrain seemed a long way of back thenl

If and when Opportunity leaves the Victoria it and the MER team (not to mention us!) will need another goal, and right now "Big Crater" seems no more impossible now that Victoria Crater was as a destination all those Sols ago.

======
Stephen

Once we had left Endurance - yes - realistically I thought that Victoria, if the terrain was navigable, was a genuine possibility.

However - looking SE from Victoria - I don't like the look of the terrain a great deal - there's no MOC NA imagery that I can see in that direction and we need that or HiRISE to judge what the navigability would be like.

Realistically - I think we could spend at least the next 300-500 sols exploring Victoria - THEN....let's see how the rover is doing.

Doug

I just got blinded with Helen's beauty...
Now we're getting somewhere with your great work James!

Another implication, besides Oppy becoming a granny faster and faster, would be the funding for the time needed to perform such a saga...but hey! Who knows?

EDITED: We can work this a bit more...
James, I made a new version taking in account some of your directions and others...not so quite...
From the features marked what are those we can say, with no doubt at all, that are misplaced or are, truly, artifacts?:

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/troy2.jpg

It's enough to make you wonder how terrestrial explorers of a non-mechanised kind ever managed to find their way around Earth before the advent of satellite imagery...

Having the MOC images has been nice (especially for Tesheiner's maps), but let's face it: they're a basically a luxury. They didn't stop Opportunity getting stuck at Purgatory and they were of limited use in determining--beforehand--what the actual nature of the etched terrain was like. They doubtless helped the Opportunity route planners attempt those long drives after Endurance, but the terrain itself soon spelt an end to those, imagery or no imagery. After that the rover and its planners more or less had to feel their way forward anyway. Only now that it has reached Victoria's annulus have the long drives resumed; and that has arguably had less to do with the orbital imagery than the flatness of the terrain evident to the rover's own eyes.

If the rover has the opportunity--pardon the pun --to strike out into the martian equivalent of Terra Incognita, why not? It will not be as if it will be venturing out there entirely blind. The rovers do have their own eyes, after all. If it--or at least its drivers--get a little lost and have to backtrack a little (or maybe a lot, depending on the terrain), so what? As everybody, from Steve Squyres down, keeps reminding us: the rovers are into extra time now. It's not as if they are trying to beat some kind of deadline (as they were back in their first 90 days). Opportunity in particular is on what Hollywood would probably term a "road trip"; and with those the journey and what you learn along the way can sometimes be at least as important as getting to the desired destination.


Of course. Victoria first.

But that said like others I'm beginning to have doubts about whether the rover will actually be able to get inside Victoria--short of rolling off a clifftop. And even then it may well find no bedrock to land on, just a slope of scree descending steeply to the dunefield on the crater floor.

Still, time will tell.

======
Stephen

Great reading Stephen!
We are starting to dream of that crater beyond and I love the way that sounds...
As imipak wisely said...: "Mad, mad, mad... you're all completely mad. I love it!"

Two points.

1) You left out F & G. I suggest F == Cassandra and G == Hector.

2) That should be "Ulysses" not "Ulisses". However, "Ulysses" was actually the Latin version of the Greek name "Odysseus". "Odysseus" is where the word "odyssey" comes from, a term that seems not inappropriate, I think, to be associated with Opportunity's trek.

======
Stephen

You're right, I've posted a wrong version...I corrected and used your suggestion trying to follow the legend's narrative:
So now we have:
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b14/ustrax3/troy3b.jpg
Agamemnon (I've seen his supposed death mask in Athens...Hypnotizing...) and his fleet (A) chasing Paris and Helen (, on the right we have Priam the King (H) as the tallest peak, with his descendance aside, Cassandra (G) and Hector (F) on the left the one who killed him, Achilles (E)
Only Ulysses (D) is a bit misplaced...We have to study that...
(Ulisses is the Portuguese way of writing it...)

Y?

Hey, Troy, MI, USA works!

Hmm...Google, Google

Darn. Already in use (look under "T")

SFJCody said "One more reason to be interested in going to this place: the rim of Big Crater (certainly the eastern rim, probably also the western rim, although it's hard to tell at this resolution) is not coated in blueberries- there's no hematite signal there!"

I think that is just a data gap in the hematite colour overlay on the background image. There are others, showing as grey windows in the colour. The rim one appears more prominent because the rim itself is so contrasty.

Phil

There are data gaps, yes, but most of them appear as linear streaks that have no relation to the surrounding areas. If you look at the three big craters in a row (the eroded one being at the top) you'll see that each one is surrounded by a 'halo' of green-blue (indicating a weak signal) that conforms to the shape of the rim. The smaller middle crater has quite a big 'halo' for its size, and this may be because it has a noticeable ejecta blanket overlying the terrain. It's the same (but more pronounced) with the really big fresh crater to the south west- the crater and the ejecta blanket shows no signal, and the outskirts are green-blue.

I'm with Phil on the data gap thought. While the big ejecta around the bottom-left crater is obviously devoid of hematite, the area in the "Big Crater" walls "lacking" hematite seems suspiciously coincident with the parts with greatest illumination/reflectance. It might well be instrument saturation occured there (this could be a ratio image used as color overlay) and no useful data exists for those spots.

Can we deduce crater's ages and/or water depth with those data? I mean age in comparison of hematite formation and depth by followinh hematire signal around the craters.

How would instrument saturation account for the low-hematite green-blue 'halos' (particularly for the case of the smaller middle crater with the ejecta blanket) which cover what appears to be low-reflectance terrain?