It was bound to happen....after the Beacon fest, and the Arrival madness.....

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA01150.jpg

Have a look at that image - and then pick your spot, expressed as X and Y.

I'm going for 2, -3 ( 2m East, 3m South)

Pick to a nearest metre and try not to pick one that's already been done.

Winner takes.....bugger all.

My best guess on Sojourner known last position is....
sojourner -4,-15

Now - this is only a guide and we will reproject these coords back onto the HiRISE map...so it's not what feature you think it's next to on that image...because that is very warped in places - it's how it seems on the HiRISE image.

list

djellison 2,-3

I'm going closer to the ramp: 0, -3

I've got (10, -10)

-4,-12

I see a definite dichotomy of opinion here: those who predict Sojourner came back to the lander and those who believe otherwise. This should be interesting

-4, 0

Sojourner is where they left it, so according to Doug:

-4,-15

2, -5

Welcome to the quadrant.

0,-8

5, -4

Doug! You have jumped off the fence!

-6, 2.

EDITED: Don't know why, maybe Nerio whispered...I'll change my bet...
7, 7. That's it.

Let me take risks : Out of quadrant for me. Is that enough or do you want me to be more precise?
In this case I'll wait for Tesheiner's vote

All the good spots have been taken lol.... so i'll just say I think it will be in the same spot it was last seen in.

I think we can say 'out of area' with a bearing.... the major 8 will do - N,NE, E, SE,S,SW,W,NW - pick one.

Doug

You can't have that...sojourner picked that one

Doug

My guess is that Sojourner is out of frame to the south (assuming north is up in the image), at about x=-4 and y=-40 or -50. I think she got back to the ramp area, started to circle the lander, angled left to avoid the rock garden, and kept angling such that she kept heading south. I think she'll have ended up a bit of a distance from the lander but not all that far. As I say, about another 20 grid squares below the bottom of the image.

-the other Doug

I may have got some wrong. Ustrax is our 'special cookie' and so has two entries - one for him, one for the voices in his head

(a few more added...tim...you nutter )

O, -18

smooth road south

Considering the propagation of error in the rover's knowledge of where it was due to wheel slippages and stuff, I'm figuring that where it thought the lander was quickly wandered with respect to ground features with time. I'm willing to give the ol' girl a little credit for still at least twitching every day when the sun comes up, so I'll go Shirley McClain here and predict that it's 123 meters from the lander at an azimuth of 164 degrees.

But I could be wrong...

-Tim.

This, of course, is the fun of the whole exercise, which is akin to throwing darts at a board. And if the "away-from-lander-crowd" is right, then I have a built-in excuse for a bad prediction

If someone can identify Wedge and Hassock....those have been reserved by the Sojourner Rover Mission Operations Engineer and Sojourner Sequence Planner respectively

Doug

I vote 2,14, just to be different. Hopefully some came by to keep her deck clean (wink wink, nudge nudge) or else we'll all be debating which rock really is her.

(-3, -13)

Airbag

0, 6 just to be different

5, 3

pi, -pi, just to be REALLY different.

Now isn't that Sojourner at -5.5, -7.5? At what point were the images taken that were used to make this projection? Was this an early composite?

Jonathan McDowell has a listing (one of his specialties) of the lifetime of Mars probes

http://www.planet4589.org/space/jsr/jsr.html

Probe Mars arrival End of ops. Duration at Mars

.....Probe........Mars.arrival....End.of.ops......Duration.at.Mars

Mariner.9.............1971.Nov........1972.Oct........0.9.yr
Mars-2..................1971.Nov........1972.Aug........0.6.yr
Mars-3..................1971.Dec........1972.Aug?......0.6.yr?
Mars-5..................1974.Feb........1974.Mar........0.0.yr
Viking.Orbiter.1.1976.Jun........1980.Aug........4.1.yr
Viking.Lander.2..1976.Jul........1982.Nov........6.3.yr
Viking.Orbiter.2.1976.Aug........1978.Jul........1.9.yr
Viking.Lander.2..1976.Sep........1980.Apr........3.6.yr
Fobos-2................1989.Jan........1989.Mar........0.2.yr
Mars.Pathfinder..1997.Jul........1997.Oct........0.2.yr
MGS......................1997.Sep........2006.Nov........9.1.yr
Mars.Odyssey.....2001.Oct........Active..........5.1.yr
Mars.Express......2003.Dec........Active..........3.0.yr
Spirit.....................2004.Jan........Active..........2.9.yr
Opportunity.......2004.Jan........Active..........2.8.yr
MRO.....................2006.Mar........Active..........0.8.yr


Poor little Pathfinder is down there with Fobos-2. Sojourner can't have gotten far, but it was not too shabby for a "technology" mission. And it's better than some that didn't even make the list.

Comga

Put me down at 1,-5

6 , -10

I'll go against the grain, I'll go with +14, +2

OK : out of area SW

Out of area, NW.

Isn't this the rovers final known position, in front of "Chimp" ?

http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/ops/rover_sol72r.jpg
http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/ops/Chimp_left.jpg

Also, wouldn't it be easier to stick a pin in one of the large panoramic images:

http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/ames/ames-pres.html

0, -12

Wedge and Hassock are to the south - mapped at
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/MPF/roversci/site-map-Rocks.html

I go for -8, -4, if that's not been had.

No - a panorama is no use - we'll have a HiRISE image to reproject these X and Y's onto - pins on a panorama will be impossible to translate onto a HiRISE image when we get it. This vertical projection, as I said earlier, is just a guide - it's not an accurate reference because it's so distorted out beyond about 4 or 5 metres.

And yes - that's just about Sojourners last known position which I have previously guestimated as best I can (-4 -15 ish) - but obviously Sojourner is not allowed to vote...she's out of the country And even if she could, she would say -400,-200 or something crazy I may have gone a bit too far south with that position actually - check her own telemetry Sojourner says she's at 0,-8.961,-2.331 - I am not sure if that it the same reference frame as our vertical projection but it would put it in about the right sort of place....just under Michael.

I've added a few more and changes Sojourner's best guess of her last known position to a little yellow cross.

Doug

Oooh - Put me down for 5, -14 then.

Doug...
If you're going to put all the guesses indicated by the voices in my head you can already give me the prize...

BTW, do you know who's Nerio?

OK i'll go for: -14, -1

-8, 8. ...For sure.

Andy

I don't think I've been in a pool yet, so I'll finally take the plunge. Give me 7,10 - stuck in a dune Purgatory style, just like big sis

-4, +14. There's a nice little cul-de-sac there.

Michael

Hummm,

For me? -12, -17.

A slight correction to the map, Doug. I think it's "tim53" instead of "tim54."

Hi Doug and gang,

Stay tuned, we should be seeing MPF site in a day or so. (I think the HiRISE image was taken Sat , Dec 17th).

I did my own "Sojourner" pool around the lab and found that my MPF & Sojourner friends guess's are all over the map (literally). Some wouldn't even guess ("How would I know where Sojourner is? I was just the project manager!").

You probably know, Sojourner had a fault recovery mode where the rover was supposed to return to the lander and circle it to regain UHF signal with the lander in the event that it lost comm. The running joke around the lab is that Sojourner has carved a ditch around the lander.

Given that Sojourner's gyro had such a huge drift rate, I would not hold a lot of stock in its ability to drive in a straight line, let alone in a circle around the lander. That drift rate was the cause of that goofy rock climb onto "wedge" (if my memory serves me ... it is nearly 10 yrs ago).

I guess that Sojourner is about (0 , -20m) (straight south part way to Chimp). I hope we can see it, but the dust "fallout" there may obscure it or reduce the contrast. We'll see.

I am very very excited about seeing them again. MER certainly trumped MPF/Sojourner scientfically and operationally, but we could never have built MER without the design and ops experiences we gained on the MPF/Sojourner project. It really was a pathfinder.

Cheers and happy holidays!

-Rob Manning

************
Comments posted here are the author's and do not represent the views of Caltech, JPL nor NASA.

When one read/participate UMSF on a regular basis, he can see how MER is important to us. I'm even more impressed of the true LOVE for Sojourner that people feel.
Back in 1997, I followed the EDL on an old computer with an old modem which staid connected for 1-2 minutes, crach, rebooted, and did the process untill I get the confirmation that they've landed safely. MPF/Sojourner inspired a lot of people here and I'm looking forward to see them again...tomorrow
Thanks for the information Rob, I feel like if I'm waiting for another EDL

So we might see something this coming Wednesday?

Even assuming we did get Pathfinder in that picture (To which I can honestly say at this point in time I don't know), we couldn't release the picture for at least another week, because we need the Geometric projections. Also keep in mind that it's Christmas coming up, and while there will still be operations going on during the holidays, a significant part of the staff is on holiday, so there isn't as much time to do stuff like release pictures, write captions, etc. Just have patience, it's no more than we have to put up with as well (In a lot of ways we have to even have more, I remember seeing the first Victoria Crater image being downloaded, and only seeing the far side of the crater for 11 hours, THAT was quite nerve racking...)

Ok, so...
Place your bets, gentlemen! The pool is still open.