Where did you get that idea from?!



Stu, can you please translate that?...

Sorry, just teasing you, I made it up. But it should be a proverb. It makes as much sense as yours about a backward peeing donkey

Posts 7, 19, 20 and 22 in this thread. Maybe you don't intend to, but it comes across as considering heading to Ithaca a plausable, feasable, and something we should do instead of going back to Erebus or elsewhere

Doug

Heading due east from Victoria would indeed be a very bad idea, there is a huge dune field over there. On the other hand, a look at the HiRISE image suggests that there is a route which is initially due south, then curves east through a region which appears generally more traversable than what Oppy covered heading to Vicky.

Click to view attachment

There are still some touchy areas to cover, but much of this is relatively open stretches of evaporite. Typically, it looks a lot like this up close:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

The HiRISE coverage is insufficient to map the complete route in detail, but there's enough to show that Oppy can make it to the edge of coverage without too much difficulty, particularly factoring in the new nav software. As ustrax pointed out earlier,

http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise...SP_001414_1780/

The overview suggests that, once the HiRISE gap is filled-in, a navigable route to the west rim of Ithaca is entirely feasible.

Boring? I think not as bad as prior to Vicky, and the destination is already visible. There will be various outcrops and craters along the way, and lot's of entertainment in projecting where Oppy will go next. Plus Oppy ought to be moving quickly enough to guarantee some regular changes in scenery.

As to scientific value, this takes us into an entirely new geological realm, not only the Ithaca rim peaks themselves, but the interior of Ithaca as well - which the MOLA maps indicate is substantially (hundreds of meters, as I recall) lower than than Vicky, and thus having the potential of having once contained standing water. Taking Oppy in any other direction would just see more of the same fractured/layered evaporite - talk about boring.

Assuming Oppy is healthy at the time, I see no reason why this would be as much as a 4 year trip. Given the new nav software, I could envision completing the traverse in a single driving season, as little as a year. To me, the journey to Ithaca seems to sanest option after Victoria.

I believe my posts were not well understood...
When on the way to Victoria were we dreaming about the possibility of reaching Vostok, Argos, Jason or, instead, the mirage of the big crater filled our imagination?
Now, I don't know about others, I'm going through the same process...there are several targets on the way, but the gold is just ahead...
Maybe unreachable, but enticing in such a way that we could trace a path in that direction all this without throwing science overboard.

The overview suggests that, once the HiRISE gap is filled-in, a navigable route to the west rim of Ithaca is entirely feasible.



I subscribe every single word in your post algorimancer.

Stu, the old saying means simply the same as...Go Onward!

The MOC imagery doesn't tell the story. The nothern rim of Erebus is an area of HUGE dunes. MOC doesn't show that. We need the actual HiRISE imagery to say what we're going to see. Anything else is conjecture.

I don't doubt the scientific value of Ithaca - it would be extraordinary. I simply believe that looking at the HiRISE imagery we DO have - there are some very very large dune fields with very big dunes with no real way around them. The North seems a far less dune-laden area than the south.

This new software isn't magical - it's not traction control - it doesnt mean Opportunity has sprouted wings - it doesn't make the vehicle less prone to digging in its wheels - it simply gives us the means to identify that loss of motion while under power and terminate drives early ( as we saw at Jammerbugt ). The vehicle would still hit dunes, still get stuck - it just wouldn't do so as dramatically as at Purgatory. There is nothing to suggest the journey of 20km from Victoria to Ithaca could be conducted any more swiftly than the 1.5km journey from Erebus to Beagle.

Fairly sweeping phrases about the terrain to the East and South Algo - my crop of the HiRISE imagery of excellent terrain was from due East of Victoria ( where you say it's terrible ). My crop of terrible terrain was from the South where you say there's an easy way out. I'm as sure that Ithaca is a bad idea as you are it's a good idea.

I think there is a very very strong case for getting HiRISE images (even 2x2 binned) of terrain NE, S and SE of Victoria. All this is essentially idle banter without it.

Doug

Don't they? I am *especially* interested in the one I designated C -- its basic form is that of a dimple, rather than a bowl. The light floor unit *might* be some simple dust fill, but as it is surrounded by a "crater" wall that appears convex rather than concave, I have a hard time believing that this is an impact structure, and if it's a sinkhole, the floor might represent a *much* lower evaporite unit than we've seen before. The dark source of the small dark fan *might* just be a dust trap that occasionally yields part of its trove back up to the winds -- but it might also be a piece of a darker, different type of material that's eroding into dark dust.

Yes, Ithaca's ringwall remnants could be quite interesting -- but what are the odds that Ithaca was emplaced a *long* time before this part of Mars was repeatedly flooded, and has been altered so much that you'd have to spend a decade putting together it's story? Ithaca *might* give you some insight into what existed here before there was water -- the three craters I'm looking at, it seems to me, might offer a better chance at increasing our insight into what this part of Mars was like *while* there was water here.

Is it just me, or does it seem like that would be perhaps a little more useful?

-the other Doug

The area directly South of Victoria looks pretty bad in the HIRISE shot, but once you get past that (easier said than done), it looks like the plains North of Victoria again (especially in the SE corner of the image). This HRSCView image is the best available to look around in the area.

As Doug said, we need many more images.

Incidentally, there are 3 attached images with my last post which are not displayed. When I go into full-edit I clearly see the attachments, both the files and the associated tags in the post, however none of them are showing above. Something gone awry with the site?

Here, I'll try again:
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

The first image shows an overview. I used red to indicate regions of heavy dunes, between which is a region of mottled terrain, close-ups of which are shown in the two follow-up images. Yes, as you say, there are regions to the south where the terrain is very bad, yet in the midst of the bad are regions which are pretty good.

I appreciate that we have very different notions as to the wisdom of heading to Ithaca . It is too early to commit to it, Oppy may not survive that long, and I agree that we definitely need HiRISE to pave the way. Still, it's a heck of a lot of fun to contemplate.

I think MER-B should aggressively explore Victoria Crater. Victoria Crater is a good place to die (much better than the middle of a dune field). Aggressive exploration up the sides and along the edges of the crater would show us the limits of the rover's capability. Such knowledge would be useful towards guiding future rovers.

Leaving aside the possible interest of the crater and speaking only of the feasiblity of reaching it how do you see this possible path?
It seems to me devoided of big dunes and with some good stretches of solid ground...
In how much time would a healthy Opportunity would cover this distance (roughly 1/3 of the total way)?
Click to view attachment

Exactly -- as Doug says, we need more HiRISE images of the entire area. I'm sure that a complete survey of the entire area is in the plans, since applying the ground truth we have from Oppy to the entire area is important in understanding the formation processes of the region, and HiRISE images are so good that they let us make some pretty high-order connections between where Oppy has been and the rest of the area. But it will probably be a good, long time (months, at least) before MRO captures all the data we want. (And remember, we'll probably want CRISM coverage of the area too, to help determine where we might find interesting minerology.)

The more I look at the area to the east-northeast, the more I like the idea of heading that way. If the terrain is as good as it looks, with 200+ meter drives you could reach the area of the A-B-C craters in as little as 100 sols of driving, as opposed to the probable 600 to 800 sols of driving needed to travel the same distance through etched terrain. And to top it off, once you finish with A-B-C (and possibly another sinkhole-like feature I'm thinking of as D, located to the west-southwest of A-B-C), there is what appears to be a straight shot on good terrain directly south to the area of Ithaca, so if Oppy is still working and you really wanted to, you could still get to Ithaca -- while getting more science in and possibly taking less time than if you took the more direct southeast route.

Now if I could only mention my ideas to the MER team... I'm pretty sure, though, that if I, an interested amateur, sees these things, *someone* on the MER team has to have seen the same things and come to the same conclusions.

Fingers and toes crossed...

-the other Doug

p.s. -- if anyone has any good ideas for designations of A, B and C, even though we know they'll be preliminary and not adopted by the official MER team, I'd be more than happy. It gets a little bland to continue to refer to these very interesting targets by simple one-letter designations. And the best I've come up with is Moe, Larry and Curly, with the unlabeled D standing in as Shemp...

We just built three new PC's here at work - Aramis, Athos and Porthos


As for Ustrax's latest map - the first 800m - could be very fast.

The following 3km or so - 400 sols - that sort of time frame - looks very similar to the Erebus-Beagle terrain - but with some areas of much larger dunes.

Doug

Tests like that can be done on earth without wasting time on mars. And as for finding 'solutions not imagined', it's always interesting watching your software in action but it really shouldn't be doing things that you didn't expect. That more often than not ends you up in a ditch.

Doug, I really think you haven't given this idea a fair hearing. While it does seem outside the rover's capability, I feel its important to 'think outside the box'. Let the creative mind soar free for a while. I don't think there is a solution forth coming but if we listen to the various ideas, we'll know for sure.

I don't think those advocating it have given HiRISE images a fair viewing. I would love Opportunity to be able to make that trip - but no ammount of poetry or positive thinking will actually make it any easier.

Like I've said again and again - with the data we have in front of us - it's a crazy idea. If we get more HiRISE images that show eagle-to-endurance like terrain for the middle 10km of the tripe....let's do it. If it's all like the part we can see - Erebus-to-Beagle with larger dunes...let's forget about it.

There are places were I see the drive direction images being 180 degrees of this
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...OUP2399R2M1.JPG

Experience tells us that you don't go through that. The vehicle can't do it. You've got to go around it - and around it is going to be hundreds of metres across more dunes. Given the data we have now it looks like a 5 year trip that Opportunity could just about make from a navigation perspective. I don't think it's a wise way to spend 5 years when there is every chance of never getting there and having our mobility go up in smoke 6k from anything.

Doug

Dvandorn had an alternative idea above that doesn't take us through that area. And it still leaves us with the posibility that Ithica is within reach.

We haven't exhausted the creativity of this group, yet.

I haven't seen anything else in the area that would make a better long term target. That is of course that we squeeze every last bit out of VC. 'A bird in the hand' as they say...

I sure wish the HiRISE and other orbiter teams would get together with the Google Earth developers (Google Mars seems to have stalled long ago) and get all this imagery incorporated into the application, then we could really have a coherent look at the terrain and communally add and share annotations to everything - and actually all be on the same page in the course of this discussion. For an example of what is feasible (assuming that you have Google Earth installed), have a look at what I've been doing these past few months in terms of exploring Lake Charlotte (big lake/swamp east of Houston),
http://www.clarkandersen.com/LakeCharlotte/LakeCharlotte.kmz

It makes it easy to mark and label points of of interest, paths, regions, and even add overlay images, then easily share it all. As I've been scanning the greater Victoria region with the HiRISE Online Image Viewer I keep finding myself wishing for the ability to tag various features, mark potential paths, or simply view it from different orientations. Unfortunately the full-sized image is too big to overlay on GE, and I don't have an easy means of subdividing it.

It can't be too far away considering how much work they have already done on the other ASU instruments.

Speaking of...

If you click between this daytime THEMIS image centered on Ithaca and the (much less precise) Hematite map using the Layers dropdown at the top of the page, it looks like there are generally higher concentrations of Hematite to the South and East.

You read my mind, Doug! When I proposed my "escape route" onto the "tarmac" through the shortest stretch of dunes to the northeast of Victoria, I was eyeing those Victoria-class craters (A, B, C) as the first major targets, followed by (Hirise images favourable!) a drive southwards to the north rim of Big.

I really have to stress how much faster (and easier!) driving was from Endurance to Purgatory 1 versus Purgatory to Beagle. Just look at the route maps! It seems so obvious that, unless there was an extremely interesting target that could only be reached through a vast sea of dunes, getting back on the tarmac as quickly as possible would maximize the scientific return from the rover. Remember - we were doing 200 metres a day on the tarmac!!

As I believe SS has commented himself, we're at a stage now where getting information about the horizontal variation of the geology is as important if not more so than what we see vertically at Victoria. Once we're thoroughly done with Victoria, getting back on the tarmac is the only practical way to study those horizontal variations over significant distances.

Amen to that.

Yeah -- like I say, *if* HiRISE imagery shows there is a relatively clear path through the northeastern apron of Victoria back up to the "tarmac," as you put it (as good a name as any), and *if* there are no major drive-around obstacles along the route to A-B-C, at an average of 200 meters per sol driving, it would only take 100 driving sols to cover 20 km. And I'm not even positive that A-B-C is as far as 20 km, that complex may only be 12 to 15 km away.

While that kind of traverse would have seemed like a completely unreasonable goal at the beginning of the mission, we know now that, if we choose, we *can* drive an average of 200 km per sol for extended periods. And heck, even if Oppy adopted the drive-three-survey-one sol plan used by Spirit on its way to the Columbia Hills, it ought not take more than 150 sols, max, to get from Victoria to A. Perhaps as little as 100 to 125.

I'm not too worried about it at present, since we're probably looking at spending the entire Martian summer and fall at Victoria. But for a long-term plan, I think that any traverse plan that places us back on the tarmac stands a good chance of getting us to another interesting location before winter solstice.

I'd be far more comfortable with an extended mission plan that gets us to a new set of interesting targets before winter solstice, than with a plan that calls for us to just sit at Victoria for the entirety of the next winter -- assuming we're done with Victoria by then. And I have to agree with Doug, I just don't see a clear straight path to Ithaca from Victoria.

And, of course, we have to understand that Oppy could die, become sensor-crippled or become hobbled at almost any time. I will rather diffidently make the point that if we lose Oppy's IDD in the midst of the Victoria campaign (and the IDD is the logical item to be lost next, since it is the most degraded of any of Oppy's sensing equipment up to now), it will take considerably less time to gather as much information as possible from Vicky and it may make more sense to observe what we can of other interesting targets before anything else dies, and especially before she completely loses a wheel and becomes hobbled like her sister. Without the IDD, you only have Pancam and mini-TES for detailed scientific analyses, and it will take far less time to gather that data than will be taken deploying the arm and running week-long Mossbauer and APXS integrations.

But, of course, we *will* have to get some decent HiRISE coverage of the whole area before we can do more than engage in energetic arm-waving...

-the other Doug

I like the Craters A, B, and C idea better than straight to Ithaca plan It's crazy too; but at least it's possible as long as a Global Sandstorm does not occur anytime soon.

We have been extremely lucky up to now that a major sandstorm hasn't happened directly along Oppy's path--although there have been a couple of scares. I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that danger yet on this particular topic. The only dangers discussed have been associated with terrain and mechanical breakdowns due to longevity. But the terrain is the least of Oppy's worries and threats on such a long journey. The rover would not last a few days if one of these sandstorms does occur. The known history of Mars suggests that we are long overdue for such an occurance.

Let me illustrate how crazy the Ithaca idea is. It's like a mission to Mars is somehow expected to reach Pluto. It isn't going to make it. We have a minimum of 2 years of good science left at Victoria, maybe 3 to 4 years. A 5 year trip in "the land of nothing" really means expecting the rover to last another 8 years total at a minimum. Yet the most interesting parts of Ithaca are over 40km away, not just 20km to the rim!!! I really think there is a reason why no probe has been sent toward a neighboring stellar system yet...guys. Ithaca deserves a dedecated mission with its own up-to-date rover designed to do the job. One could be sent from Earth and reach Ithaca sooner than Oppy could realistically get there, even if the current rover were to somehow survive the years.

Let's face the fact that Opportunity is likely to die in or near Victoria. If it survives, then we still have several years to decide where it goes next. But I'm sure whereever it goes, it will be a death march. That's assuming Oppy can actually get out of Victoria.

I think it might be a few hundred down
on a list of "deserving sites" on Mars.

Hey Ustrax, my good friend,

remember

the

good

old

days

...and you haven't changed a bit!

Pando (aka 'youremi')

Hey Pando!
Tradition still is what it used to be...
I don't know if I should smile or cry about it...

You are forgetting the final climax of those crazy crazy days...
In spite of everything one thing is for sure, we DID get there, so I'll just keep on dreaming about Ithaca and, who knows, if some years from now you will be reminding us this posts?

Regarding an hypothetical path after Victoria I'm also starting to agree that the road passing by the ABC craters is the most logical one, but without loosing Ithaca out of sight...

I find that downloading gigabyte-size files is expensive, taxes bandwidth, and probably pointless if the machine I download them to cannot usefully handle them anyway. I have however been looking at some of the smaller versions of those files which you and others have been putting up here and elsewhere.


Nobody is proposing the rovers do any swan dives off any metaphorical cliffs. But at the same time you need to ask yourself whether fear of the unknown--the unknown sand trap, that is--is a good enough reason to avoid at least trying.


I have no problem with Opportunity staying at Victoria and examining it inside and out. But then I doubt if you would find anyone on this forum who is saying it shouldn't.

That said, be careful with that "good science" claim. Let's face it. Mars is still largely a blank slate. The rovers could go virtually anywhere, stick an IDD in, and get good science back. Consider Spirit. It is finding good opportunities for good science through pure chance and the dragging of a non-functional wheel! A more pertinent question is whether the science obtainable at one particular site would be more useful to a rovers' goals than the science it might get by going elsewhere.

At Victoria I would agree there is certainly very good science obtainable there that Opportunity would not get, at least easily, by going elsewhere. The same however is more disputable for other places like, well...


IMHO, the rovers should not go over old ground without good reason. There are good reasons for Spirit's return to Home Plate, for example, but there may well be good reasons for Opportunity to go back to Erebus, but unlike Home Plate I yet to hear what the Erebus ones are. The one you give here makes Erebus seem more like a consolation prize: the place Opportunity would be consigned to if there was nowhere else more useful for it to go.


Sounds OK to me. Whether it is a best destination however is another matter.

======
Stephen

Careful! Don't confuse what you KNOW with what you SUPPOSE. You no more KNOW that that terrain is "hazardous to the MER design" than you knew that there were dunes hazardous to that same design on Opportunity's route between Endurance and Victoria.


Was it?

I do not recall there was ever much discussion about prospects in the other three directions--north, east, or west beyond Eagle. Presumably they were all too flat and uninteresting--no large craters--compared to the much closer prospects to the south.


Which is part of the reason I object to going back to Erebus without good reason. Spirit and Opportunity have unknown but obviously finite lifespans left. Fear of large sand dunes and other putative perils may be reason enough for avoiding particular routes. They are not good reasons (IMHO) for not trying at all, much less a good reason for squandering part of the dwindling life span of a resource you claim to find so priceless by sending it over old ground for fear of sending it elsewhere.

Opportunity is more likely to make useful discoveries by going to places it hasn't yet been to than by trying to fill the blanks in by going back to places it has already visited. That could be going east or SE towards Ithaca or it could be going SW towards that exposed rock you mentioned. I suspend judgment as to which is the better pending further data.

I'll just conclude this with a more general observation.

It seems to me those HiRISE images are a mixed blessing. No offence, but the sight of those dunes appears to have spooked you, to the point that you seem to be treating Opportunity, at least in this matter, as if it were a kind of surrogate human being: you are so in fear of its losing its mechanical life that you are balking at sending even remotely near the supposed peril.

That in turn arguably negates one of the prime advantages unmanned robotic explorers have over the human sort: their ability to venture into places too dangerous for any human to go. If we humans are going to balk at the idea of sending unmanned robotic explorers into even mildly difficult places--ie places it can always retreat from it the going gets too tough--then how are we ever going to gather up the courage to send them into the kinds of places that may well hold REAL perils, like scaling the cliff walls of Mariner Valley or diving into the stygian deeps of the putative ocean beneath the ice of Europa?

======
Stephen

We didn't know what the terrain was like from Endurance to Victoria. We had a MOC image which showed this etched terrain - we didn't know what it was like. We didnt know if we were going to get through it. There was nothing else for miles and miles - so there was nothing to be lost by trying. Ignorance was bliss.

Now - we have the information from HiRISE and the ability to compare all the terrain of that huge traverse across Meridiani with surface imagery. We can actually see. There is no supposition involved whatsoever. We KNOW that the dunes around the Purgatory area are hazardous to the MER design. We know that. We can now see dunes that are bigger than that - vast swathes of them - ones that we would struggle to find a route around or through. Thus we KNOW that the terrain South of Victoria is more hazardous than the terrain we crossed to get to Victoria - we can see it - we can see the patterns in HiRISE imagery - and it's the same patterns we saw on the north edge of Erebus - a large dune field that we took a HUGE circumnavigation to get around.

People having been drawing dotted lines on 12m/pixel imagery going south of Victoria. That's meaningless. Yes - Ithaca is a good target. But going South of Victoria isn't. If this vehicle can do another 20-30k - if it can do another 5, 6, 7 years - maybe we'll get to Ithaca...but we sure as hell wont make it if we point SE and gun it. Your human analogy doesn't work - a human could walk it quite easily - these vehicles do not have the abilities of a Human. This wouldn't be hazardous to humans (any more than the act of walking on Mars is going to be inherantly hazardous ) - a human could walk this stuff without thinking.

There was good science at Erebus that we shot straight past - the best exposed festoons we've ever seen. Good science is a good reason. Erebus hasn't been mentioned just for a laugh - it's been mentioned because it was interesting.

This isn't about 'claiming' Opportunity is a priceless asset. It is. Fact. The science team think so, the engineering team think so. I think it would be a waste of that asset to send it into terrain that - given the data we have now - would be a navigation dead end. It's not about avoiding peril - anyone who has been here for the duration knows what Peril means:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...09P1214L0M1.JPG

What's the problem driving over old ground? We're driving over old ground right now - back around Victoria - to get to good science we've already driven past at Duck Bay. Driving back to Erebus would not be that different. Spirit's doing it - back to Home Plate for science, back to Larrys Lookout two years ago. Turning around to re-visit something interesting that you couldn't give your full attention to is not a crime. Pointing at massive dune fields and putting to the foot to the floor is.

Is there not a contradiction in saying that their lifespan is finite - so let's spend 5 years driving South East through dune fields?

Again and again I've said we need more data before making a final decision - fighting and arguing about it now is premature - we're all jumping the gun. Perhaps we can make a solid case for a single HiRISE observation to answer this and submit it to HiROC - see if they'll oblige?

Doug

The rover spent a heck of a lot of time getting to Victoria. In the absence of a new target at an easily attainable distance, it doesn't make any sense to me to leave the crater until the potential science there is exhausted. For what? More endless Sols over a trackless dune field? And in return, we'll sacrifice many sols of in-depth analysis of the layered rock of Victoria from inside the craters?

I agree on that one - there's years of stuff here at Victoria to study yet.

Doug

This whole topic is about when the science is EXHAUSTED. The question is, what do we do then? Which direction - what targets?

But thinking about afterwards means you have to consider the in-between. Might we wear out the RAT at Victoria - or even have a wheel failure while inside. If we spend 2 months inside - then plan that invokes timelines of a couple of years might make sense. If we spend 2 years inside - then might a further 2 - 3 - 4 year plan be just too much.

Doug

There's always another destiny...

Actually - on another forum someone suggested that Opportunity start driving north to watch Phoenix land. I responded jokingly that that would be great if only it were in any way possible, feasable etc etc....only to discover he was serious.



Doug

Getting back to the question of whether the region between Victoria and Ithaca is traversable... I just spent some time measuring dune sizes in areas where Opportunity was able to A) Traverse irrespective of dune direction (for example, a point midway between Endurance and Purgatory, B) Traverse between dunes with care (for example, a point midway between Purgatory and Eagle), and C) Not traverse (Purgatory 1 & 2, or crossing dunes between them). I then spot-checked the HiRISE image to the south and east of Victoria and compared. Not surprisingly, there is a big non-traversable region to the east of Vicky, and another rather far towards the south, but much (most) of the remainder of the region falls in the traversable realm, either resembling the vicinity of Eagle crater (scattered dunes over open stretches of evaporite) or relatively small dunes which Oppy can just roll over without worrying about getting stuck, with the occasional exceptional big dune scattered about which would be easy to navigate around. In other words, it may be far more easily traversable than our earlier cynically optimistic assumptions. When I compare this "ground truth" with the Themis day/night infrared images it looks to me like there may be a nearly direct route between Victoria and the western rim of Ithaca, much of which can be covered in hundreds of meter safe drives. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic :)

To get a sense of this, use the fully-zoomed-in HiRISE image viewer to capture a view of the dunes (at the same scale) mentioned in A & B above, then scan around in the image viewer and compare with the captured images. The terrain gets progressively easier to navigate as you move to the southeast.

That's good to hear, algorimancer! We really have to remember that we haven't done any dune driving with the benefit of Hirise yet.

great maps, but what about spirit?
I didn't found spirit's landing site HiRISE maps from here > http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/HiRISE/hirise_images/

What is to the north of Endurance? If we retrace the path to some extent, what lies farther north?

What's north of Endurance is one or two of those "dimple" craters, with a white ring <in b&w pic> of sulfate rock surrounding a progressively downward curving slope that then "un-curves" to a flattish floor often with a patch of dunes in it.

My take on all these is that they were relatively fresh craters that were formed BEFORE the sulfate rock that now covers them. They seem to have had a level fill of unknown material, wiere capped with the sulfate rock, and then when the water went away, the fill material compressed and the caprock dimpled downward.

Oppy seems to be surviving the storm and assuming that Oppy gets in and out of Victoria crater it seems worthwhile to continue discussing where Oppy might go after Victoria

Steve Squyres is quoted in the 3rd of June Planetary Society MER update as making the following statement:

"Everyone at JPL, on our science team, and at NASA Headquarters, felt that if we were ever going to do this the time was now," Squyres added. "The kind of stuff we want to do inside this crater really requires a healthy six-wheeled rover, which is what we have now. We're interested in getting in there, doing our business, and getting out while the vehicle still has those six wheels to enable us to climb out. Then we've got a lot more science to do on the plains around the crater," he said, noting that the scientists already have their eyes on the cobbles and other deeply eroded craters like Erebus back out on the plains. "But now is the time to enter Victoria Crater."

The way I read this is that Oppy might well be sent back to Erebus itself and if so this might be part of a bigger plan to drive back to the good driving country around Eagle crater. My guess is that Oppy will be sent North past Erebus following its old tracks so as to get off the etched terrain as quickly as possible and then will head due North.

Large interesting craters do seem in short supply north of Eagle but at the very least if Oppy travels more than a few km North of Eagle it will be able to sample older strata than that exposed in Victoria and Endurance craters.

What I would like to see is Oppy being driven North off the Merridiani heamatite deposits altogether. Perhaps there is an exposed section of the base of the Merridiani deposits North of Eagle crater?

Does anyone know how far North of Eagle crater Oppy would have to drive to drive off the area of heamatite deposits that were mapped from orbit before Oppy landed?

It took two years, flat out, to get from Endurance to Victoria. The dunes north of Erebus were slow, nasty driving. I can't imagine a scenario where you would want to re-encounter that terrain.

Welcome to UMSF PaulM.



I'm not sure exactly how many km Opportunity would have to go to get off hematite deposits altogether, but I think multiples of the total driving distance to date--which, as Doug indicated, makes it an unlikely goal.



But I'm sure SS and team will try and get the maximum science out of what ever they do.



Floyd

On the other hand, a drive to the west rim of Big Crater/Ithaca to the east/southeast of Victoria would achieve much the same thing, as the rim seems to rise above the hematite, as well as likely predating it.

The idea of Opportunity making an Odyssey to Ithaca appeals to me. It would be better still if it had a wife, son, and swineherder there waiting for it.

And don't forget Argos, the aged, faithful dog.

TTT

I find it interesting to speculate where the "deeply eroded craters like Erebus" that Steve Squyres says Opportunity will head towards might be.

The problem is that once Opportunity leaves the Victoria ejecta blanket it will be literaly "stuck in a rut" again. Opportunity has problems crossing dune crests and so the most obvious directions to send Opportunity are NNW back to Erebus or SSE in the direction of Ithaca crater.

This means that for me the most obvious "deeply eroded crater" to head towards is Erebus itself.

Opportunity did cross dune crests between sols 621 and 626 but was only able to do so easily because the dunes were low.

I do not have the bandwidth to download HIRISE pictures at maximum resolution but if I did it would be interesting to speculate about routes to other eroded craters close to Victoria that Opportunity could reach by making a combination of NNW-SSE trending legs between high dune crests and legs diagonaly across those low dunes that exist in the Victoria area? Are there any patches of low dunes in the Victoria area?

Speaking of the "Oddysey," or the "Grand Voyage" as I call it, there was a new MRO image a few months ago (PSP_004289_1780_RED) that covered more of the terrain south of Victoria. Maybe some of you noticed it. In the far southeast of the image, there is a type of terrain that I don't remember seeing before in MRO images of the area. It looks dark, almost giving the visual impression of an area that has been "scraped" clean somehow. The area is just southeast of "Mini-Endurance", a slightly smaller twin of Endurance Crater which is about as far south-southeast of Victoria as Endurance is north. I'm not a geologist, but I found it intriguing. A clip of the image from IAS Viewer is attached.

I stared for some time at the potential path south. It seems to me like there are some rough drifts immediately south, but perhaps not much worse than what the rover has already dealt with. I think the path gets better the farther south you go, and around Mini-Endurance the terrain looks about as good as it did around Endurance.

Hey, I can dream, can't I ...?

Yes indeed. I came to much the same conclusion back on the last page of this thread. Good to know I'm not the only one looking I wish I were driving.

So, with the news that it is time to move on, and get back out on the plains, should we resurrect this thread? Perhaps not with the pie in the sky goals previously mentioned (not that there's anything wrong with that) but with a look to some realistic, obtainable targets that people might be willing to speculate on?

Personally, I'm looking forward to some new adventures. I freely admit I'm a sight-see-er, not a scientist. As much as I was thankful to reach the relative safety of Victoria after an eternity in potential Purgatories, and as beautiful and rewarding as it has been, I find myself longing for the daily tension of roving the ripples. Call me mad, just don't call me late for dinner.

Brian