Could it be material "splashed" across the crater by the formation of Sofi Crater over on t'other side? I'm just thinking impact... low gravity... some molten material might have made it over to Verde..?

I don't see anything except the usual irregular fractured rock surfaces.

Phil

That reminds me of something...
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Maybe they want to save the Sol 953/954 PanCams for the press conference?

Can you believe it! I can't remember how long we have been waiting for another press briefing. In the past these things usually were fairly informative, so I'm really looking forward to this one.

Okay then, as a general point, would it be possible for material from the Sofi impact to have reached this opposite side of VC? How, for that matter, might the impact that formed Sofi have affected the rock layers on Sofi's own side of VC, and the outcrops and features we see close to it?


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Actually, the data have already hit at the PCDT web but not at the exploratorium.
From the available date we can say that today's drive was about 41m towards Cabo Verde and both a 5x1 navcam and 4x1 pancam mosaics were taken after drive.

Very nice image Stu

Nico

Thanks Must admit the angled slumping of that particular feature is... (cue Spock-like raise of eyebrow) fascinating...

Come on Exploratorium... taps fingers....

Likely they are holding on to the raws to make a big splash at the PC. I wouldn't blame them since they know how nice a job UMSF experts can do in a couple of minutes.

Hmmm, with the press conference on Friday that would mean holding on to 3 days worth of raws, which I just don't think they'd do. Cassini, maybe; MER, no...

I just think there's a guy sat there at Exploratorium, cackling as he's reading our frustrated posts, thinking "Ha, I'll make you wait...!!!"

New Pancams up

> I just think there's a guy sat there at Exploratorium, cackling as he's reading our frustrated posts, thinking "Ha, I'll make you wait...!!!"

It looks like he read your post Stu.

Sol 957

Left

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Right

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stereo

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and vertical projection 1cm/pix

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I have to agree, Phil. Dilo's magnificent 'sharp shot' de-emphasises the 'lizard green', if any there be.
I'll even hazard a guess as to what we see (on the chance that we won't eventually get a closer look ):
A large block fallen outward from its original location, with 2 or 3 small shards landing on top of it.
Call it the Loch Ness Monster Fuzzy Photo Effect:Click to view attachment

I was planning to post tosol navcam mosaic but you was faster (and better), Indian3000.

Now the question is: are they planning to drive to the tip of Cabo Verde?

thanx but all it's 80% automatic for me, with my homemade software

pseudo-polar sol 957


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Stu,
Are we convinced that the big lump fell from above, or could it be in situ?
If the latter, it goes on the shortlist of "deepest exposures" for an ultimate visit..

Don't go nearer that edge woman!

Well, without getting too technical...

I don't have a <chink> <chink> <chink> clue!!! Have to ask one of our areology experts , I'm just a guy with clearly too much time on his hands at the end of a long work day, trying to make pretty pictures with lens flare on

... but if I was to foolishly venture an opinion, I think that this feature seems to be jutting out of the slope rather than lying on it, suggesting your latter possibility might be accurate. If that's true then wow, the wonders we might find over there...

But as I said, what do I <chink?> know?

Keep going Oppy, lots more to see just up ahead... atta girl...

The faint white ellipse gives our rough location as of sol 957:
Click to view attachment
(Thanks to Nico for the pan.)

I wonder whether they'll park at the large white tasty outcrop in front of us or continue closer to the tip of Verde. The view from here is certainly stunning, but much of Vicky is out of view so it wouldn't seem to be the best spot for a big pan. On the other hand we won't see much more of the far rim from the tip of Verde.

Great renderings Indian3000! And thanks for providing the separate left & right images, especially for the sol 952 vertical projection from last week.

Just in case the <ahem!> herpetomorphic pseudoquadripedal feature is not merely a trick of light and shadow, I would like to point out that CuCO3 has a distinct greenish tint...

Only the hydrated basic carbonate. - and that can be green or blue
/nitpicking mode off

Ah...truly stellar fact-checking, Aldebaran... ...I should have added the word "sometimes".

Seriously though, ever since the salty subsurface soil deposits became glaringly evident in Gusev I've wondered if we'd encounter some exposed transition metal ores, which would be strong evidence for widespread subsurface water at some point in the past (or present?) The upper regolith seems oddly un-mixed in some areas in comparison to Earth's, presumably because water on Earth is ubiquitous.

The HPF (my suggested euphemism for l*z*rd, lest the nutosphere run wild) may well the first such "fossil" ore outcrop found, but by no means the last; weathering of these materials on Mars must be far slower than on Earth due to the extreme dessication of the environment.

Finding an economically important mineral on Mars would certainly be an exciting discovery, but let's not forget that there is a reason these color images are called false-color. I know the colors seen on that feature are different than the blues and blue-greens that we commonly see in false-color from both rovers, but the blues and blue-greens normally become some shade of gray when the nearly-true color images become available.

Point well taken, CR; certainly we're still in the realm of purest speculation right now. However, that sure is a big part of the fun! Hope that they can do a good mini-TES scan of HPF from close range...

The heck of it is with respect to "economically important ores", as you termed them, is that they almost certainly have to be there...infinitely cool if we could find some, still blown away by the meteorite back near Endurance.

If they were as accessible as, say, Alaskan or Siberian resources we'd have ten launches a week. My kingdom for a technological revolution in space propulsion (in all domains!)

That's the thought that has fascinated me for a long time. We were all born on a planet where previous gatherers/collectors had already picked over the obvious stuff lying on the surface. Imagine being the first intelligent collector to explore another world.

A preview of the Duck Bay panorama.

Click to view attachment

Oops, wrong version - fixed.

James.

I hope they don't take Oppy too close to the edge! Look at those blue berries close to the edge at the bottom of this image:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...LJP2394R1M1.JPG

It could be like driving on marbles if there is a rock pavement beneath them. Either a slip all the way down or a difficult drive back up.

Aberdeenastro

FYI, 958 is planned as driving sol too.



> I hope they don't take Oppy too close to the edge!

Dunno if there is enough time before conjunction but "Beacon's Cape" looks better to take the big panorama and safer too.

Oh no... stop it... I now have an image in my mind of Oppy slipping and sliding and trying desperately to stay on her feet like that mini At-At in "Jedi" when it's trying to walk on logs... Get out of my head!!!

I'm sure she'll be fine, they'll take no risks with our brave gal.

Nice job - this is hand coloured, right?

I don't think so. It looks like James assembled this one from the tracking site thumbnails.

I'm glad to have that preview btw James. I look forward to the official release next Friday..

Nico

but from the lens geometry it does look like a colorized sol952 navcam panorama
Very good job on the colorization. kudos, James !

I'd say the opposite Bernhard, Navcam needs less frames to cover that area...

Nico

I see - he took the navcam pan as the red channel (it's response is dominated by IR/red, and resolution will be much sharper than L2 thumbs). Then he used the L7's and L5's that are down and the L7 and L5 thumbs for the remaining areas, scaled to navcam resolution.

I assume he blacked out portions of the navcam that are not covered by L5/7 - that's why we see 16 degree blocks.

Is that it, James?

Exploratorium has pictures with today's date, but they are just the entire set from yesterday again. Strange.

Oh and here is me thinking she had not moved very far, LOL.

"Mars Rover 3D world" demo video on sol 957

AVI with xvid encoding "9.5 Mb"

Mars Rover 3D world demo video

and a small video on the same theme

AVI with xvid encoding "585 kb"

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Sol 958

Navcam ( R0 ) + pancam ( R2 )

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Very nice work Indian

I've been playing with the navcam sol 957;



Nico

Thanks Indian, Nico ... incredible views


(and as always perfectly smooth horizon, Nico ;-)

Cannot avoid to be in complete agreement! Great work, guys. These last panoramas are even more breathtaking, Victoria is a really sweet place!

The rear hazcam shows we moved a fair distance on sol 958. But it doesn't seem like Oppy is headed to the point of Cape Verde. Do you think we are headed to The Beacon?

The navcams and pancams make it clear we are headed to the tip of Verde.

The only question that remains is how close dare they get to the "edge"?

PS - I guess this discussion should go to the Verde thread...

Sol 958

Left

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Right

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Those are pretty nice! Now, if you could include some kind of DEM model for the crater, or just an approximation, it would make things a lot more real, as right now the crater is completely flat.

Sol 958

stereo

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vertical 1cm/pixel

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pseudo-polar

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