Or, "Which one first goes on display at the National Air and Space Museum?" I'd like to be alive to see that...

I wouldnt want to see them brought 'home' - leave them where they belong, in their home, up there.

Doug

We'll probably end up seeing the testbed rover at the NASM, I imagine. Does it have a name?

I don't know if it has a name, but that would be a great place for it. I saw the 1/1 full scale model of the Mars Rover at the NASM a couple of years back, looked good, but I don't know if it looked completely realistic. Right by the rover they had a video monitor with pics of Endurance Crater, which Oppy had just reached.

If they put in the NASA test article I would love to see it up close.

I think they have two - one built for mobility and one a full up model - and they're serial numbers 3 and 4.

Doug

As I recall, Ball Aerospace did the pancam, pancam mast, high-gain antenna and gimbal, and all the power and pyro electronics. Somebody else did the arm; I don't recall who.

R.

lets compromise and have the rovers come back for a tour,sort of like King Tut's treasure coming to he US and then return them back to mars :-)
The most memorable rover mission my be yet to come and this decision of what to do with these might not be as important.

I don't think it so. They have already learned and they MUST know which sand is transverable or not. Now, the transverse is of 100% checked before advanced and also there is an improved software which checks for the wheel sleepage.

Driving over the outcrop, the time would lead three times longer. No such long time for a so acked and troubled Oppy's wheel drivers.

Rodolfo


This kind drive is most probably as intentional since the previous looks alike drive style is for scratching the land in order to check the type of subsurface of land.

Rodolfo


Yes really an amazing wheels since they looks pretty thin and fragil and how these thin, small and elegant design are able barely withstand as much as a 1000 km of a truck 4x4 off road (comparing the circunference distance between them) on desert without washing and grease the truck's chasis.

Rodolfo

The arm came from a small business in Pasadena:
Small California Aerospace Company Contributes to Mars Rover Mission
Alliance Spacesystems, Inc. Honored with NASA's Prestigious George M. Low Award

Alliance Spacesystems has tech info on the IDD at their website.

And Honeybee Robotics did the RAT.

--Bill

Route map, updated to sol 762.

Click to view attachment (332k)

BTW, the rover is leaving the landing ellipse.

'Elvis has *left* the buildinggggg!'

Bob Shaw

I think is time to resume vertical-projection maps...
This is a very first one, reporting only Sol762 panorama/position.
Click to view attachment
Position I found appear the same reported from Theseiner and I based previous waypoints/path on his excellent map.
Hope to find enough time/resources to fill the gap from last (Sol651) position, but topography doesn't help... and, yes, I have also to extend MGS background map!

Marco, nice to see your route maps again.

A pool, you say, Bob? I must admit that the concept has much more appeal than pools for trivial events like the Super Bowl. You have a concept in mind? I'm in for up to US $10.00.

Gotta say, though, that my money will be on Oppy. Random events aside (such as Spirit's recent wheel failure), Meridiani is obviously a much more benign environment for MERs than Gusev, and therefore I see no logical reason that Oppy won't survive long past Spirit. A "horserace" between the two would be moot.


Oh, my bad! Who was the prime contractor for the MERs, then?

> Oh, my bad! Who was the prime contractor for the MERs, then?

JPL was the prime, as they were for Galileo, Cassini, Mars Pathfinder, and others.

Lockheed Martin's main contribution was the aeroshell (backshell and heatshield).

Ok, here I projected 4 panoramas from previous Sols:
Click to view attachment
probably alignment and projections are not perfect, due to topography issues, and there are wide missing areas. Due to large area covered, scale is reduced to 20cm/pixel.

I hope to better cover next Sol path ...until Victoria!

Welcome back to this thread, Dilo!

Route map, updated to sol 765.

Click to view attachment

Close, but ain't no fat lady singing just yet.
Elvis is making preparations to leave the building!

Remember, the ellipse boundary line as shown on this unofficial route map is nothing more or less than the width of the line that was arbitrarily used on the landing ellipse map from which the ellipse was transferred onto the route map. (PHEW!)

Assuming the ellipse line is transferred correctly to the route map, then one could make a good argument that the actual ellipse is defined by a line (with length but no width nor depth) which lies exactly halfway between the edges of the arbitrarily-sized line.

By that reckoning, Opportunity exited her landing ellipse during her last drive.

Hooray for Opportunity! Long live MER-B!

-the other Doug

Well, when I included that boundary line in the route map I maintained that big width because of the uncertainty in where would be the real/no-width boundary.

I prefer to think on a sort of diffuse boundary and in such a case consider that the landing ellipse has been left when the whole thick line has been crossed. Given that tosol (766) was planned as driving day too -- the images should be down this evening (MET) -- and assuming a nice move like on previous sols, I would guess that the rover left the boundary today.
Anyway, it's a personal opinion.

The landing ellipse is an abstraction, anyway. The landing point has an uncertainty of +/- x-degrees and where this cone intersects the geoid of the Martian surface it describes an ellipse. Actually, the uncertainty is from the center to the ellipse boundary line. My take is when Oppy crosses the approximate center of the broad brush-stroke used to draw the ellipse boundary she is about to exit the ellipse. More or less.

Let's keep an eye on the bedrock. Ever since we hit the Erebus Highway we have been driving along a series of paleo-crater rims. Now that we are passing beyond large impact structures I'll suppose that the nature of the bedrock will change.

--Bill

Route map, updated to sol 766.

Click to view attachment (576k)

As you can see, I added the whole background image up to Victoria. I had to do some tricks in order to reduce the file size and I'm not really happy with the results.
For later updates, I will try to add another background image (below the current on) with drastically less resolution in order to cover the black portion outside the "corridor", if it doesn't compromise the file size.

Cheer for Oppy for crossing where no rover has gone before! May she have great investigations in the Etched Terrain and beyond.

*sigh* Still a -long- way to travel. Getting to Erebus from Endurance was barely over 1/2 the trip to Victoria...

I wonder if someone can supply info on how far the rover has traveled "as the crow flies" from the landing site to endurance crater on to where it is now. Same with Spirit,from the landing site to the top of husband hill to where it is now and also maybe a direct line from the landing site to where Spirit is now ? To me it seems easy to lose perspective as to just how the rovers have traveled until you figure out say a two mile distance from where you live,it then it seems like quite distance or to me at least.

Here's an off the wall question: anyone know the lat and lon for (the center of) Erebus?

-- Pertinax

Yet another great achievement for Opportunity!

Actually, I think that Erebus is about two-thirds of the way from Endurance to Victoria. However, the terrain is going to be rougher the rest of the way than those lovely smooth sands we had most of the way to Erebus.

Are we not moving into an area with more bedrock exposed and less complicated driving ? I'm optimist and think this region will be covered quite quickly and see oppy getting to Victoria quicker then many of the projections in the other thread.
One thing I've always noticed about both rovers when looking at the pics of the drive direction and that is the terrain always looks much worse then when we actually get there and it's like I ask myself where did all the obstructions go ? A credit to the people driving these rovers. See Doug, I can give them credit when they deserve it in certain aspects of the drive :-)

FWIW, I agree. Knowing what we know now, comparing the satellite view to the views from the ground, I'm betting it's going to be relatively smooth sailing right up until we get to Victoria - not as easy as the first part of the journey south, but easier than the terrain around Erebus, I would think. I have no idea what's going to happen when we get there, though

Since Oppy left visiting the Payson, it has been driving an average of around 19 meters / sol (alternating driving and charging/atmosphere observations sols), as always taking the best and safest way in the middle of ripples. The outlook is 100 sols according to the present advance pace (Sol 867 at June 30)

Rodolfo

P.D.I will create a small matrix about the Oppy transverse progress toward Victoria with its distance/sol, remain distance, average distance/sol, arrival Victoria date outlook. I will update it to this topic.

BillyMER asked about the rover locations. The best estimate I have gives the current positions (you'll have to convert to miles yourself if you want that):

Spirit - 3200 m E of lander, 2080 m S of lander, straight line distance 3817 m from lander.

Opportunity - 350 m E of lander, 4340 m S of lander, straight line distance 4350 m from lander.

These are based on measurements from map-projected MOC images, and are probably accurate to within a few tens of meters.

I will try to answer Pertinax's question tomorrow.

Phil

Pertinax:

Measuring on a map-projected version of MOC R22-00640 I find that the centre of Erebus is at:

5.79 degrees west, 2.05 degrees south

Phil

Doug,

Can i suggest that this thread is pinned at the top of the Oppy forum like the route map is in the Sprit forum. Although this thread is so frequently updated that it hovers there most of the time, it would be nice for it to aways be in the same place given that it is such a oft viewed thread.

Of course, initially the margin of error wuld be huge - but would diminish with time. This would be a really useful metric.

A myriad of thanks Phil. When we peak down into Victoria for the first time on Sol 1066, I'll pester you for the lalo of Victoria.

Again, thank you.



-- Pertinax

JPL's new map is up now:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-.../MERB_766_1.jpg

Phil

Oh, for some drives as those between Vostok and Voyager! - I actually think the terrain will be propitious for it. Let Oppy loose on autopilot!

two months, two words, one dune

Purgatory Situation

Doug

Question moved, sorry!

Well - go and put it in the right place and I'll ask next time around

Doug

Two more words: slippage detection.

You're asking Opportunity to be 'let loose'

Slippage detection involves stopping every X metres, commanding a short drive, verifying progress with Visidom and then continuing the drive.

Autonav and Blind Driving just don't cut it in this sort of terrain any more.

Doug

Route map (new look), updated to sol 767.

Click to view attachment

With the pace from SOL 760 to 767 Oppy will get to Victoria in roughly 84 sols

Fingers crossed

... and in about two weeks we could have a Hell Of A View...



goooooooooooooo Oppy!



Great map Tesheiner, thanks.

Hmm. I just took a close look (finally) at the edge of Victoria's ejecta blanket, and it almost looks as if there are some pretty steep slopes on its perimeter, at least on the north side in Tesheiner's excellent mosaic. Anybody know if these slopes have been assessed yet, and whether a tentative ingress plan for the ejecta apron has been developed?

She will be there by sol 960.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=46281