Hi all,

Like every morning, I've just checked the latest info on the pancam web looking for the current and immediate future imaging plan and ...
Stay tuned and start Alt-F5'ing the exploratorium page at 19:35 UTC or so because today might be the day. Sol 1291 is a driving sol!

I think your right Tesh.

This line is telling:



A colour pancam mosaic mid-drive, very unusual.

Looks like we are going to see a repeat of sol 133 at Endurance; get all six wheels in, take some pictures, then back right out again.

Hold on to your seats...

Not going to make a huge deal out of it... many moving and powerful words will be written elsewhere today about both the event itself and the anniversary... but I think it will be very fitting, in a way, if Oppy drives into VC today, carrying with her a small piece of one of the Twin Towers, as described in Steve's excellent book.

Click to view attachment

Hope no-one minds me pointing that out, but I thought we should mark the anniversary in some way.




Right, go get 'em Oppy! We're with you!

That's a picture from Spirit.

I know it is, thanks, but both rovers carry a piece, and that's the best view I've found of one of them so far.

Wow... I did not know that, Stu - 'twould indeed be most fitting. Thanks for noting this little known (probably) fact.

The WTC metal is the plate attached to the back of the RAT motor casing with the US flag on it.



EDIT just noticed Stu's image above.

Yep, that's the one, as labelled on the pic in my original posting.

The story of how those pieces of the WTC came to be on Mars is one of the most moving parts of the "Roving Mars" book, in my opinion, gives a very human dimension to the mission.

The RAT WTC memorial was discussed at length on NASA TV by the RAT team in 2004, so I'm not sure one could consider it a little-known fact.

The builder of the RAT was Honeybee Robotics -- their offices are just a few blocks from the WTC site.

Given this fhazcam image and this other one from the rhazcam, I think we are actually on top of the drift.

Edited: In the same fhazcam we can see the tracks telling that Opportunity got at least its front wheels on the slope.

PS: I'm replying here on "Back to work" to keep this one as the active thread.

Looks that way to me too, and makes sense to test the driveability of the ripple before contemplating any movement into the crater. See if there are traction issues that could affect backing out.

Brian

It looks like the drift is not an issue. That's great news.

Yeah, though it seems Oppy got a bit slippage while driving back, but it's not a problem I think.

A clean path right ahead!
May I call this mosaic "Paolo's plunge site"
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> Yeah, but it seems Oppy got a bit slippage while driving back, though it's not a problem I think.

Think the same. The tracks reminds me of Purgatory, in that section where Opportunity was starting to slip.

and my version

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and vertial projection

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and a other 360° projection with front and rear cam

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sol 1291 R0 1x3:




L0 1x3 here


All the images have sky-flat dusty lens corrections.

You know, I think we may have gone further in than the tracks suggest. The tracks end where the surface transitions to rock and so Oppy could have gone further without making any (hazcam visible) tracks.

The tracking database suggests that Oppy backed up ~3.8m, that's over twice her length, out from inside Victoria (and about 70cm vertical decent/ascent). This could be inaccurate if there had been much slippage but it doesn't look that way to me as both the in and out data are consistent.

EDIT: A quick bit of photogrammetry seems to confirm this, objects are about 3m closer in the mid-drive pancams than in the end of drive navcams.

Oppy really did go right into Victoria!

Take that Cassini!

James

I can't wait to get a look at that tracking data. Later this evening...

Mars rover begins risky downward drive
Opportunity takes a ‘toe dip’ into the biggest crater it’s ever visited

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20726395/

Hmm... that mosaic looks suspiciously non-JPL.

I don't know how accurate the tracking data is, but I know I like it





And it looks about right to me, actually.

On closer inspection, I agree it looks like there was some slippage on the way out. And yet the tracking data seems to be about right. I think we are currently parked on top of the drift, so maybe we didn't make it out quite all the way yet. Looking forward to some more images or news.

Ah, looks like the news is already here. That's what I get for not checking the official site.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-99b

Stu: ...many powerful words, indeed. Thank you very much for pointing out the significance of this date for the crater entry, and the special metal samples carried by each rover. Although it was intended to be a "quiet tribute," the fact that it wasn't noted elsewhere today is sad.

Damn, these freakin' rovers!! They put such a smile on my face. Nearly four years on and they're still going. No dunes, sandstorms, or Martian winters can stop these badasses.

Here's a little video of Paolo's Plunge, according to the tracking data. I'll do a nicer one sometime.

Ok. Sol 1291 was the day in which Opportunity moved into and out of this slope.
But when will be the day to go IN to stay there? It's today, sol 1293!



The images might hit the exploratorium around 20:35 UTC.

Because of Iapetus I still haven't got a dust compensation flat fielding routine up and running, so this isn't great.

It is however our first view taken from inside Victoria and shows (I think) a good part of the ground the Oppy will be driving over on this first decent.



James

When you get said dust compensation routine up and running, some of use would be interested in hearing the technical details...

sol 1291 L257 1x4:



Without at least a 1/3 overlap I don't think a dust compensation flat field mask will work on the 8 bit JPG data.

I hope that the Cornell Pancam Images will have a dust correction.

... and this one might be the second. It's the navcam mosaic taken at the same position inside VC; same pointing but a bigger fov.

Click to view attachment

How can the entry surface of Duck Bay is so smooth, no boulders or stones? It seems that something has ironed it.

Endurance was as smooth as this, wasn'it?

The smoothness of the bays versus the boulder-strewn capes... not sure there is any consensus there!

Look for the discussions on "capes" and "bays" that are the terms used to describe Victoria Crater's scalloped appearance.

Yes, indeed, Endurance's lateral surface is similar to Victoria's bay (no Capes). This case puzzles me about these stones were laid down as smooth as possible.

The only idea that is arised in my mind: "When that place was so hot soon after an asteroid had impacted. It was like a magma and the left stones from the asteroid impact were able to accommodate to the Mars' gravity."

We discussed this issue, the apparently planed smoothness of the slopes irrespective of the irregular composition of mixed boulders and matrix, quite a while back and I can't yet find where. But the answer we came to was aeons of erosion by wind and wind-borne dust grains, slowly grinding the jumbled boulders and ejecta mass down into a plane surface. It was deposited lumpy and irregular by the impact, then slowly smoothed down over an enormous period of time.

Kenny

An alternative hypothesis for Victoria is that the bays were long ago smoothed by wind abrasion, whereas the steeper capes are still shedding debris. Victoria may well be older than Endurance, most of which, except where Oppy entered, was relatively steep.
- HDP Don

Edit: Ooops. Kenny, we both answered "wind" at the same time. Obviously, I was referring to post #36 above. Incidentally, one could equally well (probably better) argue that Endurance is older than Victoria, and the morphological differences mainly result from Endurance's smaller size.

We are inside!

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...JZP1312L0M1.JPG

sol 1293

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A bit of photoshop, a lot of MMB..the view of the 'dip'

Doug

and front rear cam 360°

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Love the fractures that seem to run straight down into the crater. That one right in the center of your composite, especially. Post crater formation, yes?

a manual merge between panorama sol 1291 and sol 1293

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What about the slope angle?
What I've got from the mobility data tells me the rover is on a (at least) 15º slope.

I call this one... dip and dive

Ooh, I'm liking that one Doug.

I've (kind of) got something working to correct for dust on the lens, still a lot of work to be done, not far past 'proof of concept' at the moment. I'm reposting the sol 1291 both because even my current crude routine improves the mosaic a lot and also, by some fluke this process has also outputted (to my eye) a much more pleasing colour.



Right, must dash, going away for the weekend...

James

Nice one, Doug. Getting it to properly hide behind the drift like that must have been a bit of work.

If you turn off the left camera eye checkbox in the panorama settings, you will get a better view there. I've pretty much given up on Oppy's left cameras for now ( ), but I'm now de-vignetting the right eye images for her.

For the computer guys,

is it possible to make and publish, here in Unmanned Spaceflight.com,

a small computer programme to correct the dust on the lens

of Opportunity.

It will be much appreciated by a lot of members.

jvandriel

Current Location
Click to view attachment

Original image can be found here:
http://marswatch.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_...cape_verde.html