The press conference is in progress (8 am pacific). Check it out. You will be impressed.

-Rob

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08813

Wow.
If they would have had that, they probably would have been able to blind-drive Opportunity all the way to Victoria, right around the dunes.


Image description page, with high res zoomed Opportunity image

Wow, I just saw the link for the nearly-300MB TIF full res version.



Here, there's a longer image available. I think I can see rover tracks near the top of it, at least in the Browse JPEG file. Still downloading the full-res TIF....

holy crap!

Even the rover tracks show up!

It was a good press conference, except that the "gentlemen" (=nitwits) of the press didn't have any questions!

Fantastic!

To see Oppy so dwarved by Victoria...to be there! WOW!

<standing ovation> Thank you NASA, JPL, everyone who made this possible...

Repeats is on NASA TV 12:00 PM est. NOW!

I guess the thread was deleted.

I just watched the press conference.

Absolutely stupendous MRO and pancam images.

Seeing the SHADOW of the pancam mast and the outline of Opportunities solar deck has to be beyond anyone's expectations !

Here are some brief quotes from Steve, Jim, Al from my notes. Steve said with great emotions:

"Its Day 960 of the 90 day mission. And, Its so good to see the rover again. Its one of the most evocative images I have ever seen"

"For 21 months (since leaving Endurance) we have seen the same stack of rocks. Now we have the capability to see down to the deepest stack of rocks we will ever see. We expect to see older and younger rocks. We will not see a deeper stack on this mission"

" We do not intend a suicide drive into the crater. We want a safe path in and a safe path out. We intend to go in, but do it carefully and safely."

"Duck Bay is a sure fire way into the crater, but may not be a surefire way out. Another problem is that Duck Bay faces south." So if they go into duck bay, the first thing that will happen is that the power will go down. They need the pancam data to determine if duck bay is rocky enough to enter safely.

So as soon as we find a safe way in and out and gather the rim rata, they will enter, he said

He said they "are formulating a plan of attack". A partial circumnivigation is planned. direction not yet decided. He said they used the new HiRise images to to drive to the edge of Cape Verde (another example of synergy).

If possible, he would like to drive right up to some outcrops and reach out with arm.

The latest images are posted here:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/index.html

BUT they are not at JPL yet at this moment (hopefully soon)

Al McEwen of MRO showed a gorgeous hi res flyover of Victoria in color showing exquisite detail and even shadows from the promentories around the entire rim. Its a whole new view of Victoria. almost as good as Opportunity will achieve. he said resolution was 27.5 cm per pixel. It is the higest resolution MRO will achieve, but stereo imaging is planned for the fall and they will monitor over time for any changes.

The flyover animation is not yet posted (at this moment)

I hope they post it soon as well as several other videos shown by Jim Bell

As the speakers mentioned, this highlights the fantastic synergy between the orbiters and surface rovers to achive even greater success

Jim Bell said "The new images have vaulted to the top of my Top 10 List. "We need to respect the landscape and be extremely cautious." He said this week "was like opening a new book and the start of a new mystery novel where you get totally hooked" ... an amazing time for space exploration.

Top priority is acquiring a large color pans for stereo imaging to determine the slopes and angles, where to go and check for entry/exit points

towards the end, they mentioned how they would love to bring some samples back

well thats it from my notes

ken

I'm still just looking over the full-res version now. You can really see the ripples changing in size as you scroll up and down. I wonder if Purgatory is anywhere in this image?

I also see some boulders in Victoria past the Beacon that look at least as large as Opportunity.

Hi
Wonderful everything is great.
Oppy and mast and its shadow, the dyke? the dunes and even the clusters of small craters out on the plains
I must have more although I might be sick of overload.
I'm watching the rerun as I missed some of the questions near the end due to unforseen circumstances.
Roy F
Hey I'm a member (no comments please)

Download the png, not the tif! They are (in almost all cases) the same quality!

Gang,

If you want to see a cropped (i.e., 264 KByte JPEG / 2.5 MByte TIFF) high-res version of the HiRISE picture, I'd recommend you go to the HiRISE site:

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TR...pportunity.html

Oh, and JPL has a Victoria animation up on their site:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/vid...a-DEM-animation

Is this the one you saw on NASA TV?

Lorne

Now that is moderately impressive. Especially the shadow of the camera mast being visible. The color image is a keeper, but I'm interested in seeing the grayscale images. I noticed an Anatolia feature in the SSE annulus and another one in the dust in the crater bowl.

This will give us a good roadmap around our roadcut.

--Bill


PS-- grayscale is at http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TR...0/victoria.html .

WOW!!! Stunning!! It's very exciting that they can see differences in the rock layers AND that Oppy's chances of getting a closer view of the rock outcrops are "excellent".

Can't believe the stupid sun is gonna be in our way! We need relay sats!

From the Q&A, it sounds like it'll be awhile before Oppy ventures down. Patience is a virtue? Ugh!

After seeing this incredible picture, it is now even more difficult to wait for the pictures of the other well-known lander sites (Spirit, Vikings, hypothetical Beagle II crash site, Eagle crater...) !

Sure thing Rakhir ... I would love to see the Viking landers from above
Exciting times indeed

I'm freaking out over the 160MB+ .tiff ! Played a bit with the contrast and colors and it's...phew.

Thinking about stepping away from it for a minute -it's too much

Nico

Very nice. I'd like to see this for the whole route to date, and for the terrain from here to "Big Crater".

Holy... *****!
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA08813.jpg

....

Somebody tell me how to breathe, quick....

stored press conference linked in other thread seems to work - looking at it now.

BTW: HiRISE is giving really impressive data. That image of victoria is siply amazing

Yeah! I would really like to see another "strip" to the left of this one. That would cover the whole path from Erebus to Victoria and the tracks would almost sure be visible. Erebus, Payson, sinkhole, Jammerbugt (ooops!), Beagle, a lot of remarkable places.

For the record, those are very good points, people. You've convinced me.

Un-CLINK-ing believable! I really don't know what else to say. I hope we'll eventually get complete coverage of Oppy's and Spirit's routes, then we'll have the mother of all route maps. This really closes the divide between the satellite views and the ground views. This exceeds my wildest expectations. Congratulations to everyone who pulled this off!

Where is the link to the stored press conference?

http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/inde...iew&id=1055

This image not only shows Oppy's present, but also its past. Here is a crop over Purgatory Dune:

Click to view attachment

Compare with: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpegMod/PIA07922_modest.jpg

EDIT: Promentory...purgaotory....tomAto...tomato...

Purgatory Dune:

CRAP BEATEN TOO IT LOL

Like everyone else I am amazed at the quality of this image. Not only can it be of help for Opportunity, but I guess the rover also can provide a bit of ground truth for the instruments on MRO. But the latter are in a completely different league - the image technology (and I guess also other kinds) have gotten even more advanced and now arrived complementing the still functioning rover.

Edit: Nah im happy for your post Sunspot, I thought Purgatory was the bright spot but you helped confirm that to me.

I didn't even realize there was a larger image. Going into meltdown now. Or at least my computer is.

Beagle Crater

Purgatory dune!?!

Where is the image covering that area? Link, link please!

Myran said:

Bingo.

And notice how the light-toned dust has spread out from the Purgatory disturbance.

--Bill

just something noted from the colour view Pando linked: a group of small craters in the bottom right seem much younger than all the others surrounding it. Just looks cool.

Tesheiner, it's in the full-size image: http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TR...0/victoria.html

oups overlap with volcanopele

Indeed! They appear to be much more sharply defined then any other craters in the view. Smaller than Eagle and I get the impression they were created by the same event, perhaps ejecta from some more distant crater. Of course if that is the case then some other, larger, crater in the area of equally recent vintage must exist. Otherwise they may just be some piece of debris that broke into several pieces after entering the atmosphere but before impact.

With the new detail provided by MRO, anyone want to speculate on the most likely entrance and exit points, based on safety and science?

My guess is Oppy could enter the crater via the bay immediately north of the prominent interior feature that is perpendicular to the far rim (that interior feature is almost directly across Victoria from Cape Verde, but a bit south). (If there is already a naming convention for all the bays, I apologize.) If Oppy can enter from that point, I would think it could proceed within the crater towards the interior feature and either turn around to exit from whence it came or proceed within the interior of the crater to the second bay to the south of that interior feature and exit from that bay.

Feasible? Other guesses?

Phillip

Has anybody mentioned this full version:

http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA/TR...color_Full.html

I think this is "jammerbugt" where we got stuck on Sol 830

Missed out on all the fun cos I was out all day, just catching up now...

To quote Ellie Arroway at the end of "CONTACT"...

I had no idea... no idea...

I am genuinely finding it hard to put my thoughts and feelings into words seeing these pics so I'm just going to look at them. Again. And again. And again.

Almost perfect.

The tracks aren't wider than 10 cms across and its identification is very important in localizing its route.

A good lesson learned is that hope that MSL's wheels shall be wider than 30 cms so that one pixel belonging to the track can be poped up! I think that MSL wheels would be wider than MER but I seems it would be under than 20 cms...

Or perhaps, a little better resolution, downing to 10 cms/pixel, the tracks would be very visible!

Happy week end with good MRO's pictures.

Rodolfo

no DEM with this release ...

Now isn't a 1.6 Mbyte thumbnail an oxymoron?

I'd say this calls for a sonnet, Stu, possibly even an ode!
Meanwhile, we can now resolve the longed for "Beacon" from orbit, but I'm a little unsure whether it's the white blob of evaporite marked 1 or 2. Anyone able to specify? Ustrax? Tesh? Fellow Far-rimmers?
Click to view attachment

They just got this image a few days ago (and our network has been kinda slow lately). It also doesn't help that there are brightness variations due to albedo in this region, so that will also hamper doing a DEM. But have no fear, there are plans to reimage this site later this fall to get stereo coverage.

Working on it!

My take is it should be right SW of 2. Have a look to my latests route maps in B&W.

>Now isn't a 1.6 Mbyte thumbnail an oxymoron?

Not if the subject image is 60+ Mbytes.

The more I look, the more amazed I become.

--Bill