The current IDD work volume is visible in these haz, nav, and pancam views:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2397
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2397
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2M1.JPG?sol2397

So maybe the interesting feature is that darker smooth band along the edge of the block? It looks like a slightly lower layer of the block. I don't recall seeing this before, but maybe a look back would uncover more of them.

Phil

That could be it, Phil. There's also some slightly darker rind on the bedrock at the bottom of the pancam frame. I also don't know how common that is.

I didn't notice the rind, but you're right, that could be it as well.

Phil

It almost appears as if while the sulfate rich mud was descicating and shrinking (leading to the mud cracks) the top centimeter or so of this particular section got caught on one end and slid relative to the mud underneath. This left the strange "darker smooth band" texture that you see along the top edge of the section where you are looking at the now exposed lower strata. You can also see how the top sheet pulled away from the blueberry rich soil. In support of this theory, there is a mud crack between the section that slid and the section to the left. The crack had a slight zig-zag and now you can see where the point and the corresponding recession on the opposite side have shifted relative to each other. Notice that the shift between the point and the opposite recession is the same as the apparent shift of the whole top 1 cm of the section relative to the edge of blueberry rich soil.
I think I have seen similar things happen in terrestrial mud cracking where a crusty, thin, top layer shifts horizontally as it shrinks relative to moister lower mud.
Any possibility a similar thing happened here?

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2M1.JPG?sol2397

Do you mean that fine-grained material around part of the perimeter of the block? I think that is something we've seen before. I'd be surprised if they finally stopped to study it. It looks like a lower, fine-grained substrate of soil overlaying the edge of the block.

The fhaz images should be telling us where the work volume is, unless they still need to adjust the rover's position to properly deploy the IDD. Usually the arm is extended beyond the front wheels when the instruments are used. The pancam target called Puntarenas lies beyond the front wheels. I can't help but wonder if that will be the focus of the investigation.

The L7s of Puntarenas are not down yet. I think they'll give us the clearest view of the rocks. Until we get those images, here is a mosaic of Puntarenas made with the L2s and R2s.
Click to view attachment

I saw a bunch of MIs on the next sol's plan i.e. no additional position adjustment.

Instead of a mosaic of the L7 images of Puntarenas, let's take a look at an animation comparing individual Puntarenas pancam images through the L2 and L7 filters.
Click to view attachment

Here is an animation comparing the top half of Puntarenas through the L2 and L7 filters...

Click to view attachment

There is nothing unusual about the rind at this spot. My guess is that they have noticed the distinctive bedding on some of the eroded pieces and have stopped to get geochemistry. This, along with the physical appearances, can be compared with earlier stop(s) and may well give us the long-awaited marker bed of the sequence.

What was remarkable was the nice finely-bedded 5YR 4/3 outcrop that we toddled past on Sol 2392. Were I walking this traverse, I would have thought "yummy-- argillaceous" and stopped for a quick look.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r91/wil...45L2M1-crop.jpg

--Bill

Colour view of part of Punta Arenas...

Click to view attachment

More images 'n stuff here: http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...at-punta-arenas

Yeah, if this is the area to be 'spectrometered', it looks like it's just a routine check of the pavement composition along the route and not some unusual feature to be examined.

Click to view attachment
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/5110151352/#/

Pancam site seems to have gone down.

The PCDB is still down.

Yeah, this really does look like a routine stop for images of berries and perhaps some surface chemistry. If I was driving this robot I think I would target more images and measurements at cross sections of the bedrock instead of the the surface of the bedding planes.

So, what's with the earlier announcement that the "scientists spotted something shiny?" I don't see anything "cool and interesting" here. Surely they wouldn't have gotten us all fired up about something interesting that had been noticed unless there actually was something worth noticing.

It wasn't an "announcement", and certainly no-one's been "fired up" by anyone; it was just something Scott mentioned on Twitter. As I explained in a previous post, he used the term "shiny" to just describe something interesting to a scientist, which could well be something very subtle and not at all impressive to the eyes of back seat drivers like ourselves.

Maybe what makes this spot interesting is being representative of the area's pavement, but smooth and flat, good for spectrometry, considering grinding is not an option.

Come on, Stu. It wasn't "mentioned" on Twitter, it was announced.

...and, several of us were seriously fired up by his comment. We were actively searching for the next new and interesting feature to be discovered on Mars by this amazing rover.

Ok - seriously, it's called 'twitter'.

It's not the AP.

Moreover - you will only see an 'announcement' from Media Relations, not from a JPLer directly.

Sorry, CR, I don't think anyone was "seriously fired up", re-reading the posts..?

But that doesn't matter. Always best to remember that, as Doug said, announcements of anything news-worthy will be made officially, via the proper channels, not in a tweet with a smiley in it.

( And best not to complain about the contents of Twitter messages; yes, they're a useful source of information but unless they're an "Official account" they should be treated as informal and unofficial. Start taking them too seriously, start attaching too much importance to them, start kicking the Twitter gift horse in the teeth, and the people who write them might think twice about saying anything in case it got misinterpreted and landed them in trouble. )

Right. Keep treating Twitter posts like press releases and NASA officials will clamp down on any unofficial uttering by its employees regarding missions.

There was more to this than just Maxwell's comment that had me thinking there was something special here. In the latest Planetary update, there were several statements that stops would be very infrequent enroute to Endeavour. For example:



So with the official plan for only two or three bedrock stops until Endeavour, I was surprized to see one so soon and suspected something might be up. Maxwell's comment reinforced that.

Of course, it may just be that this is the first of the two or three planned regular stops. Or, the official plan could've changed, and they may be planning more regular bedrock stops than just a few now. Or maybe there was some other reason that this was a convenient time to have the rover stationary?

Quite. So can we stop drawing conclusions please.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, this is simply a routine stop along the traverse to get that holy grail of stratigraphy, the elusive correlation between Z and X & Y. Nothing profound or earthshaking, Scott Maxwell simply mentioned that we saw something interesting and we're gonna stop, nothing more or nothing less.

--Bill

Just to be a little bit different - a more artistic, Ansell Adams-style view of the rocks Oppy is currently studying...

http://twitpic.com/30uo0p/full

'Shiny thing' or not, the pancam site is back up. Here's 2401

It's ~120 meters driven today!

Wow, scarcely a ripple in sight! (assuming this is end-of-drive)

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P0653R0M1.JPG

Phil

If you look at a map showing our previous location:
Click to view attachment
you can see that we were sitting right on a boundary (contact?) between lighter and darker bedrock areas. If I've got my orientations right, that boundary runs right through these navcam views, diagonally from upper left to lower right:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2397
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2397
Generally, the brighter region (below in the navcams) has smoother, flatter bedrock, and the darker region (above) is rougher. This is a nice example of how the "ground truth" clarifies things. Those navcams show the Punta Arenas area.

I cannot see anything here:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...V1F0006L0M1.JPG

Is that I new kind of compression or some picture errors? Usually the unfinished pictures look a little different.

A modest little impact feature(?) on the road from Punta Arenas. Pancam mosaic.
Click to view attachment

Just checked today's imaging sequences to confirm that it's another driving sol.

02402::p0683::03::6::0::0::6::0::12::navcam_3x1_az_144_3_bpp
02402::p1205::08::2::0::0::2::0::4::front_haz_penultimate_0.5_bpp_pri17
02402::p1211::03::2::0::0::2::0::4::ultimate_front_haz_1_bpp_pri_15
02402::p1301::06::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_penultimate_1bpp_pri17
02402::p1312::07::2::0::0::2::0::4::rear_haz_ultimate_2_bpp_pri15

But check that azimuth on the "post-drive" navcam mosaic: 144 degrees, that's SE. It's time to drive direct to Santa Maria!


Nitpicking on another topic: Punta Arenas vs. Puntarenas. I realized that the our previous site is actually named after the place "Puntarenas" in Costa Rica and not "Punta Arenas" in Chile. There were a few other imaging targets shot during last sols and all of them were identified with places in Costa Rica.

Bit of clickety-click on Google Mars suggests we'll now be heading for this 'corridor' (which isn't really a corridor of course, but it looks like one, so just go with me on this, ok? )

Click to view attachment

And it looks like we're now just about under 2k from Santa Maria!

Click to view attachment

Interesting - and exciting! - to see how the terrain ahead of Oppy from now on, if she takes this course, will change from ripply to flatter and better...

http://twitpic.com/318pk1/full

After the drive on 2402, maybe. From the 2401 position I think we're slightly over (the HiRISE and HRSC images aren't properly aligned).

Some thoughts on the road ahead (posting a link 'cos the post itself is full of pics, too many to post here)...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/.../the-road-ahead

And just as a taster for what's ahead at Santa Maria, here's a pic showing Oppy arriving at the crater rim, shown to scale...

Click to view attachment

Anyone else out there feel these hills getting closer now..?

Click to view attachment

I'm still tracking the two middle distance features we were discussing earlier. As the latest drive was almost directly towards them the increase in the angle they subtend cannot be due to a line of sight effect and so should give a more secure estimate of their distance. They look dark not light in this filter:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...J3P2429L6M1.JPG
Even so, it's reasonably clear where to measure from, I think. I come up with an increase in separation of ten percent (plus or minus a couple of percent) over the 100m drive. This places the features around 1km away, consistent with TMAN's triangulated position for the leftmost feature. (Did you ever do the rightmost TMAN?).

I'm starting to doubt that there is enough hidden ground beyond these features to conceal Santa Maria, so now I'm peering even more closely at what's immediately beyond the leftmost feature. In this filter, I see a brightish streak and above that about half way 'vertically' between leftmost and the lip of Eandeavour a hint of a wavy line that could just be a chance alignment of noisy pixels. (EDIT No it's visible, just, in all the images - including previous days.) Is this a viable candidate for Santa Maria?

EDIT: it shows rather nicely running in from the left edge of your mosaic, Stu.

Right on the money, Stu!
Click to view attachment

Here's an average of the 2402 L6 and R1 frames to improve the S/N a bit, and then stretched 3x vertically. Santa Maria should be somewhere in this field of view:
Click to view attachment
There's a dark smudge farther away and a bit to the right of the two features we've been following (which are near the left of the frame), which would be my best guess at the moment for a Santa Maria rim feature.

Here's a similarly averaged view to the right of the previous view:
Click to view attachment

Which heading do you get for that prominent crater on the far rim of Endeavour on sol 2402?

If 113,4 degrees is right, on sol 2402, I get for the two pancams below a difference of about 1 degree in comparison to the Tracking Interface! So if we've had that unplanned Rover attitude shift in the last drive, then these dark features could it just be ...honestly, it would be better
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Fred has already posted some stretched images, but here is the full span of this panorama with a ten times stretch. The whole view is opening up beautifully. I'd like to see it with more oblique lighting one day... the appearance will change quite a lot with different lighting.

Phil

Click to view attachment

I have a certain fondness for these stretched Martian B-Movie peaks, which is wrong of me, I know.

Andy

That's about level with the wavy line I suggested, but further to the right. Accepting TMAN's location for 'leftmost' posted here http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=165537 it seems to me that our current sightline to the centre of Santa Maria should pass just to the left of 'leftmost'.

I've also been musing on why 'leftmost' doesn't show on the HiRise. ('Rightmost' if a little more distant may do so - I'm still hoping for a TMAN fix to check that.) The appearance of both features is so different through different filters that I'm wondering if it's a soil colour thing more related to mineralogy than topography.

By the way, how close is the nearest identified patch of phyllosilicates, and what is the lower size limit for mineralogical detection from orbit?

Just finished reading again your article, Stu. And I think you are right regarding that little crater more or less on the way to SM; I think it'll be the next waypoint.

Oh, me too... part of me still thinks "That's how Mars SHOULD have looked..."

Given all the currently interleaving complexities that determine how long a drive is, is progress on featureless "parking lot" terrain going to be faster or slower than driving on outcrop? I guess it's a matter of both the length of the blind drives and the length of the autonomous drives at this point.

It sounds like right now, they much prefer outcrop to ripples because the visual heterogeneity allows them to plan longer blind drives. Is there terrain that's flat enough that allows them to plan even longer blind drives?

As for the autonomous driving on featureless ground, do they have visual odometry issues with trying to look back at the tracks with the IDD in the FHAZ view? Can they still do the little jig that created features in the tracks? Or do they strongly prefer other visual indicators for autonav?

Whatever the solution to the mystery of wandering headings and the elusive Santa Maria, those white specks at the mid-distance *do* look a lot like the/a crater rim. Attached an L2&R2 anaglyph from sol 2401 (sorry, another stretch) and a HiRise anaglyph of Santa Maria. Move the pointer around the HiRise anaglyph and you can easily point out the highest places along the rim. Some rough calculations tell me that the highest (north) point may be 3-4 m above the mean surrounding plane. It should be definitely visible by now, the 'Leftmost' being IMO the most probable candidate for it. (Tho' I'm nowadays mostly wrong...)

Addendum: a version of Santa Maria anaglyph has been posted earlier by someone but I could not locate that post anymore.

http://twitter.com/marsroverdriver/status/28959377798


133 metres! That should put them on the parking lot! Assuming thisol refers to 2403, of course.

133m would put Oppy... here...

Click to view attachment

I really want to see the post-drive pictures before calling this patch of soil "parking lot" since at full resolution it still looks like a ripple field. The last one, sure!
Click to view attachment