Judging from the new navcams and pancams (new hazcams aren't down yet, though) there's been a drive:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2420
It looks like we've made it to the remnant of exposed bedrock around 100 metres east. A bit of dejavu, huh?

Yes, metadata says due east, a respectable distance to be determined.

It's been a long time since we've seen a large panorama taken with the L7 filter. We have sharp L7-R1 stereo pairs of Intrepid Crater and the beautiful eastern skyline. Before we get too far away from Intrepid I wanted to post an anaglyph panorama of this lovely scene from sol 2417. I've removed as much vignetting as possible. It is an especially nice view if you have multiple monitors or an extra wide monitor.
Click to view attachment

Great stuff, all, and esp. like your anaglyph, CR; thanks!

There are indeed some intriguing rocks in there...but I hope we don't go in even a little bit, frankly. Those dunes look like the could be pretty deep to me, and the crater slopes are uncomfortably steep.

And there is also a "rock" in the distance right in front of us after last night drive visible in fredk attachment.

The data were downlinked last night but the drive was executed during sol 2420 i.e. two days ago (see this post).
I'm updating the route map right now...

Just for fun, based on messing about with skilfully simulating the view using Starry Night, but probably not too far out...

Sunrise Over Endeavour this morning...

Click to view attachment


(hope you don't mind me using crop of your gorgeous panorama, James)

That's gorgeous!

Sol 2420

Inspirational! ....Isn't it, JPL? *Nudge nudge, wink wink*

Since the discussion here:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=159419

the dark blue "stain" has enlarged considerably, as seen in this navcam image from Sol 2412.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...4IP0673L0M1.JPG

It seems to be advancing (and occasionally retreating) along clearly defined frontiers. This does not fit well with the explanations proposed earlier, which should result in a more dispersed profile.

In sharpened pancam images that correct defocus blur, posted by Hortonheardawho on his website, the "stain" looks like it might be a layer of dark material on top of the light-colored dust that we see everywhere else on the rover deck.

This suggests the interesting possibility that it involves a phase change in the light-colored dust. Perhaps that is related to the formation of duricrust, which I believe is not well-understood.

It's simply below the resolving power of Pancam or Navcam to make any meaningful interpretation. There are a thousand things that could cause something to happen. FWIW, my initial gut reaction remains to this day - it looks like clean patch free of dust, not a surficial feature and the word 'stain' has never sat well, imho. However, there are many complex and interesting components and materials involved in building the rover, and some of them we know to be behaving unexpectedly ( such as the delamination of the sundial base ). I would like to see what people do with PDS calibrated data, rather than trying to 'deblur' jpgs - which really is a way to generate feature that simply don't exist.

Short answer - we're never going to know.

I think that chemical reactions on the surface of Mars (what few that may exist) must happen VERY slowly by terrestrial standards, particularly those that require the interaction of water in any phase. We've seen several iron-nickel meteorites that have clearly been in place for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of years, and show no signs of corrosion, merely windborne dust build-up.

It therefore doesn't seem reasonable to assume that any sort of detectable chemical alteration has occurred on the MERs during their exceedingly short tenure on Mars, both for that reason and by virtue of the fact that their component materials are much more resistant to such reactions than the meteorites.

A clarification: the pancam depth of field is from 1.5 m to infinitiy, so the sundial at 80 cm is slightly out of focus. Thus, a deconvolution algorithm can be used to sharpen the focus.

It can be used to TRY and sharpen the focus, but you are playing a very tenuous game to try and pull out anything meaningful that you identify in those deconvolved images that isn't apparent in the orig. images.

Had one of those 'woah' moments just now. Looked at the 1.4km distance to Santa Maria while thinking "Oh, that's not so far now. Shouldn't take more than a few weeks."

Then I remembered that 1400m distance is over twice the mission success criterion.

I'm glad it's not just me then!

We are still over ten times the mission success criteria away from Endeavour crater with a rover which has completed approximately 28 missions

Neil

Nice Intrepid Crater 'look back' view with the tracks leading up from the distance.
Click to view attachment

Some future alien explorers might deduce that Oppy dodged that one!

'Road to Endeavour' blog updated: http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...km-and-counting

WOW ! My dream is becoming true !
Here is the link to this fantastic image
http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...over-endeavour/

I like that image too, and I have no quarrel with the notion of artistic license. In fact I think artists should have the license/freedom to do almost anything so this is not a complaint. But in my mind's eye Martian sunsets are conceived as always being cold blue affairs, more like a failing fluorescent lamp than a comforting camp fire. (The alliteration is accidental, I promise.)

Hortonheardawho did some full filter ratio analysis on this with some interesting results. The reflectance of the stain is pronounced in the ultraviolet as opposed to surrounding soil, and a sample of clean deck. He and others on the yellow forum have also identified when the stain started (bottom of Victoria crater) and that it initiated with a feature just visible behind the sundial which then spread. Most likely a dark material spread by wind and covered/uncovered by the ubiquitous dust.

It is disappointing that JPL have not bothered to investigate this, or if they have that they did not think it worth mentioning. They would have all the spectral responses for the pancam filters and it would be interesting to know the makeup of whatever the stain is. Surely anything unusual associated with the Rovers is worth investigating.

The simplest explanation is that it's an area almost clear of dust. Comparing the spectrum with other almost clear areas of the panels is tricky, even if you used the calibrated data. Thin films of dust could affect the spectrum.

We'd need pretty good reasons to contemplate a new material not seen elsewhere.

ADMIN HAT ON...

I think I'd like to see discussion on the so-scalled "stain" to stop here for now.
There's no further information that anyone can draw upon and any so-scalled "analysis" by the armchair explorers among us is working from less than the full spread of information that will one day be available through various sources. If it's something worth investigating then the mission team will definitely let us know.

There is plenty of "discussion and speculation" going on in other forums, so I believe it can continue there.
At the moment it's cluttering up the "On to Santa Maria!" thread and does not deserve a thread of its own.

Remember that you can always just PM each other if you want to discuss it further.

For now, like Opportunity, let's move on!

Thank you.


-- Pertinax

From Maxwell:

I know I'm gonna sound stupid for asking this, but are the hazcams all right? I assume Scott means that they just didn't get the images down, but it's scarily-phrased.

Remember, Nick, this is Twitter. No room for detail. I think we can be quite confident that he meant "lack of Hazcam images in the downlinked data." And geez, do we need another warning about overinterpreting Scott's tweets?

The answer is here:

Yeah, thought so, and sorry for even floating the concept. I must be twitchy today or something.

I wasn't sure if this should go here, or in the route map thread, so please move if necessary.

Here's a CTX DEM (20 m/px) of Oppy's driving area, made using the fantastic USGS scripts (thanks!) and the old SocetSet pulling-out-your-hair method. Actually, CTX DEMs seem (famous last words) to be working pretty well...there must be something wrong.

First up, a general elevation colour map with CTX image P01_001612_1780_XI_02S005 underneath. The red dot is Oppy on sol 2420, taken from Tesheiner's route map (thanks!).
Click to view attachment

Next, a close-up view of Oppy and the rim of Endeavour, this time with a different colour stretch to highlight the elevation change on the next part of the route.
Click to view attachment

I'm more than happy to share this if anybody thinks they can do something with it.

Pete

Could you pull out a height profile, from - say, Victoria to the edge of Endeavour including the rim? and/or from our current location to the rim at Cape York. That sort of thing

Thanks for this! Can you provide an elevation scale for these images as well?

Whenever I see images like this one, I can't help but think of images like this one....Endeavour Bound!!!
Click to view attachment

Land Ho!

Wait a minute. Those islands are off the stern. You're sailing the wrong direction Astro0!

It's amazing though, how a change of color in those ripples completely changes what the brain thinks it's seeing.

David

Off the port side, actually

DFinfrock: You're sailing the wrong direction Astro0!

No, just a leisurely voyage tacking across the Meridiani 'sea'

It looks like the hazcam-less drive has taken place:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2424

130m, according to the rover's mobility data.

As requested, but I'd avoid reading too much into the actual profiles and the spikes and troughs - there's a fair bit of noise in this DEM as the smooth terrain is great for driving but bad for pixel matching! It does however still give a nice impression of the overall topography.

Click to view attachment

Pete

The mean mileage per sol is consistantly increasing since late August but the more the sols the more the "need" to drive to keep it this way (at least 250m per week at the moment). So, I guess we're "safe" this week
Not a race but giving the feeling that we follow SS statement.

You can see (I think) in the red profile the same thing I had convinced myself from the MOLA data: That we are currently on a flattish section with a drop-off to Santa Maria a few hundred meters ahead. I think this is why we can't see Santa Maria yet.

I made a prediction to Stu by PM earlier this week regarding this: That I expected Santa Maria to pop into view quite suddenly and dramatically ~400m ahead, since then we have covered around half that distance. So keep your eyes pealed over the next few drives, I'm anticipating a HOAV moment very soon.

James

I've made some measurements to try to decide whether the double feature we've been seeing is Santa Maria or not. I compared the separations and positions (relative to the distant east rim of Endeavour) of both of the light "bumps" on sols 2409 and 2420. These measurements are entirely relative, ie I didn't use any absolute heading information. The only assumption is for the comparison of bump positions between 2409 and 2420: I assumed that the distant east rim of Endeavour was essentially infinitely far away, so there was no parallax between 2409 and 2420 of that east rim. That parallax should be extremely small. The left-right bump separation measurements are independent of this assumption.

Here are the angles measured from the pancams:
Click to view attachment
And here are the corresponding angles measured from Tesheiner's route map:
Click to view attachment
The corresponding angles are consistent with each other, if the two bumps are high points on the north and south rim of Santa Maria. The agreement of the four angles means that both the size and distance agree with Santa Maria. So I'm ready to declare that the two light bumps are Santa Maria.

I like your slide show presentation Fred K. I think we should be there by Christmas and what a gift to us all to see Santa Maria by then.
Maybe Santa Clause will stop by and give the Rover a boost of Energy for the coming season.

I can remember the day she landed in Eagle Crater way back then or ages ago. I am amazed what this little golf cart rover has done.

May The Force Be With Her.

I do have a couple Question. Is the top of Santa Maria lower in elevation then the bottom of Victoria Crater and would the bedrock within Santa Maria
be older then anything we saw at Victoria? Is there any possibility that we might go into Santa Maria or just drive around and keep going???

I had another 'chat' with our favourite rover driver over on my blog, which some of you might find interesting as we head towards Santa Maria...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...h-scott-maxwell

Thanks Scott! :-)

I've also been working on some "artistic impressions" of Endeavour, which I've put on my blog in a different post concering possible future art on Mars. I hope some of you like them.

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...tadt-on-barsoom

I think having Thomas Kinkade on Mars would be a good thing.

I didn't recognise the name so I did a Google image search...

...now I wish I hadn't.

Stu,
I hope you haven't forgotten the great dawn shot Spirit took looking back at Von Braun. mhoward had a fantastic panorama, and some guy colorized it to make it look like something Ansell Adams would have taken The team has taken quite a few shots at hours where the shadow of rocks and rovers are tens of meters long, and has taken color panoramas of from most every place there has been a HOV