Question: Has Opportunity equaled her distance driving from Eagle Crater to the First time she reached Victoria Crater to the time she left the rim of Victoria Craters yet?

You could calculate that yourself very easily just by looking at ET's maps, and by reading the odometry updates at the JPL site.

The question piqued my curiosity so I checked the odometer updates and did the math.

But I will be keeping the answer to myself.

UMSF membership requires knowing how to fish. No free (fish) lunch here.

Yes, it's much more helpful to tell someone to look it up themselves than to give a 1-word answer! My dad did that to me all the time. Now I do that to my own kids, and they don't like it any better than I did when my dad did it to me.

"Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day."

LOL and I will look up the answer. Now where is my Abacus to Figure this problem out???

Here's an easy trick Bobby. What you really want to know is whether the arrival at Victoria was half the odometer reading that we have now. So check out our present total and cut it in half. Then compare that to the odometer reading at Victoria.

Thanks ElkGroveDan. I got part of it figured out now. Found a web link that on Sol 951 or September 27, 2006. Opportunity arrived at Victoria Crater and had 9.28 KM or 5.77 miles. That's nearly 4 years ago. Seems like 2 years ago. WoW. Now we are up to 22 KM.

We had a year exploring the north rim, and then a year going in and back out, and it's been roughly two years since we left - so there's your four years. (I know - doesn't seem like it, does it )

We've almost trebled to odometry since arriving. NICE result.

Anybody know what the larger nodules are (bright in this image)?
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...S9P2582R1M1.JPG

Since the original question appears to have been forgotten I'll throw this out there: Oppy left Cape Agulhas on the rim Victoria on sol 1683, on sol 2199 the distance traveled post-Victoria exceeded the distance traveled pre-Victoria.

What I can say is that the pictures were taken on sol 2313 by the automatic AEGIS sw.


Sol 2199 was after visiting the "Twin Craters" (San Antonio).
Click to view attachment

Oops, that should have been 2299.

Data from sol 2326 are flowing down.
The mobility info from the tracking web tells that this drive was executed as 74m in "blind mode"/"slip check" (as usual) + an additional 12m in "dancing the conga" mode. Total 86m!

Thanks for the prompt updates !
brief question: Is the current drive-every-other-sol pattern due to normal "restricted sols" or is the "resting day" in between drives still needed to to avoid elevated wheel currents ?

I do love these rover self-portraits...

http://twitpic.com/2ddl4o

3D image

Here's the answer, I think. Yet another driving sol.

02327::p0653::03::6::0::0::6::0::12::navcam_3x1_az_90_3_bpp
02327::p1205::08::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_haz_penultimate_0.5_bpp_pri17
02327::p1211::03::2::0::0::2::0::4::ultimate_front_haz_1_bpp_pri_15
02327::p1254::02::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_haz_fault_pri15_4bpp
02327::p1301::06::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_penultimate_1bpp_pri17
02327::p1312::07::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_ultimate_2_bpp_pri15
02327::p1354::01::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_fault_pri15_4bpp
02327::p1757::01::14::0::0::14::0::28::navcam_7x1_az_270_1_bpp
02327::p1991::07::4::0::0::4::0::8::nav_2x1_rvraz_0_1_bpp_pri42
02327::p1994::06::1::0::0::1::0::2::nav_1x1_MovieFrame_Leye_1bpp_pri72
02327::p2601::05::4::2::0::0::2::8::pancam_tau_L78R48

Eduardo,

If sol 2327 is another driving day and if it's another 70 to 80 ms or so am I right in thinking the two rovers are going to be very close to a combined 30kms of roving?

If so, that is simply incredible.

Neil

I'd said that Oppy is tosol 2326 at ~22200m. As Spirit is at 7730 m, another 70m Oppy drive will give a Total of 30 kms i.e. 50 times what has been scheduled. I'll have to move this post to "Some Statistics...".
Go Little Young Lady, Go...

Edit: congratulations Neil, you beat me by 2 minutes...

Thanks climber, but the congratulations should go to the MER team for the miracles they appear to perform on a daily basis and to you and Eduardo and others who convey this information so promptly and in such an easy to understand manner.

Thanks for such a prompt reply. Feel free to move my previous post if it's in the wrong topic as well!

Neil

Some Twitter comments from Scott on the latest drive:

Well, that's a lot more like it. Our last drive got almost 10m of extra distance thanks to the new drive-extension trick! Still waiting for downlink that'll help explain what's scaring Oppy away from driving farther. Maybe we can tweak params to do even better.

The latest drive (sol 2327) was a little bit short; "only" 45m. Nothing strange given the lack of post-drive pancams yesterday.
Here's today's navcam mosaic where I highlighted a sequence of rock patches to the left (actually NE). They are clearly visible on HiRISE (see GE version attached). A fracture maybe?
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

Very, very ripply...

http://twitpic.com/2dpgyh

Fortunately we're past those particular ripples after tosol's drive. There's another patch right in front of us, and then a very smooth stretch that you can see in the orbital views or in this new pancam:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2M1.JPG?sol2327
That'll be a taste of the flat terrain to come. It's still a ways before we're completely out of the bigger ripples, though.

Maybe they intend to angle NE up that fracture, then cut back east across the smooth rocky patch? The Ripples E and ESE are a bit heavy by comparison.

Dunno. And here's another piece to the puzzle from Scott's twitter.

Today's drive will likely be cut short by science, anyway: we're stopping early so we can image some big ol' ripples along the path.

(I love this back-seat driving)

I love it so much, I broke the tradition of a life time and found an avatar

Based on Maxwell's comment and the drive direction images, I'd hazard a guess that we'll head more or less straight east and stop here:
Click to view attachment
That should give us a decent view of the little crater just to the SE.

Not so much back seat driving as back seat prognostication?

That was my take too but I didn't included it above because I thought it might be too far (another 40m?) to be precisely reached on a single drive. Let's see.

I think we're about to enter a very interesting area... I'm particularly interested in one feature not too far up ahead...

http://twitpic.com/2dsndu/full

That's where I left it! Thanks.

Phil

Finally Opportunity entered the low ripples area.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...LTP1205R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...LYP1211R0M1.JPG
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that this was a long drive.

I thought you were a Human!
Front seat driver, eh?

70m+ again. And due east.

The Navcam images of the Hills are starting to look like some of the early Pancam images of them now. Memories of the drive to the Columbia Hills.

Here's today's navcam mosaic. There is a small crater partially visible to the right, which is clearly seen to the south on the orbital view.
Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

Even if you're very accurate Eduardo, it's nice to be able to point out very precisely where we are, isn't it? It reminds me of the traverse from Erebus to Victoria.

Here's an approximate reprojection of Tesheiner's partial panorama. Wimpy little ripples!

Phil

Click to view attachment

After seeing the first signs of the ripples changing recently, I thought it was time to dust off the ripple mapping and take a look at the terrain between here and Santa Maria.

Click image for larger images (1 & 2m/pixel) and some of my thoughts on the terrain ahead.



James

Good to know she already is on the blue/green colored terrain. We should be just 1-2 weeks away from the big pavement right before the "parking-lot" terrain.

Meanwhile, I checked the tracking web. There's yet another driving sol tomorrow.

Oppy really does seem to have her foot down at the minute.

Is there any reason they would be rushing to get to a certain point or is it simply a combination of power improving/nothing to see here/good driving conditions/good wheel behaviour?

Neil

Likely power. Solstice passed, power is improving with the solar elevation, and a recent cleaning event helps.

And we're no longer in "restricted sols". But don't think the rover is "rushing"; almost each and every sol during this last week the science team was imaging selected targets with the pancam. The fact that the IDD is not being used doesn't mean a lack of interest on the surrounding environment.

In another topic, we are back to the "sea of dunes" but that will definitively change in a few hundreds of meters. Navcam mosaic from today (sol 2329).
Click to view attachment

Looking at Oppy tosol route and at James's posting above, I'd said that we'll be going South East for some drives before heading again East strait to Santa Maria. Even if one drive doesn't show general direction, doing so will avoid most of the "red" dunes ahead.
I'm heading myself to Mars-like Arica (Chile) for 3 weeks, but that's another story

Just checked the tracking data to know about the latest drive: 93+m on sol 2330!
This was the longest one since sol 1797.

And when did we last see 4 driving sols in a row? And 500+ meters in 10 sols

Drive drive drive! As a wise man once said

They are still aiming to mix in some forward-facing drives in the mix, are they not? While running in reverse appears to aid the right front wheel, I thought they still considered it beneficial to drive forwards some % of the time, to help distribute lubricants evenly.

From Maxwell:

I wonder why only 30 minutes? Power levels are pretty high now.

Housekeeping, remote science, late uplink, early downlink, some, all, or none of those. Who knows.

A little view of the 'Maxwell-motion' technique sol2326.
Click to view attachment