I believe the Mössbauer is used to discriminate among various Fe minerals. As such, it will be difficult to predict how often it might become an important analytical tool. Considering the significance of iron compounds in Meridiani Planum, on Mars, and wherever planetary science is being performed, it is an important tool use frequently in the xyz directions of any exploratory campaign.

Prior to these rover missions, how many people have ever heard of a Mössbauer spectrometer? Certainly not me. Probably only a few here have. I'd like to know the answers to TTT's questions, considering how amazingly useful this analytic tool has been to the MER missions.

It has been a long-stated goal by Steve Squires to examine cobbles after leaving Victoria Crater. The only question was which direction to head in while looking for them. They have now examined one cobble. How many more they will pass by and how closely they will look at them remains to be seen.

Some pictures from the new site are available here: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...cam/2009-01-19/.
There was a 115m+ drive during sol 1774 and I'm now working on the map. It should be posted soon.

Here's a reprojected partial panorama - makes it easier to see that crater off to the west.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Sol 1774:



Anaglyph:



Not sure what that is in front of us (south) - a crater? Speed bumps?

Agreed, the Mössbauer is important, but a rough half-life calculation indicates that five years after landing the integration time will have to increase by a factor of 105 to get the same number of counts. Since the background count rate will remain constant, an even longer integration time will be needed to get the same S/N ratio.

The early Mössbauer integrations were several hours so we're looking at integration times measured in weeks, which will seriously delay our travel. I imagine the Mössbauer will be used sparingly.

Steve M

Important Mössbauer integrations were allowed 24 hours even at the outset of the mission. See, e.g., Roving Mars at 114 (describing two 24 hour Mössbauer integrations on El Capitan in Eagle Crater). The latest Opportunity update suggests that the most recent integration occurred over 12 days, but doesn't specify if the instrument was in use continuously.

It would be interesting to hear if techniques exist for making effective use of shorter integrations with the instrument in its weakened state. Roving Mars speaks of "tuning" the instrument for different kinds of readings. I wonder if it's possible to tune the instrument to a "coarse" setting that would yield at least a modicum of useful information from a quantity of radiation flux (if that's the right term) which earlier would have been considered too small to bother with.

CosmicRocker pointed out several posts upthread how few of us had ever heard of a Mössbauer spectrometer prior to the Rover missions. Professor Mössbauer discovered the effect which bears his name in 1957 and is still with us (he turns 80 on January 31). It would be interesting to learn if he ever dreamed that Mössbauer spectroscopy would be used on Mars in his lifetime, and what he makes of the Rovers and their discoveries.

TTT

Here's the latest navcam mosaic, taken after the drive during sol 1776.
Click to view attachment
Have a look to the route map and you will see that we are next to a little crater which was already visible from the previous site.
I'm eager to see the rest of the navcam pictures.

Next stop? Or drive on past...?

Click to view attachment


Click to view attachment

A color mosaic perhaps and then go for good. My 2c.
Here's the crater in polar view.
Click to view attachment

I agree. It's a nice view, but I don't see any reason to linger here.

Ranger. Nice name.

Are those giant dunes that appear to be part of the horizon?

Funny how ecstatic we would have been if we had encountered this crater early in the mission. Now it is just, "yawn, drive on.."

Some may think that this is just another pothole on the Road to Endeavour, but I still think it's worthy of a photo
Click to view attachment

Astro0

EDIT: A larger version (with no text) is now on my blog.

Yeah. Eagle Crater's outcrops pale in comparison. But Eagle lives in history as the most astounding first look any lander has had to date. IMHO
Click to view attachment

We're moving again. What a relief! {/pun}

It would be great to get color images. The rocks look dark on the navcam compared to the pavement.

And it could easily have been the unluckiest landing spot in history. Imagine if Eagle had been a filled-in sand trap like so many craters encountered.

Speaking of filled in craters: Ranger looks like it must have a very deep layer of sand and dust in it, unless it was unusually shallow. Are the craters in this area old, or is the sand/dust just really prone to getting blown around? These craters look so much more filled in than things like Meteor Crater in Arizona. Are there estimates of their age?

Beautiful one, Astro0 !

An update gleaned from the PDT:

Second part of the Ranger pan tosol (to make a 15x2) then driving the sol after next (1780).

Is it me or the images processing by our wizards has improved THAT much ?

I guess we're in restricted sols these days

I don't think you can say that based on this plan, as we stopped to image Ranger anyway. No driving on sol 1789 is likely a result of it being the weekend, restricted or not she could still have driven on that sol.

Of course we could be in restricted sols, I have completely lost track of when they fall.

I agree James.
Nevertheless I was (also) refering to this post: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=127527 (mine actually) that was ok till conjunction but could have drifted ever since.

That is so damned cool, to be able to image a small crater (Ranger) from orbit and then drive right up to it! And again, this is exactly what Mars should look like -- a barren plain dotted with small craters!!! Tesheiner, Astro0, et al, thanks!

We've moved south. Bye-bye, Ranger.

Here's an anaglyph mosaic of the Pancam drive direction view south on Sol 1780:

Great!
Comparing the pictures taken from the current site with previous ones, specially the navcams, I have the impression that the ripples are becoming smaller again. Have a look to the map too and scroll down from sol 1780's position.

Yup ! I'm hoping to resume our pre-conjunction 100+ meters-per-sol driving regime soon ...

However, I'm a bit concernd about a remark I read sometime ago, that due to the new Odysee passing times, Oppys daily driving window will be significantly restricted such that we can no longer do long single-sol drives. Could some one of the rover experts confirm this ?

No reason why they couldn't carry on driving past the comms pass. It would mean a restricted-sols type situation for the end-drive location, but it would mean a longer drive if it was possible/required.

Doug

Except that later in the day we might have issues with post-drive imaging (yes that can be taken on the subsequent sol) and if autonav is used, driving with very little light can make things a bit difficult. I'm not sure about the impact on ambient temperature at that time of day.

Paolo

I wasn't proposing post-drive imaging any later than it normally is, but we did read somewhere that MODY was being shifted to earlier in the day so that it wouldn't be fortuitously overhead at a normal 'done for the day' sort of time anymore.

The times I heard there would not be much time post-ODY. Moreover, the drive happening post-ODY should check what happened in the drive pre-ODY. There are certain conditions which would be difficult to check/predict at the the time of sequencing. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it would make my life miserable ;-) I also know full well I have to get ready for this since it will likely happen on MSL as well (=drive sequences broken up in different time segments).

Paolo

Mosaic taken on 1773 named 'Pavement Textures' on the PDT site.



James

Reminds me, ever so slightly, of Anatolia back up in the Eagle-Endurance days.

I'm wondering if we will see different kinds of bedrock once back on flat terrain...

Speaking of feature names, "Surveyor" (crater?) is on the list of images planned for today, sol 1782. My guess: it's the tiny crater almost S of the current position which will be imaged on a "mid-drive" mosaic.
Click to view attachment

That would be a good guess. The answer is in about 10 hours.

Paolo

I wonder if the three craters formed at the same time from meteor that broke into several pieces? They look similarly eroded.

Now this is exciting. Looks like there was a pretty long drive to the south and west on sol 1782. And although I'm no judge of these things, it looks like the drifts are thinning out quite a bit!

Here's the Navcam mosaic (so far), I left it in full equirectangular facing south in case anyone wants to reprocess it.

I think your right Mike. Looks like about 110m SSW

Here it is.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

If you believe my ripple size mapping then we're through the roughest seas.

Click to view attachment

Green dot - approximate sol 1782 position

Look at that! Beautiful matchup.

My impression is that we already crossed the worst of it. Still rough but less on each driving sol.

Do you mean the worst of the whole drive, or merely of this segment?

TTT

Thanks for the location update on your ripple map, James. Looking at that map and Tesheiner's route map, I can see two options now. First, continue farther south, until we reach the smoother, blue region on the ripple map, then head east. The second option is to head east around now, following the patches of exposed bedrock, even though the ripples are somewhat higher here. I'll guess that they'll drive a few hundred metres farther south, then head east along the southernmost reaches of the current stretch of exposed bedrock.

On another topic, has anyone else noticed the small raised ridges in the bedrock at the sol 1782 location:
Click to view attachment
Presumably old fissures that filled with a harder material. Does anyone remember seeing features like this before?

There were features like that at in Endurance, IIRC. What I found interesting was the way the feature seems to be split, possibly implying some sequence of events.

Also the feature's placement way out here in the middle of nowhere might be interesting, although I don't know.

Worst of the whole drive - depending on the route taken.

Several kilometers of these slightly smaller ripples before heading out onto the 'parking lot' (like the terrain around Eagle/Endurance) a couple of km's before 'mini-Endurance'.

Here is the whole route with a green dot for our approximate location.

Click to view attachment

A long way to go...

If, since their formation, at the same time or different times, the craters were filled in and covered and are just now being uncovered, the similar degree of uncovering would be no indication that they were formed at the same time.