Ouch... that brings home just how far away Endeavour is, doesn't it?

If you think that's a long way....! How about a journey beyond Endeavour.
That'll get tongues wagging
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Never say, never.

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Above, I've enlarged an area from the original Sol1782 Navcam image (located here) and was curious about this little object.
It appears to be a rock sitting in the side of a small ripple dune, and near it, one of those lovely little impact 'dents' (although that could be an illusion).
Ejected rock from the surrounding bedrock? Meteor? Rock carried along by the shifting dune (very slow)?
Hard to tell. A Pancam shot would be great (but I suspect not on the agenda).

Haven't done this for a long time...hey Doug! I was able to restrain myself!...
Looks like we're still on the right tracks...
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I wonder if the ridges are what we once called "razorbacks" near Erebus?

Thanks for the map update, ustrax. I keep wanting Oppy to veer southeast too early, but your route makes it clear why the trend is more south to find the best driving terrain.

Yeah, but your luck is gonna run out soon, Rui. Ain't no way they are gonna take the Porcupine route, that's just too far out of the way. Absolutely, no way, no how. Bet the farm on it! How's that for a bold prediction?

Well - he is 4 months ahead of schedule, but the comparison between his route, and the route taken, is remarkable

Thanks, Marz, I'd forgotten about the razorbacks. Perhaps these are related features.

And the accuracy of Ustrax's route prediction is downright uncanny. In fact, I'd call it suspicious. Ustrax, have you been quiet lately because you've been hired on as a rover driver?

I wonder if you also compared not only the path but the relative progress. How does it compare to the real progress?

Paolo

Yep...I must agree with you, everything points for us seing Oppy changing her direction where I've put the border between leg 1 and 2.
fredk...I'm not sure if Paolo will like to read that...
Doug...was I ever unremarkable?...

Love this view... more vertical relief in the terrain than I thought...

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Thanks for the 3D view, Stu. That relief you're seeing is part of the raised rim of Ranger crater, from sol 1776. (Notice the Beacon on the horizon at far right.)

Ain't no way they are gonna take the Porcupine route go beyond Endeavour, that's just too far out of the way. Absolutely, no way, no how. Bet the farm on it!

What can I say, I'm always wrong and I want to keep that streak intact.

Ah, right, thanks Fred! Thought it was suddenly a bit bumpy! Yep, spotted Beacon over there... happy days, eh?

This view is just downright cute! Love seeing shadows of the rovers on the ground; makes them seem more real, somehow...

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What I find amazing about the idea of Opportunity going to Endeavour is that the crater is so big that if it had appeared in the landing ellipse the huge slopes would surely have violated the mission safety criteria! This will be like nothing we've seen from the rovers before!

Exactly my feelings too
Thats one of the reasons I like the long distance driving: if it puts us so well beyond the original landing ellipse, it is a bit like landing another spacecraft at another position - for the price of one real landing plus driving

We left the landing ellipse before we even got to the etched terrain at Erebus iirc - that terrain wasn't considered safe for landing even.

Doug

It only goes to show how important ground truth is.... even MROs wondrous images are just whetting the appetite!

I dunno. Looking at the original ellipse it seems there was some etched terrain off to the west of the rover even before Erebus/the edge of the ellipse.

But look at all the etched terrain to the south (and Squyres mentioned this in on of the Q'n'A's a few years back)

We are in terrain that was intentionally avoided at landing.

Looks like roughly another 100m or so on sol 1784.

Latest batch of my 3D images collected here...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/3dfest

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Here we are...

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Phil

Nice. I wondered if we would head for that linear feature.

Phil, I would have positioned Oppy about one red-dot-diameter further south from where you have it - we're just the south side of the NE-SW feature.

Well, I can't move it now, I flattened the image. Young Oppers will have to back up.

Phil

Looks like the linear feature of interest is a monocline with a small displacement crestal normal fault

My 5 minute Sumo Paint interpretation:

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Coooooool.

How did it form? What does it mean?

(....and is that a little bitty crater next to it on the left?)

5 more minutes on Sumo Paint yields this:

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And yes, that does look like a mini-crater. The dip panels suggest maybe a low angle impact towards about 11 o'clock, with some low angle dips on the right side of the crater and some bi-directional steeper dips over a small fold on the upper left side (weathering in a rubbly slope).

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Can ya tell I'm lovin' the Sumo Paint? Best Internet-Mars-Geology-Field-Camp mapping tool there is!

That will make a neat illustration for:

"Roadside Geology of Mars"
"Mars Highway 1: Victoria Crater to Endeavour Crater"

Better view...

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Well that was unexpected. Yestersols drive looks like it was WSW (i.e more west than south) about 85m according to the PDT site.

Can't wait to see the images to confirm this. I assumed the next drive would be due south. Where are we off to now...

You beat me by 10 minutes, James.
Those 85m might change (increase) a little when we get data from yestersol (1786) with the actual driving path. Definitely nothing close to the 160m stated on the monthly report.

Now I'm a bit concerned.

1. Here are the positions pre and post-drive, mapped on a HiRISE image at 25cm which I usually use to double-check the rover's mobility data with the navcam mosaics in polar projection. And the current position seems to be in an area with a few ripples bigger then usual.
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2. If I did my math correctly, the rover's attitude after this move is: yaw=-118º, pitch=10º, roll=-6º. Mike (Howard), could you double-check this with MMB?

Long drive aborted after excessive slip?
Can't wait to see the pictures too!

My program for decoding the quaternions is at home, dam it, just when I need to dust it off.

The change in 'z' is also a little worrying; 3.5m is quite a lot for a 85m drive. A similar false reading was seen at Purgatory.

Not that I'm trying to worry anyone.

It looks odd in MMB, seems to match the numbers you give. We've seen odd before though (and in normal situations); I'm going to hold off on freaking out until the pictures come in.

One mars bar says a Jammerbugt like event. Partial dune ingress - drive self aborted - back out within a day or three

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/imag...er20060720.html

Tesh's map does stop on a large DLO running perpendicular to direction of travel.

(dune like object - geologists seem a bit prickly over what is and isn't a dune)

Doug

My mars bar says a confused drive terminating in a less-severe DLO collision...

> The change in 'z' is also a little worrying; 5.5m is quite a lot for a 85m drive. A similar false reading was seen at Purgatory.

I got 3.6m (-2.6 to -6.2) instead. In any case, and regardless of the exact value, IMO it might be a consequence of slipping on a tilted position while driving in "blind" mode. Assuming the 10º pitch figure is correct it means slip-driving about 20m at such tilt to "climb" 3.6m.

Yes - that was a mistake (Monday!) I must have been correcting the value when you replied. 3.5 is not so worrying but still maybe a little high.

That is exactly the mechanism that caused the Z error at Purgatory - driving while the rover is at a significant pitch.

Here's the view from MMB, FWIW. Disclaimer: obviously the data does not match reality, unless Oppy can fly.

Based on Eduardo's Sol1786 position, here is an image showing the Sol 1786 position, centered inside a 50 m black box, on two of the terrain models. There is some potential ickiness around there.

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(And of course the excitement happens right at the artifact gap of my model)

-Mike

As for 'why west?' - they have to go some distance west to bypass the field of purgatoids down near "Porcupine"... I think...

Phil

Current position/track compared to earlier proposed W Spur Route:
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Sol 1786 position is about 75 m E of previously proposed corridor.

-Mike

False alarm, I would say.
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Um, is this, like, wierd??

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Imagine prevailing winds for 2,000,000,000 years. Little ridges and furrows in the rock are going to affect the flow of the wind over the ground, causing little disturbances like that I would have thought. The opposite of a wind-tail behind a rock.

Just thinking - perhaps an IDD keep-out volume violation occurred to end the drive early - the bottom of the IDD turret, and the 'end' (nearest to WEB) of the Mossbauer seems quite close to the dune ahead. I'm assuming auto-nav FHAZ pairs are used to establish if the IDD is about to bash into something.

What's good is that whilst the wheels are sinking in a bit to these dunes ( see the RHAZ) - I don't think there's much wheel slippage going on - the cleat marks are neat and evenly spaced.

I was wondering what it would look like if the ground shifted/displaced AFTER dune emplacement.
(The N-S big dunes are remnants from an earlier wind regime.)

Note the subtle little tell on the other side of the dune and how it lines up with the pavement crack running under the dune.
(Inverted image, with gamma correction to bring out details in the "crack" on the far side of the dune)
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What I find interesting is that, aside from the localized disturbance in the dune, the dune associated with the upper crack also appears to have a lighter albedo distal of that crack as opposed to the proximal side. That is unexpected (to me). If it is real

Maybe saltating sand is channeled by the crack and piles up right there on the dune sides.

That is what it looks like.