You didnt have Mars Odyssey safe mode on you as WELL did you

Dial up - broadband was the analogy I used to explain it to my other half

Then again - T1 is a smidge more than 'broadband'.

Doug

That's exactly how it feels at either end of my commute I live out in the sticks where the phone lines are bad. For me, surfing from home is a good exercise in patience and multi-tasking.

--O'Dave

Yup, that'll be it.

Thanks.

Paxdan asked about links to polar (or donut... I use that term because it was used back in the Viking period, 1976-77 ... I'm fossilized enough to recall those far-off days) reprojections of the Viking sites. You can find V1, V2 and Pathfinder at low resolution only (sorry) at this site:

http://publish.uwo.ca/~pjstooke/viksites.htm

Phil

My concern would be that the etched terrain consists of a lot of 2-3 foot steep dropoffs and the wind-shadowed sides of the outcrops have loose sand-sized material deposited. Similar to the problems Oppy ran into in Endurance near the dune field. We'll see what the terrain is like as Oppy nears Erebus.

--Bill

Here's a polar view of Naturaliste crater. The original pan was a JPL release. I will do the same for Viking and Voyager if JPL or anyone here posts a pan of either.

Phil

Click to view attachment

It looks like Erebus' walls are still partially intact along some arcs of the old circle. I think you're right, the crater itself looks completely filled in, such that the landform is going to look from the ground like a very low ringwall sticking up a foot or two from the plains.

It may not give us any deeper layering into the evaporite, but the ringwall of Erebus *is* the very rim of a crater roughly half the size of Victoria. Certainly a much larger impact structure than we've visited thus far. So it's possible that some of the rocks exposed in and around the ringwall will come from *much* deeper than we've yet seen.

Of course, those rocks may well be the basalts that underlied the sea and provided a base for the evaporite layer... we'll just have to wait and see.

In any event, it seems to me that there *may* be a Burn's Cliff sticking right out of the sand up there at Erebus, right within easy reach all along its height and breadth... I can't wait to see!

-the other Doug

Updated Opportunity Route Map:

Yup - didnt hang around at Vik+VOy very long, especially with the crud downlink during that time. Hell - Erebus for next weekend

Doug

I am glad they are moving on, those were just 2 small craters, not much new to be seen there. On to the older crater with some small cliffs, and some etched terrain

I'd say straight to Victoria, and some etched terrain after that. Erebus is ancient, so a lot is erased. Victoria is more fresh and thus more interesting considering make-up of the mother-rocks deep down. Some imageing at Erebus (and no RATting), some snapshots during traversing further south (and no RATting), and get in there (and RAT RAT RAT ) !

I want the science, I want the view and i want it soon ! Imagine an outcrop 10's of meters down, and no RAT capability

Imagine a dead rover near the rim of Victoria.....

go-go-go oppy !

That of course is based on the assumption that Erebus and the etched terrain won't contain something too compelling to pass up. I guess they could brush a rock, and after studying it, if the results are still ambiguous and compelling in a way that a RAT-ing might clear up, then go for it.

Victoria is over two kilometres away and there is etched terrain in between.

Anyway I see etched terrain as a more important target. Victoria is just Endurance on a bigger scale...

Imaging getting there, and then realizing that we missed important science on the way there

Doug

Then we just drive back and look at it again. We have 1000 Sols remember

I kind of hope the Etched terrain turns out to be very uniform so they will not need to sample a rock every 10 meter.

I say, go to Victoria ASAP and then go back and do the "boring" science
Unfortunately I'm not in the driving seat.

I think it will depend. If the etched terrain turns out to be the same stuff they saw in Endurance and Eagle, they will move quickly to see if Victoria has something else to offer. If other things are present, it is important to investigate - It would be terrible to have tantalizing pancam data on a rock and have skipped it to get to Victoria, especially if it turns out to be a bigger Endurance.

I admit that I'm more captivated by the spirit of exploration than the science. I'm hoping we make it to Victoria in good time and then beyond. I'd love to see Spirit head for Thyra soon as well.

puts in perspective whos rocks are harder. That stuff oppy is rattin in must be soft like chalk/limestone.

scott

I never did hear any official analogy suitable for everyday experience the texture/density of the Meridiani bedrock. Likewise, ive always had the same impression by looking at the chalky images and grinds that that was whats it like, similar to a bed of natural porous chalk; but then looking at the 'weathered' surfaces of the rock, its looks more like burnished unfired clay. The rind that makes these surfaces appear hard as limestone cave formations seems thinly painted over compressed silty salt cake that quickly fluffs away under the rat. but i digress, whats the offical line?

Phil and all,

Back when I was in college I worked at JPL on preliminary versions of the high-res Viking 1 & 2 Lander mosaics. I have a web page you might wish to look at with links to various "final" versions that have been published. These are cylindrical projections, and perhaps they can be reprojected into polar if anyone would like to try.


http://laps.fsl.noaa.gov/albers/viking.html

Later,

Steve Albers

Have you done versions of these without the extreme vertical exageration?

The "Eagle Formation" is said to be Keiserite (Magnesium Sulfate) which has a Mohs Hardness of 3.5, which is only slightly harder than Calcite (Calcium Carbonate). This hardness is for a single crystal of Keiserite, and I'd expect the pseudo- or microcrystaline rock to be no harder and probably softer. It may be chalklike in hardness.

--Bill

Technical problem? I notice that Opportunity hasn't moved for some time - they haven't deployed the IDD which they often do during weekends or briefs science stops.

Flash was probably quite full - I noticed the Explo. had a LOT of images from the Vostok pan come down over the weekend. They probably spent the weekend doing all the UHF passes they missed last week, charging batteries and writing the sequences for this week in which, I imagine, we might well see some BIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiig Drives

Doug

Well, as of sol 430, still not much on the horizon.

I think there was a wake up call with the lack of bandwidth. kinda a "we'd better get all thoes images down we've been putting off just incase" heh

scott

But at least the horizon is not sea-flat as it has been. Not as interesting as Endurance where we could sample tantalizing previews of the interior bluffs as Oppy approached from Eagle.

I think that Erebus is going to be interesting as a window into the etched terrain.

--Bill

Hmmmmmm still going nowhere:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...IHP1235R0M1.JPG

I wonder if they are contemplating an alternative route...

What, like via Olympus Mons or something

There are no other routes to take - I'm sure it's simply a combination of three things

battery charging - Oppy is on less power than Spirit now - about 30% less - so from time to time it makes sense to get a fully charged battery

data downlink - after heavy imaging at Vostok and the Vik/Voy twins, there was a lot of stuff in flash that still needed sending down - if they plan big drives in the future you needs lots of flash space for the autonav data

Mini-Tes - they may be taking a few sols out just to troubleshoot Mini-tes, see if they can find what's wrong with it and patch it up.

Doug

But why take front/rear haz pictures if you are not moving?

That image is from sol 431. Rawid output:
Acquisition time (Mars): Sol 431 11:15:23

As far as I see there are no images from sol 432 yet.

What are you using to extract all the file information? Date, time etc?

search the forum for rawid.exe


Doug

A small command line utility by Joe Knapp called Rawid. I can't find it on the net anymore. It used to be on his website at http://copperas.com/. Maybe you can email him, or failing that I still have the source code for it.

The full output of the utility is like this:
rawid http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...IHP1235R0M1.JPG
Image info for: 1F166444496EFF52IHP1235R0M1
Spacecraft: OPPORTUNITY
Camera: Forward HAZCAM, right
Spacecraft clock: 166444496 (seconds since January 1, 2000, 11:58:55.816 UTC)
Product type: EDR full frame
Site number: 52
Drive number: IH
Command sequence number: P1235 (PMA or remote sensing instrument) HAZCAM
Producer: MIPL/JPL
Acquisition time (Earth): Mon Apr 11 01:22:49 2005
Time zone: EET
Acquisition time (Mars): Sol 431 11:15:23
Current local time (Earth): Tue Apr 12 14:23:31 2005
Current local time (Mars): Sol 432 23:01:38
Elapsed time since acquisition: 1 day, 12:44:26

..........ah yes, I remember trying that, never managed to get it to work lol. I'm not very technologically adept, I don't know what the command line is lol I need something were you could just paste the filename into a box click a button and the file info is displayed

Is there any way someone could re-deploy raw-id via a webpage. It would be MUCH easier to just copy and paste into a text entrybox on a webpage and click submit - and have it come up with the results.

I have SQL and PHP hosting on this server if someone wants to give it a go.

Doug

Hey, I think Opportunity is on the move again...........

.....this looks like a TINY meteorite impact crater:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P0703L0M1.JPG

Bright soil or just a reflection?. Might the etched terrain be a different soil type brought to the surface by victoria.... Nah! probably not.

A small app like MidnightMarsBrowser would do the job .. like you say, just paste the file name into a box and click submit........

Actually - yes - that's all that's needed. It's just annoying having to copy the filename into a batch file, save it, getting up a dos window, then running the batch file. A simple thing like MMB would be perfect.


Doug

There are beautifull Japanese rock gardens inbetween the sand waves. And Erebus on the top left starts to show himself better.

original PanCam image

Added some sunlight/contrast/sharpen : (191 kB)

Yeah, it looks like the soil is getting different - all disturbed crests of dunes are kinda brighter. IMHO the etched terrain won't be much different than the plains behind Oppy - just the soil will be much brighter.

PS. I'm working on simple image name decoder, probably will finish it in couple of hours.

Erm, has to be some strange logic to end up with that solution.

Since you are starting up a dos window anyway, why not type in the command directly there? You can just do
C:\rawid.exe 1R166636041EFF5400P1315R0M1.JPG
and it'll give you the output, assuming rawid.exe is in your PATH. The simplest way of ensuring that is just copy the file rawid.exe into C:\Windows or C:\Windows\system.

I wish people would still learn command line interfaces. They are hugely powerful for simple tasks like this. I would never want to run something like this in a GUI.

I haven't tried Midnight Mars Browser, but I am surprised that decoding of the file names isn't included there.

Yes - but you cant copy and paste into a dos box - you have to type the filename (and 99% of the time get it a bit wrong

doug

Yes you can. There is a menu behind the little C:\ prompt icon in the upper left corner of the dosbox window and you can do Edit->Paste there.

I believe you can Doug, i just tried (Win2k) : by right clicking in the dos box, it pasted the text i copied before.

edit : i just saw akuo answer, we posted at the same time, both answers are valid though

My GOD do you have any idea how long I've been trying to do that for

Thanks chaps

Doug

Antlion pit! )

What the heck, that thing is quite odd looking - and there's a smaller one to the left of it, slightly farther away. I'd imagine something like that to be fairly fresh too.

How long ago was this picture taken? Did Opportunity already move away from it?

Must have been taken last week. I felt silent after seeing this. If it's a meteorite crater, it certainly must be fresh. If it is not...then what is it ?