Thanks for all the help guys, but naaah, nothing's working. I bet it's a stoopid AOL thing. Just received this from the very helpful Webmaster Ron...

It should be "partially" up now. You may just be experiencing DNS
issues because I'm using a temporary IP address until I can move the
machine back down to the colo. Befor I do this, I want to replace the
RAM in the machine as it seemed to have a RAM error today that may
have caused a crash. (If it's not one thing, it's another...)

If you can clear your DNS cache, that may help. If you are running Mac
OS X (10.5 or above...) you can issue the following command in the
Terminal Application:

dscacheutil -flushcache

You are on your own in Windows or Linux.

Ron

Will try again later, have to go to work now anyway.

At this time, Exploratorium is down again. I suspect local network and/or server issues, which have gone on for a couple of weeks now.

--Bill

For those who haven't been able to see exploratorium, it's been back but with no new images, so you're not missing anything. The latest are from sol 2252, before the latest drive, and those 2252 images were available before the site went down.

Word from the Exploratorium:

Folks,
The computer that we use for hosting the raw Mars Rover data had a serious meltdown recently. We will be rebuilding it and will hopefully have your beloved raw data flowing in a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience. Who knew that hard drives don't last forever (or that the Rovers would be such troopers!)
- Ron 2010-05-27

http://www.exploratorium.edu/mars/raw_data.html

--Bill

Sounds eerily similar to post #290.

I just tried now and it worked, but like fredk said no new images.

Easy to miss things sometimes in a busy thread Bill, done it myself several times.

Deja-vuvu

I came across that as I was searching for a "raw data mirror site" that we could use whilst Exploratorium was ailing. There is nothing except for the "official" JPL site:

http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/a...pportunity.html

--Bill

Once we get to Endeavour Crater. Has anyone heard what they want to do? Will we do hill climbing or will we start going down into the Crater as far as we can???

The hills are the target, an old crater rim projecting up through the Meridiani plains. Descending into the crater takes you back into plains material.

Phil

We'll see what it looks like when we get there. In theory, ascending from atop the Columbia Hills would have simply gotten Spirit back down to the Gusev Plain, but actually placed her into the most interesting locale.

Geomorphologically, the inter-crater plains should be different than the intra-crater plains.

--Bill

I know what you mean, but to me it looks like the same plains unit is draped over the whole crater, inside and out, with exposures of different material only in the rim hills. One different thing in the interior is large dark barchan-like dunes, but they are a very much less interesting target than the ancient rocks on the crater rim.

Phil

There is the possibility that the crater once contained a lake, in which case there should be some sedimentary rocks distinct from the meridiani stuff. Remains of these might be found at the foot of the hills rather than their summits, providing a worthy science target in the event that by this time serious climbing is ruled out. One question I asked in an earlier discussion didn't get answered, at least not here. I guess this is a good opportunity to try again. What is the elevation of the lowest point on Endeavour's perimeter and how does it compare with the elevation of the beachlike platform we see around the lower parts of the rim hills?

It's hard to say what ought to be done because we don't know what she'll be able to do. Oppy will be pretty old and creaky by the time she reaches the Endeavour Hills. As many of us are.

At a minimum she ought to be able to walk the outcrop and look at the outcrop and pieces of float that have come drifting down. In an ideal world she ought to make a travserse up the hill and down the other side and give us a good idea of the lithology and structure of that section. Look at the inter-crater sediments. And then explore.


Ngunn, I'm not sure what that elevation is. I don't think it's as much a "beach-like platform" as much as it is an erosionally-resistant bed. Whatever it turns out to be, it will most assuredly be interesting...

--Bill

Squyres has a few things to say about the plans for Endeavour in the new PS update:

Judging from the images in that report, our Stu's known about this already...

Also from the new report, confirmation of the turn to the east:


And good news about the pancam lenses:

There's certainly been a big improvement over time - compare recent pancams with those from Victoria.

Ha! I wish! No, I just helped AJS with labelling some images to illustrate her report at the last minute. I had no idea where we were heading until then.

I agree its an outside chance, but I'd like to know the elevation is wrong so I can stop thinking about it.

The recent exploratorium issues and the general monotoni of Meridiani conspire to make the trip southward from San Antonio to the next waypoint a boring one.

There's a lot of activity in this thread though.

Thanks - I have eyes and I see not
Mike

... and the spectacular Martian dunefield view from Sol 2228, just processed with artificial green channel created from R1 and R2 filters + average sky added colored with samples taken during the processing. I think the colors are fairly accurate, being seen at the end of the afternoon. Enjoy
Click to view attachment

Beautiful! I love the drama of those low-sun-angle late afternoon shots.

Sol 2228! Still trying catching up with Oppy Olivier? 10m/sol should not be much of a challenge for you
I like the scenary too and I so happy there no longer such dunes ahead...

That's nice. I half expected to see "Kodak transparency film" on the border.

Ray Arvidson and team just published a lengthy paper on Opportunity's science results from Sol 511-2300.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2010JE003746.shtml

Subscription only though.

Mah: There are some ways to get copies of journal papers even if you don't have a subscription.
---If you know someone enrolled in a university or employed by a major corporation, you might ask them if they can get a copy. Before I retired I was able to get articles from most journals through my employer's library. Now, I just ask my son, who is a graduate student with full access to all scientific journals.
---Send an email to one of the authors. In my experience, a respectful request emailed to one of the paper's authors will more often than not get you a copy.
---Finally, Google is always worth a try. Searching for the title usually returns many links to the abstract only, but sometimes you'll find a pdf of the full article that has been stashed away on some university server by someone.

I don't know how often planetary geologists post there, but the eprint arxiv is definitely another place to look for free access papers.

Another way is if you happen to be near a university, go to their library and read the article there or copy it.

Or the main branch of a city public library. I used to go to the Los Angeles downtown public library to keep up on my journal reading. The major journals -- definitely Science and Nature, possibly high-impact journals like JGR and Icarus -- will be there.