Sol 994 position - not very certain yet.

Phil

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PS I'm writing an article on the history of lunar and planetary cartography since 1900 for a big history of cartography project. A ridiculously small word count is available... but I'm slipping in one sentence to the effect that the long history of amateur involvement in astronomy continues in the planetary cartography field as well, with several participants in this forum specifically in mind.

Phil, are you using the HiRISE to to get your position? You can actually see the individual little bits of bright exposed rock in front of the beacon in the full res HiRISE! So I'm actually pretty confident of this position even with limited images.

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James

James, I was waiting for enough navcams to make a good polar to decide the final location, so my image will probably move a bit. You're probably right on yours. I'll be adding the HIRISE image to my background soon, just too busy at the moment.

Phil

Not much imagery to base this on yet, but should be about right.

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James

Looks to be quite accurate to me, from my point of view. Awesome job all who've contributed with this!

I have adjusted my positions a bit here and added the new background image.

Phil

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There are enough navcams down to be fairly confident of this position (might be a touch to the left):

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Phil

Hiris vs Vertical Projection ...

and localization ...

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Discussion drifting away from Opportunities 'route'. Posts moved to "Farewell Beacon".

It's images like these that make me appreciate the fancy footwork the drivers are doing to make Oppy waltz around the capes.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ZZP2429L5M1.JPG


The latest navcam seems like Oppy is a little dizzy from dance-fever:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...8UP1950L0M1.JPG

Is this testing of the latest software update, or is driving with a stuck actuator resulting in a special dance step?

It looks to me like surface contours are creating the impression of a zig-zagging motion. If someone wants to put together an anaglyh, I think you'll see that it is a relatively "lumpy" path.

They said they'd be testing in this period so likely that's the cause of the staggering.

Indian3000's vertical view shows very clearly where we are today.

Phil

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Also - remember, FR steering actuator stuck with 8 degrees of toe in....that could well cause a slight wibble (and I use the term wibble in a technical way) to driving.

It's hard to call it "lumpy" but yes, the surface isn't so flat

We've driven much straighter many times recently on similarly smooth surfaces. See for example:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...O5F0006R0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...G1F0006R0M1.JPG
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...EVP0773L0M1.JPG
My guess is the testing we've heard about.

Check the rear-view-mirror images for empty beer bottles.

Granted I don't know the software, by my guess is they probably just have some control loop variables to tweak. Our new robots tend to wibble too, until the motion wizards get a chance to tune them.

a draft version of HI-RES route map

a browse version

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and a full version ...

http://www.rlproject.com/~marsrovercenter/...es_routemap.jpg

Astounding! The dunes!!

Ahh - great work i3k - is that based on the bundle adjusted data from the workbook?

Doug

not yet but it is the goal

it's just a draft version, a quick pointing based on Phil Stooke's route map ( a very big thank for him (and all others route map makers ) ).

Yeah! How cool to visit Oppy's track history in such quality!

Just a note: I would like to get anything over Oppys real track as small as possible. Or, personally I don't know how yet, maybe even nothing at all..., or nearly transparent...

The tracks are barely visible most of the time anyway - and while I do see your point..the point of a route map is exactly that - to overlay over the tracks.

Doug

Latest version of the map... but I'm not yet very sure of the location.

Phil

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Indian:

Nice work!

It's amazing how having the "firehose" open up at full tilt with Hirise image acquisition and release has made updating my own traverse map take a back seat for the past few weeks!

-Tim.

Indeed, Tim. I had just collected the bits and pieces of Phil's route maps and was starting to match things up with Emily's kind and gracious "Eagle to Victoria on the Installment Plan". I'm still going to work those images up with routes on a separate layer, and I'll transfer the geomorph "features" over from the MOC images I've been plotting them on.

One thing I've noticed is that the "anatolia features" are more than an odd trench here and there; they seem to be a major feature on this locale. And likewise, it seems that the Halfpipe Formation is significant.

Ah, to have had MRO imagery at the onset of this mission... I feel less like one of the Three Blind Men (of the elephant fame).

--Bill

Latest map:

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Phil

Excellent work !
A compromise would be to show the sol locations but without the joining lines. We could then be able to see what remains of the tracks - but know precisely where to look for them.
Just a thought.
Rob

The tracks are not visible enough in most places for the route to show up like that. A side-by-side comparison might work best. For instance, the Payson area of Erebus:

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Phil

First I had in mind a form of small lines running parallel in which their center would be the track position - but that would only work by one "straight" track, not when Oppy has driven higgledy-piggledy


Think too that would be fine and works best.

What about using a different shade/color for the portions of the joining lines that are overlayed on unambiguous rover tracks from the orbital imagery? Actually this idea could be extended to other shadings/colors to represent other sources/methods by which that portion of the route map was reconstructed:

• unambiguous orbital imagery of the tracks
• rover navcam/pancam observations of the the tracks in the surrounding terrain
• telemetry or other rover-supplied spatial information
• interpolated path based on best estimates of our talented route-meisters
• others?

Just a thought.

Thanks to all those who have worked on these great route maps...

In many of these images, I can almost convince myself that I see rover tracks, but only with the hindsight of knowing exactly where they're supposed to be. There are very few places where I can say with any certainty that I can see unambiguous images of tracks.

Interestingly, it's much easier to see the tracks that Oppy has made in the past few weeks around Victoria than it is to see the tracks up near Endurance, even though the surfaces around each are somewhat similar. I'm beginning to wonder how much of the lack of track definition in some of these images has to do with their intrinsic visibility (at the limits of HiRISE's resolution), and how much is due to weathering (and perhaps partial erasure) of the older tracks.

-the other Doug

Well - if you cast your mind back to leaving Endurance...we crossed some 8-odd month old tracks and MI'd both the old and the new and the difference was very obvious.

The new tracks had all the berries squished into the soil - the old tracks, the soil had begun to be blown away and re-revealed the berries again.

Further south where it was all dunes and few berries, I think it's simply a matter of wind erroding away the impression of wheel tracks - and a very obvious indication of that was soon after the egress out of purgatory - one could see a streak left behind by wind blowing past a wheel loaded with white deposites.

Doug

What astounding luck that the dunes were oriented the way they were...- Imagine having to cross them all, instead of going through the troughs! Opportunity certainly has been the Enchanted One since she first did an Eagle hole-in-one...

I did an exercise like that some time ago.

Here is it: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=72028

Anyone know what happening on Mars? No new MER data in days. And no new posts. Very odd!

When the MER missions are finally over I fear that I will be in store for some major withdrawal symptoms.

MRO went into safe mode a couple of days ago. Communications with the rovers has been reduced to a minimum. Hence no major downloads of new images. Things should be back to normal in a few days.

I'm hoping you mean Mars Odyssey, and not something new?

I hope this isn't a taste of what the forum will be like when the rovers missions finally end

You know, when the MERs landed, I figured they would both be gone by mid-2003 and I would have to wait seven years until the next rover was on Mars. I'm ecstatic that they are still operating on any level and grateful that it won't be anywhwere near seven years between rovers.

A quite small activity on the MER side of the forum this last week, eh? Let's hope Odissey is soon back on-duty so we could have our daily mars fix as usual.

Meanwhile, here is an updated version of the route map. It's back again in B&W for two reasons: file size & image sharpness. This point was already discussed before, but it looks like the different color filters are slightly unregistered around this area. The last plotted position is still the same as of sol 1016, however the rover is currently slightly to the left of that point, according to the last status report.

Sol 1021 (Dec. 7, 2006): The rover took a 2-meter (6.6 feet) drive along Bottomless Bay and the panoramic camera took the second half of the stereo mosaic of Bottomless Bay.

Many, many thanks, James for keeping the map updated since last month.

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There are some new data from sol 1021, enough to plot a preliminary position (based only on the rover's mobility data). I'll double-check it once the respective sol's 360º navcam panorama is downlinked.

Curiously, the data available tells that on sol 1021 the rover moved about 53m, which is in contradiction with the 2m indicated on the last status report. The few navcams available (here and here) seems to support the long drive.

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For what it's worth, my triangulations agree exactly with your 1021 location. Parallax distances and angular separations using 8 features are consistant to within a few meters of the position.

Thanks for this verification Horton!

My sol 1027 estimated position is here.

Sol 1027?!?

I wasn't aware about these fresh images. Thanks.

http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportu...cam/2006-12-14/

Agree 100%.

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Yes a nice surprise! Not a contrdiction, the status report says they moved 2m to get some long baseline on BB_NE, which is true*, what the fail to mention is that after that she then drove another 50m!

*Actually according to the tracking data the move was more like 5m. Complicating sol 1021 even more Oppy then drove a further 11m before imaging Islas Baleares *then* the final drive of the sol.

Do we know the next drive direction? South to Bottomless Bay or east to the next cape? Do we have a name for that cape?