Nasa announced earlier that Opportunity will head for Vostok Crater, due South.
I assembled this colored mosaic to get a better idea of what lies ahead. Reaching the crater Victoria in the south should not be a problem, I only hope the rocky terrain north of the crater will allow Opportunity to travel in more or less a straight line. There sure are plenty of interesting sites to explore in this area!

Pando posted an image of the expected route - which goes slightly left of a straight line - via vostok, to the round feature at the start of the etched terrain, then SE to Victoria

Doug

Nix, am I mistaken, or is there a bit of a scale discrepancy between the upper and lower halves of your mosaic? It appears in your picture that Endurance crater is as large or larger than Victoria, but I thought that Victoria crater's dune field alone was as big as all of Endurance crater.

Ilbasso I think you are mistaking the big depression in the upper half for Endurance. Endurance is midway the mosaic and Eagle Crater to the left of it.
Victoria is about 700-750 meters wide I think compared to 130-140 meters for Endurance.

The question becomes...why not go 'up' to the big depression area? It's as large as Victoria but not as deep (they pretty much have no chance to go into Victoria). Maybe it's just not as exciting or they don't think they'd see anything new there?

Eric P / MizarKey

Nix: Oops, sorry! I'm so used to seeing Endurance at the top of NASA's maps that I forgot there was anything north of it! Great mosaic, as was your Spirit pan on the other thread.

That's because they really wanne check out the Etched terrain to the south and it also looks alot mere compelling than the big sand dune to the north.

The good thing is that they can have a look at Victoria when they have (hopefully) worked their way throug the etched terrain

The reason it's not as deep is because it's filled in with sand/dust. Anything interesting in it is covered up! The reason to head south is the etched terrain, an area of great scientific interest. Victoria is 'just' an added attraction if the rover is still alive after exploring the etched terrain. The time it takes to explore the etched terrain will depend on how interesting it proves to be once Opportunity gets there.

I think they will visit similar depressions in Victoria's vicinity once they get there, although Victoria will have all the attention. I have been looking through some raw images and the outcropping surrounding Victoria is visible in some images. I had some doubts because the white horizon in some images dissappears when colorizing the images, but looking at some other images the L2's shows the rocks lighter toned than for example an L5.
What do you think?

The rock near the Heatshield is interesting too!

Hard to tell from the images whether Victoria is visible or not. Perhaps we could calculate the curvature of the marsscape vs. how high the rim of the crater is; it may be completely behind the horizon at this point.

I don't mean Victoria itself to be visible but the northern boundary of the large area of outcrop surrounding Victoria.

That light area on the south horizon looks like about the correct azimuth for Victoria. I'd bet on an upturned crater rim-- remember how Endurance and Burns Cliff was visible once Oppy got out of Eagle.

--Bill

As fascinating as Victoria may be, I can't help but think that there will be so many amazing science opportunities in the etched terrain, that they will be tempted to spend the rest of the rover's life exploring a small portion of those badlands.

I can't say that's a bad thing. I look forward to many Sols, slowly rolling through that stratigraphy.

Agreed. Victoria is a long-term goal, but who knows what sights we'll see along the way.

Look at the interesting things we've seen around the heatshield, and we've just "scratched the surface" there.

--Bill

Are all of these sites still within Opportunity's original landing ellipse, or will Opportunity leave the ellipse if it gets as far as Victoria?

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/01/24/

Victoria Crater and some of the Etched Terrain are well outside the landing ellipse.

Victoria is outside of the landing ellipse. The landing ellipse cuts through the middle of the etched terrain.

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/0...llipsefinal.jpg

edit: Thanks Sunspot I was sitting at the edit screen too long

Given the relative flatness of Meridiani, I hope they decide to take Oppy to one of the hill like protrusions toward the east end of the ellipse in Pando's post. Might take a bit to get there, but it would be a nice change of scenery.

Eric P / MizarKey

Victoria crater seems like the best 'cool thing' for 100's of sols of driving in any direction to me. it's likely to have 50 - 100 metre depth - 10m cliffs at the edge - and seemingly routes in, and would be a fitting end-of-mission location

Doug

I'm not sure what hills you are referring to, but there seems to be two eroded *craters* at the end (or slightly below) the right end of the landing ellipse. The Victoria Crater appears to be relatively young compared to these though, and is therefore a much more interesting science target.

Also, notice a huge (and I mean Huge) crater-like structure at the lower right corner of that image, with barely one quarter of it visible. It's so huge that it would be unrecognizable at ground level...

That Huge Crater is, incidentally, the only feature in the whole area to show up on my by now quite antiquated (1979) paper maps of Mars -- where it appears as a tiny, nameless dimple. Thanks for reminding me just how huge Mars actually is, and how little of we really know, up close, after all these years

I was wondering if those were craters or hills...

And Doug, shhhhush, stop mentioning 'end of mission'...Oppy will go on forever!

Eric P / MizarKey

Indeed!

Hey guys, I know what I'm about to suggest is complete and absolute crazy talk, but check out this map of all Mars Landing sites (failed and sucessful) http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/marsprobemap.html

Wouldn't it be neat if Oppy could travel to the site of the failed Mars 6 lander? It's in the same general vicinity, probably several hundred km away. (Not sure of the map's scale) At the very least, if Oppy survives after Victoria, it would be a direction to drive.

If they plowed ahead at 100m/sol, that's 10 sols for 1km or 1000sols for 100km. Like I said, absolute crazy talk.

The distance is on the order of 1500 km, so at the speed you suggest it would take oh, about 40 years to get there. Also the intermediate terrain is rough and heavily cratered, and looks particularly nasty close to the (assumed) Mars 6 crash site. Moreover we would need to figure out exactly where the Mars 6 actually was, but I suppose 40 years is enough to determine that.

It would be more interesting to see the Mars-3 lander and figure out exactly what did happen to it after a half minute of transmitting. As for Mars-6, it has the distinction of being the first to send back data from inside the Martian atmosphere (basically a temperature and pressure profile). Also, spurious signals from it led people to believe the Martian atmosphere contained a boat load of Argon.

Looks like work on the meteorite is finished.
Are we go for Vostok now??

The main part of the heatshield is close behind Oppy again. I wonder if there are still some investigations to be done here.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...EEP1311R0M1.JPG

We need an updated future SOL plan from Pando

Come on, Oppy, Smile for the thermal blanket - cheese!

I vote "self portrait" in the reflective covering - please!!!!!

Haha, lyford, that would be most stupendous! My vote goes for a self-portrait in heatshield too.

The dirt on the rear-hazcam appearing JUST when they got to the Heatshield and only on the one set of camera is a bit coincidental to me - all this chared cork and resin ready to be run over and I can imagine it easily sending clouds of sticky dust in the air...I think they should do no more than the bare minimum then get away.

I was AMAZED they spent so long next to the 'big piece' when the mylar insulation could have folded back around and hit the IDD

Doug

Yes, and if that problem happened on front hazcam it would seriously inhibit the use of the IDD... They have to be really careful around the debris field, and it's unlikely that they would do any more work on the heatshield.

I think they just turned the rover very sligtly, but haven't driven today

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...EEP1307R0M1.JPG

okay, party poopers, i suppose i have to side with safety over vanity.

would have been neat, though.

A new flight director's update is up (they are getting busy, its been months between the updates before this one) and Oppy is going to be investigating the heat shield further.

Strange. I guess they saw something needing a second look in the heat shield.

Lovely new image of meteorite.

Nice picture. You can see the area that they brushed - could that be rust in there or just dust that the RAT brush missed?

Looks like it's embedded in the rock so it might be rust or...? The soil around it is definetely interesting.