We haven't seen one of these in a while.....

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...D9P1214R0M1.JPG
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...D9P1901L0M1.JPG

Follow the recent flash-memory DUMP that resulted in year-old images of a trench in Eagle crater being downlinked, I saw this thread and was all ready to go "NO, ACTUALLY, that was AGES ago"

but um

Yup - new trench - they'll probably IDD it over the weekend.

Doug

I wonder what science they hope to get out of this trench... I mean, they already made a trench on the plains back on sol 73. What makes this site so interesting apart from that tiny piece of outcrop?

This is a necessary step when you do science, even if it is on Mars.
Sometimes you have to repeat things, although you know you got them right the first time, just to make sure.
In this case, maybe they want to check something they know already, or verify that soil composition is the same here as in the previous trench,or see seasonal changes.
Maybe they need to support a previous argument or theory. Who knows ?

Not to mention that Journal reviewers have a tendency to ask for things to be double and triple-checked , so it might look boring, but it is necessary.

Just a short stop, hopefully, and then we 're "on the road again"

I thinking they want to see if they could reach the outcrop themselves with the rover wheel.

I'm guessing its a little deeper.


1 1/2 feet down? <My Guess.

Maybe Opportunity took the initiative and start digging herself. After all, she's used to consume easily available outcrops since Sol 1.
What's a rover to do if she gets hungry in the middle of the plains with nothing but sand dunes around ?

I think Oppy must be trying to create her own challenges. She hasn't had a sandbox to play in since she tried to get away from Wopmay way back when. The going must be far too easy for her!

Perhaps to relieve boredom on these long treks, the next rovers should have an iPod preloaded with driving tunes. Will the next orbiters have sufficient bandwidth to allow rovers to set up a music file sharing network?

haha!

In spite of this idea containing no science whatsoever, I have to say the idea ranks very high on my "coolness" scale.

Send the Mars Microphone and we'll be able to actually listen to them through martian air! Another useless idea with a high coolness factor.

That would be so silly it would be cool. Call it the "Mars Acoustics Experiment"!

Too bad there's not a large concentration of helium in the Mars atmosphere then. If they played an Elvis CD and recorded the sound through the air it would sound like the Chipmunks. Hunka, hunka burnin Wopmay......

The reason for this trench is that they are interested in the dune. Notice the trench cuts across it.

There will probably be MIs done on the trench walls to see sand grain distribution, etc.

Steve Squires mentioned after a drive to Endurance that they traveled from Eagle to Endurance pretty fast and didn't have time to investigate the dunes and cobbles on the plains. Now they can do that.

Yep. Plains science will likely include:

Soil characterization
Component end-members
Trenching activities in ripples
Size distribution of spherules and other components in soils
Fractures & Dimples - relation to outcrop exposures
Craters - systematic variations among small craters

And of course, a couple of days worth of IDD work minimizes the loss caused by restricted sols or weekends

Doug