Farewell Conception?
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...WUP1211R0M1.JPG

Sure looks that way. I reckon she covered about 55m to the WSW. Time for a new thread?

I'm really enjoying the view of Concepcion now!

I may be misinterpreting, but it looks like we've left. I make a heading of Southeast.

Bye bye Concepcion...

--Bill

As the great man used to say...

Allons-y!!!!

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Really enjoyed our stay at Concepcion, and think that in years to come the study of the "Chocolate Hills" will come to be seen as one of the mission highlights... wonder what the geologists learned about Mars' history there? ... but yes, time to move on. Wonders await!

Is everyone onboard? Next stop: Santa Maria! (with a brief halt at Twin Craters in order to satisfy your physiological needs Meridiani journeyers)

There're roughly 600m from our current position to the twin craters and the odometry is now near 19500m, so that means the 20km mark will be reached during this leg.
20km! Unbelievable!

Yes, unbelievable but 3 months and 1 week behind schedule according to my predictions...are we there yet?
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Hmmm. I like Concepcion... and I also like the Twin Craters... but which is best?

There's only one way to find out...

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Left hand images (IAS Viewer 1x) to same scale. Right hand images (IAS viewer 4X) to same scale too.

Is it possible to tell whether they formed at the same time, from one impact event, or are just next to each other by coincidence?

If one happened significantly later than the other, it would have mostly filled it (the earlier) in with ejecta.

I would guess the same time. If one was formed later, I would think ejectra from the second would be obvious in the first. Good question.

[edit] Shaka posted about 30 seconds faster.

Even so, it's likely that one was formed just a fraction sooner than the other as sparated bolides are unlikely to travel at exactly the same speed. I reckon the one on the left is later by half a second (or less).

I think that the key is the shape of the "border" wall between those two craters. It looks like both of their shapes have been altered by simultaneous formation.

Many if not most of the pancam and navcam images down at exploratorium today are corrupted. Problem with Oppy?

Not necessarily. **** happens. She still sent back some nice parting shots of Concepcion...

http://twitpic.com/17yy6c

Worst ... artifacts .... everrrr!

Phil

Having a really hard time making anaglyphs out of them...

A ratty UHF comms pass ( perhaps with the UHF antenna to orbiter line of sight being interrupted by the LGA or PCMA ) and it on'y takes a few dropped packets to corrupt lots of pictures.

Note that the corruption is in lots of images of a wide range of time. They are not all taken today, for example, inferring a problem with transmission or receipt rather than the actual data or the rover itself.

Maybe a family of gorillas wandering past got too close and accidentally knocked the antennae out of alignment...

Nah! Too far from their niche. Oh, perhaps we're talking about the "Gorilla Meridiannii"; that's a different species.

Now, back to business: a 70+ meter drive SW was performed some hours ago. Waiting for the pictures...

I'm sure I read in the MER technical guides that UHF passes are always error-free (which if true, points to an orbiter-to-DSN issue). I hope this isn't due to the loss of DSS-14...

Then you've read wrong. Whatever the problem was, it was clearly temporary as the most recent down link was fine. The UHF passes are pretty damn reliable, but they're not perfect.

http://an.rsl.wustl.edu/mer/merbrowser/bro...=res&m=MERA

Four CSV's at the bottom of this page are of UHF passes and have a data quality field, you can see many data dropouts within them.

It's impossible to warrant zero errors on any kind of electromagnetic transmission, so "error-free" can only mean that errors are detected and not propagated.
Besides, I'm pretty sure that this "error-free" (if true) applies to the telemetry packets exchanged between the rovers and the orbiters; we are not talking about image files but only about the chuncks that will later on be assembled in a file. You may have error-free packets but still only, say, 10% of the packets making an image file correctly transmitted.
Now, with all of this into account, try to imagine how a heavily compressed JPEG picture will look like when 90% of data are missing and the 10% which are there has no errors. Perhaps like this: http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...LNP1665L0M1.JPG

Indeed, but the data quality field suggests that '1' could represent DSN issues:

Very good point.

If it were a DSN issue, then we would likely have heard about problems with MRO, MEX and MODY downlink - not just Opportunity.

It would be most strange for a DSN issue to interject occasionally, within the downlink time of the packets from MER UHF passes.

Thanks to all posters for this--the good news is I would not have known about it unless I happened to check here. I have forwarded the concern and included it in my downlink report. In a spot check, I see the affected images as being associated with (I cannot speak to causality) the images being reprocessed into the right sol. So, good images exist, and I hope the problem (late) in the pipeline will be resolved soon.

Edit: PS, got a good laugh about UHF passes always being error free... I agree with most of the commentary following that. In theory, all bit errors are trapped and do not propagate, except some small fraction. In practice, there was a time when errors got through all the time. And the images then looked just like what is at Exploratorium now. Since the on-board compression is (usually) a wavelet based one, simple dropouts look different (missing or blurry rectangles) from this and from some JPEG errors.

Ah...in (nerdy) layman's terms those would be the Borg ships we occasionally see, as compared to the monochrome bed quilt above.

I'm trying to think of the various times we've had few, borked, or no images - apart from ODY safe modes, most of the time it's been problems on the ground with scripts, processing etc rather than a problem inboard the spacecraft.

Low temp stopping the PANCAM filter wheel from rotating fully so the frame of the filter wheel was visible is all i can remember. I think you even interviewed Jim Bell about it:

http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/ma...vers/audio.html

Rover Audio Update, April 27, 2006
Pancam Update with Jim Bell

MP3 format (running time 28:27)
Doug Ellison, the host of the online forum unmannedspaceflight.com, interviews Pancam Payload Element Lead Jim Bell about:

* Low Ridge Haven: Pre-planning for Spirit's long winter stay
* Victoria Crater just on the horizon
* Tilt or Latitude for extra power
* Coping with streaks and noise in images
* Taking pictures in the cold: stuck filter wheel
* Albedo and photometry: ground truthing orbital observations

Outcrop up ahead... our next stop?

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Keep it quiet Stu...maybe they won't notice it...

Now, now, Rui! The purpose of a journey is not to reach a destination, it is to experience the trip itself...

If not a stop, at least a look.

We saw many "fracture fills" at Concepcion. This bluff or step may be the surface expression of a fracture or an "Anatolia feature" and remember that some of the Anatolia features trend NW-SW, so this will put it well in line with fractures in the Concepcion area. Not proposing a full-blown science stop, but hoping that we won't breeze right by the outcrop. As far as I can tell, it's right on the projected path (I think... I can't get used to the drive path cutting across ripples).

--Bill

I'm a little apprehensive about posting this given the skill level here, but here is my first attempt at an anaglyph using the March 12 navcam images. I suppose this location is a lot like many others, but "standing here" gives me a sense of relaxation.

The left and right eyes are reversed, had to flip my glasses to make it work!

No worries. That's what we do here, learn and post.

Welcome to the forum.

"Now, now, Rui! The purpose of a journey is not to reach a destination, it is to experience the trip itself... "

Hey, it's a Luno-KHOD, not a Luno-STOP! Oh, sorry, wrong world. But right sentiment!

Phil

Phil I think Rui's point in moving on is just that, moving on. As soon as we get to Endeavor he'll be dreaming about Bopolu Crater.

you're even shortsighted, Dan

They didn't. :-P
We're already past it after the last move.

Huh. I'm actually a bit surprised.

On the other hand, the team may have determined that when you've seen one outcrop of Meridiani bedrock (in Oppy's current region anyhow), you've seen them all. They know there's mineralogically different terrain ahead. The chance to directly examine phyllosilicates might just start trumping stops for anything that's not obviously & radically unusual...

True, and looking at this area again, the outcrop may be on the rim of a buried eroded crater. "Nothing to see folks, move along..."

As far as I can see the next important stop will be Twin Crater, a major "road cut" on the route. Then things may get interesting-- we get off of the aeolian peneplain we've been on forever and start going downslope. The distant vista will improve and we might start to get lower in the geologic section.

--Bill

I have to agree here. Personally I am eager to get to some new geology. Tough, though, when almost every rock and cobble looks so inviting. Wouldn't we all love to pick up some of these, crumble Mars between our fingers. Sigh!

Craig

Bopolu Crater?...Isn't this the Valles Marineris trip? Sorry looks like I got in the wrong bus...

Scott Maxwell Tweeted earlier:

"It's gonna be a lean Martian winter: tomorrow's my first shift in a couple of weeks, but Oppy has too little energy to drive. Recharge sol. "

I read that too. Note that he's talking about planning so the recharging sol will be tomorrow; today was driving sol and the images might hit the ground in a few hours.

Love the wind-sculpted patterns of these dunes...

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I have the impression, based on these images and the HiRISE too, that the ripples to the SW are becoming smaller.
Flat ground ahead?