Would be interesting to see a good closeup picture of the new tracks crossing those from Sol 950. Its probably the best estimate that we will get of the wind erosion rate. Have any been taken?

A pancam series of the old and new tracks was taken on sol1211.

This rear hazcam also shows the difference well between old and new.

It looks like Opportunity is determined
not to let Spirit walk away with the title
of "Most Tracks in a Single Image".

Well -- the older tracks have definitely been softened (presumably by aeolian erosion) in the time since they were laid down.

I'm thinking that in less than a decade, the only way you'll be able to see these tracks at all is by the fact that the concretions have been pressed down into the soil and thus won't be as exposed. The tracks will look like dusty lines to the naked eye, but will still be quite discernible in the right spectra (i.e., lacking any trace of a hematite signature).

-the other Doug

Speaking of wind, Oppy's gotten a fair bit of accumulated dust on her left navcam recently.

Compare this sol 1203 view with this sol 1214 view. Hopefully the winds will blow some dust off, like they did with the hazcams a ways back.

More accumulation of dust on cameras, this time the rear hazcam. You can see a dramatic increase on dust on the lens over the last three rover locations:

Sol 1212.
Sol 1214.
Sol 1216.

In that final image you can see that dust has already been kicked out of the tracks produced on sol 1214's drive. One navcam from 1216 also shows those tracks:
Click to view attachment

Those tracks are very interesting. It would appear that they drove forward and then backed up to get a better position with the arm. The tracks forward are much more disturbed than the tracks back. It looks to me like the wind is coming out of the east (is that the direction forward?). As the rover moved back, it kicked up dust. The wind blowing back blew the dust in the direction of travel and over the old tracks. These winds must be much stronger than normal or we would have seen this effect before.

By kicked up, I mean picked up dust on the wheels and dropped it as it inched its way along.

In the final (sol 1216) hazcam I posted, it's pretty clear that the rightmost tracks are the most recent, from the 1216 drive. The left tracks are from the 1214 drive, and they look much softer than the new tracks. I think we just had some very strong winds/gusts between the two drives that has softened the 1214 tracks but not (yet) the 1216 tracks. It'll be interesting to see what happens next.

In the navcam crop I posted, it looks like the wind was blowing from the right or upper right. If you look at the route map that means the wind is approximately from the north. That's consistent with the winds we saw near out easternmost point on the rim, which were towards the rim there.

It seems like a major dust storm is breaking out quite close to opportunity, according to space.com

Strange, I clicked on your link and got a Wikipedia entry. If anyone else has that problem try

http://www.space.com/news/070627_mars_storm.html

Brian

While the panoramas are always great, it's the little 10k files which often fascinate me with examples of the MERs driving and software navigation techniques.

I like this little zoom in on some surface rocks and berries.
Click to view attachment File: 271k

Enjoy
Astro0

The remaining view of the tracks from sol 1216 is in. The wind has sure made a mess here. It looks to me like there have been multiple wind directions.
Click to view attachment

Look how quick the tracks, only 2 sols old, have been degraded. That's astonishing.

Doug

pointless quote removed - Doug

I was looking at that, and I had to wonder whether there is something related to the rover's movement that degraded the old tracks. We haven't seen that kind of surface alteration at any previous time, in any previous location on this mission (that I've noticed).

Do you remember "Emma Dean"?
It was the last crater visited on the way to VC, and here it is on sol 1216 pancams.

I pointed out some old sites on the image, including the one (sol 957) where the rover was when MRO took the image I use as the route map background.

Click to view attachment

... and the site where I think we'll be at the end of today's drive (sol 1218). My 2c.

It looks to me like the wind is from one direction but was diverted around the rover.

That's it, of course! I forgot the rover was sitting at the far end of those tracks for two sols. Like you say, the wind must've blown while she was sitting there and formed eddies etc around the wheels and body.

WRT moving on sol 1218, we have the usual nav/pancam mosaics on the exploratorium but it looks to be an aborted drive.

An old one but a nice one.

The Panoramic view taken on Sol 1162

with the L2 Pancam.

jvandriel

I´ve just checked the PCDT web and it looks like sol 1232, which has just started, will be driving day.
I won´t expect a big move right to Duck Bay but the fact that we are on the move is an indication the power levels are enough to support such activity.

Good news!

Nice one. Reminds me of an old abandoned campground

Only YOU can prevent forest fires!

Oppy moved about 35 meters on sol 1232 (July 13):

Oppy sol 1281 L257 1x4 of Duck Bay:




Not sure if anyone is interested in this, but thought I would share...

The pancam images have been processed by using the L2 L7 SkyFlat images as masks to compensate for the lens dust. Also, a square root filter was applied to the images after dusty lens processing.

There are links from the panorama to individual 3D images.

I'm for sure!

sol 1285 R0 1x3:



The images in this pan have an experimental navcam sky-flat lens correction. It actually worked out better than I thought.

There are image links to a navcam 3D and an L2 pancam montage with similar lens corrections.

Fingers crossed for the ingress tests

Hello, I'm turning to the UMSF community in order to get some help in completing an article on the MER 2007 operations.
More specifically, I'm searching for a high resolution (color) photo (panorama) showing the path Opportunity choose to return back to Duck Bay.
There's isn't much at:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/pan...as/opportunity/


Similar to:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/uploads...80641_thumb.jpg
or
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=10794
or
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=10939

Thanks in advance!!!

Color? There isn't much. There isn't even much Pancam. Maybe someone colorized a Navcam mosaic?

A color mosaic was taken looking back from the farthest point of Oppy's voyage around VC, the D-star Panorama.