Agreed, she will be there by sol 960, with 58 sols of Victoria Crater science and exploration behind her.
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=46413

[quote name='Tesheiner' date='Mar 25 2006, 05:41 PM' post='47615']
Route map (new look), updated to sol 767.

Now Oppy is definitely outside her landing ellipse. Did I miss the party? Hopefully we'll see this mentioned in the next MER report.

I couldn't find any recent figures, but I'm fairly sure Oppy has taken back the distance lead. Anyone know which Sol it happened on?

Route map, updated to sol 774.

Click to view attachment (325k)

But the 'big picture' section on the right has not been updated...

True.
I'm not planning to update that part of the image so often. The idea is that whenever the left part should be "shifted up" to cover southern terrain (*), I will update the right part both the reference rectangle and the route.
Anyway, I think it's quite easy to recognise the terrain features on both pics and extrapolate the current position from the left to the right image.

(*) Given current Oppy's pace, I'll need to do that quite early.

This is a good route map design that you've chosen.

I wish that the way were not as clear; during the "North Erebus Dunefield Detour" I rather enjoyed doing the daily hypothetical maps guessing where Oppy would head. Perhaps we can do that again when Oppy reaches Victoria. It would be great to have HiRISE coverage for the Victoria exploration planning (wishful thinking).

--Bill

During one of the earlier MRO press briefings, someone said that they were planning to take imagery to help with the route planning for Opportunity's trek to Victoria. Obviously, such imagery would have to come from the pre-science phase of the mission during aerobraking. I am guessing that they will wait a while yet, in order to get into a lower altitude and more circular orbit, but apparently it is something that we might expect. My wishful thinking at this point is that they would release that imagery early enough that we could have fun using it en route.

Ok, I found the data...it was during the drive of Sol 765 (Mar. 19th). As of 3/21/06 Oppy was 96 meters ahead. Not that they were planning to drive Spirit all that far anyway, but there is no way Spirit will ever take the lead back. Ok, I won't say 'no way' as Oppy could keel over any second, but I have faith Oppy will reach the apron of Victoria at a minimum.

I've been reading "Roving Mars", what a great story. To read how many trials and tribulations these rovers went through before getting off of Earth, for them to be performing now is simply amazing. Everyone involved in the mission deserves a Mars bar!

I didn't include a "future path" on the route map because there are plenty of routes toward VC.
But, hey, it's not too late to start that. Actually the question is when/where will Oppy start to move East?

Is there a need to move East? If they keep going in the current heading, perhaps with a slight veer eastward, there might be one difficult patch about 200 m south of your box border, but is there anything really insurmountable on that route?

The north side of the crater seems to be sheer dropoffs, plus a steeper slope overall than the southern side. To me, the nearest safe entry point looks to be about 7:00 on the Victoria clock. I would guess a relatively straight line approach between there and the current position.

OK, so I guess I've just made my route guess. We'll see how it holds up. As for arrival date, Tesheiner took my birthday, so I don't want to play that game now.

Brian

Well, by moving east I was trying to say "east and then SSE again".
The current heading is due to the ripples orientation, sometimes a bit to the left sometimes a bit to the right. But following that heading Oppy will be too much to the left of Victoria, so I think whenever they find a chance to move eastwards (probably at any big rock outcrop) they will take that opportunity to put the rover "back on track".

BTW, at this pace Oppy won't be at Victoria by your birthday but by mine (May 2). I should have chosen an earlier arrival date...

Route map, updated to sol 775. This time with my two cents route proposal.

Click to view attachment (327k)

unnecessary quote removed


looks like she's really making good progress.all along I've been blown away by most of these predictions,like a hundred more sols to get to VC on average ?!? I think May 2nd like you said or a little more is a lot closer to what it's going to turn out to be.

Route map, updated after "small step" on sol 776.

Click to view attachment

Hopefully the next drive will be another long one ... it looks like they have a pretty clear path for quite some way ahead.

I'm also surprised at the size of the dunes..I was expecting them to be MUCH bigger.

They must have seen that they were out of line with your projected path and moved to correct the situation.

I wouldn't be surprised if, when they reach that large patch of exposed ground up ahead to the SSE, that they turn to the ESE and follow that sequence of exposed ground for a while. Only one line of slightly bigger dunes that can probably be dodged with a WNW jog for a day.

I agree, though this feature is so straight, I wonder if it is some kind of ridge/fault line.

I commented on this idea a little while ago,the drive direction photos often look a lot rougher then what it turns out to be when they get there.

That's one small step for Opportunity...one...giant leap for Spirit.

We'd be thrilled to see Spirit drive this far in a day now!

As part of the planned activities for sol 778 (tomorrow) there is this navcam sequence:



It's a "post-drive" (yes, sol 778 is driving sol) 180º navcam mosaic centered at 126º. That heading is consistent with your proposed route. Let's see what happens on/after sol 778.

Click to view attachment

Yes. I am guessing a hard left is coming up soon. That's a highway not to be ignored.

I think they are going to keep on a step-stone path along the bedrock exposures. This is a course correction to avoid sandier areas (circled in green) that lie immediately ahead. We've been noticing that the ripples are looking "wilder". I think we'll still be pretty much bee-lined to arrive at the NW or NNW edge of the ejecta blanket.

An annotated adaption of Tesheiner's Route Map is attached.

--Bill

I think we are all thinking of a similar route. The "hard left" turn I mentioned is the one in Bill's dark blue line, and the light blue path Tesheiner labels as "future path?," and the one originally described by Burmese when he suggested they would "turn to the ESE and follow that sequence of exposed ground for a while."

It seems a logical choice, since they do need to drive eastward to avoid the patches of apparently larger dunes to the south. It's a good place to cross cross a lot of smaller drifts and make eastward progress before resuming the southward trek using the troughs between the drifts. I think Tesheiner's line going all the way into the SE corner of his detailed map looks pretty good. From there, it's a straight shot to the south with lots of outcrop to drive on and fewer large drifts to have to cross.

Antoniseb noted how straight this feature is, and wondered if it were some kind of ridge or fault line. I am curious about that, too. It's more or less aligned with several other lineaments in the region, and it also seems to fit with the concept that the bedding here appears to be dipping roughly to the south. That makes me suspect it is a layer of rock that is more resistant to erosion and coming to the surface here to form a ridge.

This is a linear feature, but that is the trend here: at Erebus there were the Mogollon Rim and the Vermillion Cliffs as well as the unnamed straight features at Terra Nova. And Endurance has a polyagonal nature and there are the anatolia lineations. On our Moon, we've known for years that craters tens to have hexagonal rims, that is simply the nature of how rock breaks in impact (I disremember the exact explanation).

We need to keep a sharp eye out, though, since this is the stratigraphic high, also.

--Bill

Here is the view of the start of this east-west cut. Not terribly promising, but not bad, either.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...J9P0675L0M1.JPG

At some point they will have to cut East and I think if they do it now, they might get the added benefit of gaining a bit of higher ground earlier as I think the highest ground is just a bit east of Oppy.

I have to say that I think we may be being overly cautious about avoiding the dunes on the run to Victoria. Sure the Purgatory experience threw the fear of perdition into us, but I'm not convinced we have other Purgatory Dunes ahead waiting to snare us. There may be a few patches of 'darker' sand it would be prudent to skirt. I'm not suggesting throwing caution to the wind. But I think the 'average' sand depth is less south of Erebus than north - that's why so much bedrock shows through that the area is called "etched terrain". I have not yet seen a hazcam shot suggesting any dangerous digging-in of the wheels. I think we can follow a more-or-less direct route to Victoria's skirts, and I think that is what the drivers are doing. How easily we will be able to cross the 'skirts' to the crater edge is unclear at this point since we don't know its composition. Time will tell whether it's easy or difficult.

We see bigger and more frequent dunes now than we did before hitting Purgatory - and lest we forget we had a near purgatory event on the north rim of erebus that was saved only by the rovers use of visidom.

The rover has a good ammount of power. You balance the eagerness to get to victoria with the risk of getting stuck - and daily drives of 30, 40, 50m are more than adequate to get the job done without putting the vehicle at unnecessary risk.

Doug

Here is the route map, updated after sol 778 drive.
I included a new "future path" going almost ESE starting on the next move. Pretty sure it won't be the selected one; Oppy will take a route somewhere inbetween these two proposals.

Click to view attachment (330k)

I am not good at judging the size of objects in MER photographs (Spongebob's Mom was a particularly embarrassing example). If we are seeing bigger dunes now than we saw north of Purgatory, I am entirely unaware of it. I wish there was a running database of these kinds of statistics readily available to me. I don't have the training to do my own measurements.

I was not in any way questioning the apparent driving philosophy of Oppy. I thought I was explaining it, by suggesting that some of the hypothetical tracks proposed by some UMSF members were more 'evasive' than the Rover drivers were using. I am impressed by the straightness of the rear hazcam photos. They don't appear to my unprofessional eye as highly evasive.

I'm glad to see the ESE path included for the moment, however I was surprised to see the path after the ESE leg not going SSSW, so as to follow the troughs of the dunes. The ESE path positions Opportunity well for a straight shot South with no dune hopping.

Now that we can see it's entrance, that route doesn't look very promising, does it? But the first 70 meters or so was kind of 'iffy' to begin with. It seems pretty clear now that they will not take that route, since they barely looked in that direction and took no pancams that way. For the time being it looks like they will continue following the troughs, taking the nominal 165 degree heading for a while.

In the past they have mostly navigated through pretty large drift fields without much apparent trouble by using this technique, but there is a drift train coming up that appears to be the most significant one yet seen. I guess we'll see when we get there. It appeared to me that the purgatory incident occurred shortly after Opportunity climbed onto a less significant drift train.

The nearly-dead-south path looks most likely to me, with Oppy continuing to shoot the tubes and turn east on rock only when necessary.

I don't remember have seen this been discussed yet. Is there a relation between the orientation of the dunes where Oppy is now as compared to the orientation of the dunes inside Victoria ? The reason of the question is that I'm already thinking how to approch Victoria, and this could influence the entire trajectory of the drive from now on. I assume that the dark spots arround Victoria are were the sand has been blown by the wind i.e. less sand, i.e. easier place to approch, more likely better place to go if you need a blowing event to clean up you solar panel. This also will be a lower part in the crater rim, so you'll have a better view, etc etc so, LET'S GO to the dark spots.

I wouldn't discard the ESE route yet; it wouldn't be the first time they drive outside the pancams fov.
The fact they drove just to the beggining of this big outcrop and didn't traversed it 'till the end is an indication of the interest on this path. Time will tell...

If the route is or not difficult, well, I'm remembering when the rover made that NW de-tour before approaching Olympia. These are navcams looking back, taken on sols 624, 625 and 626.

Sol 624 (mid-drive): http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...BP1600L0M1.HTML
Sol 624 (post-drive): http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...WP1655L0M1.HTML
Sol 625 (mid-drive): http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...CP1600L0M1.HTML
Sol 625 (post-drive): http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...UP1635L0M1.HTML
Sol 626 (post-drive): http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...LP1635L0M1.HTML



With visodom turned "on", the rover and the rover drivers are capable of outstanding things!

They are reportedly naming all these routes and features based on 19th century cattle trails. Would love to know the name of the ESE route they are near now...

There is a nice chance for some long distance driving today (Sol780)...

... and given the post-drive navcam mosaic's heading (162º) it seems they will continue with the current SSE path.

Yes, I think that is the best way, which is to continue on about the same mini-valley of dunes toward the South and little East (the western most route) until reaching the eteched outcrop before to turn on left side. Otherwise, it seems possible to continue. However, the shown picture does not guarantee the best selection of route and its selection must be based on the daily NAVCAM or PANCAM pictures.

Rodolfo

Route map, updated to sol 780.

Click to view attachment (330k)

Bye, bye, ESE route. See you, mmm, later?

A fourth of the way to Victoria in only 20 sols - great going!

The attached image is a greatly reduced and horribly JPEGged version of the Opportunity route map I'm working on. I need to add better background images before I can complete it.

It is built up out of 12 separate square maps, each a separate file in the original version. The squares are 500 m across. A square grid at 100 m spacing overlies the whole thing, with its origin at the lander.

I will show enlarged versions later when the backgrounds are finished and other things are done with them.

Phil

Click to view attachment

Wow, that's an awesome map, Phil!

Whoa! That's a Labor of Love, Phil. Thank you.

Whoa!, outstanding, Phil. This is the kind of thing I keep waiting for from JPL. I can't even imagine what it will look like when you finish. (SO - Standing Ovation)

Edit: O.K. I guess any Texan like CR has priority on the use of "Whoa". So substitute "Holy Toledo!" for my whoa. (Nobody here from Ohio, I hope.)

Beautiful work, Phil. I suggest you to insert also planocentric coordinates grid version...

Hats off!

Yes, your work there is priceless, thanks so much Phil. As every move, crater, place visited is shown, in order to be complete, and if you think it's worth doing it, you may want to show on the map the zone were the 3 EDL picts have been taken ?
Amazing how the forum's discussions is only a part of the work done "in secret" for the benefit of all.

that's amazing phil. I was looking forward to something like this!

Wow, it's a very good work.
A "jewel of precision".
Thanks