Hi alan, certainly that's the shortest route map about the rovers ever seen - congratulation!

Well, now that Oppy is free, time for maps again...

Big congrats to JPL/NASA for the job well done! You guys are just awesome, what can I say...

Anyway, I've been trying to localize the exact spot of Oppy's quagmire, based on orbital images and using the overhead projection posted by JPL a few weeks ago. Check it out...

Wow.........by sheer bad luck it looks like they hit the biggest dune/drift there is in the area

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8098155/

"The Erebus Highway"

Where will Opportunity go?
Eventually, Opportunity will resume its southward trek, heading first for a bright feature nicknamed the Erebus Highway, about 130 yards (120 meters) away, Squyres said. The "highway" could be a stretch of exposed bedrock, leading toward Erebus Crater — which would be a very good thing for Squyres and his colleagues. Or it could be a huge pile of Martian dust.

Great job Pando !
"Erebus Highway" must be the bright linear feature at the bottom of your image.
It looks like the dunes go right through it, I am not so sure there will be a lot of outcrop exposed there. Should be more stable to navigate, hopefully

RE: Pando's Quagmire map

Interesting. She got stuck at the transition between the NE-SW trending dunes we've been travelling in and the "mottled" area around Erebus. The small crater to the SW of the sandtrap does not have the characteristic Evaporite Halo around it, so I presume that this terrain is deep and dusty...

--Bill

Those "fish scales" must be larger dunes with the drifts lying on top of them. Oppy had the bad luck of running head on into the last one in her path. A short drive to the west should get her around it.

Looks like we'll have to be very careful in and around Erebus, too. There are some very pronounced dunes throughout the northeast part of the crater.

With any luck they'll be so large that Oppy can drive comfortably between them.

Oppy looks close to the edge of a large flat looking area just to the south. Oppy can drive accross that in a south x south east direction to reach the "rock highway to Erebus."

(sounds like a good name for a song)

Hi Bill!

I'm not so sure...If the white flecks on the photo depict the sort of dunes Oppy was in, and got stuck in, they disappear within a few tens of metres to the south of her current position. That makes me think that these dunes are virtually spent.

The crater you mention as potentially in deep dust, is perhaps half the size of Viking & Voyager, and possibly the reason for a lack of an EH is this small size. Compare, for example, this little crater to the one on the border of the photo to the east of Voyager - same sort of size, no evaporite. Is it a scale thing?

Were I behind the wheel, I'd send Opportunity sse/s to skirt the edges of the rippled dune-sea, driving on the less topographically obvious (flatter?) dark terrain, and then have a rethink once I reached the lighter material marking the start of the Erebus highway.

Andy, optimism returning for Victoria...

Sounds like a song cue for a Hope-Crosby road picture -- "Ohhh, we're off on the highway to Erebus. You never know when we'll get stuck! Yes, as we salley fore, we'll see some dunes and more -- the odds are even we'll run into Dorothy Lamour!"

-the other Doug

Is it just me, or does the "Erebus Highway" appear to be the eastern edge of a very large and shallow circular depression, with the NW edge of Erebus forming the SE edge of the depression? It looks like an ancient crater that has been almost completely filled in.

Ilbasso, it's not just you. I thought the same.

Phil

I believe that's the part of the rim of the old crater they refer to as "Terra Nova".

See Squyres update, April 18.

But I think that Erebus Highway is actually the NW rim, however, as I always thought Erebus was imbedded in the western half of Terra Nova, with the eastern-most rim of Erebus being the center of Terra Nova.

Now where did I put my PaintShop PRO....

Thats the first thing I thought when I saw Oppy was stuck, she ran into a buried crater. I wasn't thinking of one that big though.

I think that the Terra Nova that Squyres referred to is shown by the white circle in this image.

Ah, I see it now. It does look like there's yet a third big crater in the area. The upper one must be even older than Terra Nova.

This is going back a bit, and it's really in reply to dilo in another thread but it belongs here more than anywhere else.

A map of the Heatshield area. It's nothing more than a composite of two vertical projections released by JPL earlier this year, but they are combined in a way that allows the blank area at the center of each to be filled from the other one, resulting in a map without gaps. There are two diagonal lines at the top which could not be fixed in this way. But it gives a very good view of the rover tracks in this area.

But think of taking every pan location around Paso Robles/ Methuselah/Larry's Lookout, or inside Endurance, and combining them in this way to make a larger photomap of the whole area! This is what I would like to try eventually.

Phil

Click to view attachment

That map is wonderful!

--Bill

I'm just an interested lurker, but I found it informative.

Also IMO the accuracy of your example happened to be somewhat self autheticating.

Jack

Really impressive, Phil... I never realized, looking to single MER images, that main two pieces of heat shield are almost simmetrically placed respect to the impact "crater"!
Now I would like to show also my progress using PovRay and the famous Sol454 ("fighting the surf") panorama, wich provide improved far details thanks to superior angular resolution of PanCam.
First one is a "pseudo-polar" projection (texture projected on a large sphere tangent to terrain):

second one is a vertical projection of this mosaic; note that distant dunes crests are deformed due to radial projection:

in both projections, I replaced center gap with the "official" Sol446 projection.

Re Phil's map of the heatshield area -- that is some fancy stitching! Great work!!!

Would it also be possible to make a similar overhead projections of Oppy's sojourns in Endurance crater?

Exceptional viewing!
These vertical projectors are very helpful for Rover's driver. It can visualize with anticipation the best way to drive on the maze of dunes.

Rodolfo

Does anyone have an updated route map?

I'm tring to assemble vertical projection from different Sols, but work is hard and progress are slow ...

JPL has updated the traverse map for Opportunity

http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/tm-opportunity/index.html

Wow. We are closer to Erebus than I thought!

I liked the maps we had on this forum better. They showed more deatail and had a wider view.

...and now (Sol 533) we are close to enter in the higway!

Thanks for the updates dilo! Impressive work.

Nico

A panoramic view of the Interstate to the south.
Erebus in the background.

Taken with the L7 Pancam on Sol 533.


jvandriel

Have a look at this:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...HP1607L0M1.HTML

I get a strong feeling that what we are seeing here is a thin layer of sand draped over a rather uneven bedrock surface. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if we have a karstic surface underneath. The small crater a few days back could just as easily have been a small doline.

tty

Thanks to you, Master!
Beautiful stitch, jvandriel...

The best estimation that Oppy reach the hearth of Erberus crater is three weeks from now.

Rodolfo

It *may* be karstic -- but I think the simpler answer is that the jumbled bedrock under this sand is the ejecta from Erebus and Terra Nova. They are craters, so they had to have emplaced ejecta blankets when they formed. And we're approaching their rims.

Why posit karsts to account for the uneven base of bedrock when we *know* the terrain must have been jumbled by the impacts?

-the other Doug

TTy

I agree with you, it might be the best explanation about the strange of mini-craters which the other Doug have mentioned. I tought these mini-craters might have caused by:

1) Small meteorite. It might occur but it is not so evident since there is no much debris around mini-crater. I remember that Oppy found a meteorite on the surface close to heatshield without any hole and no debris -very strange case -
2) A expulsed stone from a nearby volcan. Descarted hypothesis. Not enough momentum to make such a hole.
3) Underground water filtration. Possible hypothesis. The water current might have erosioned the outcroup making a crack to underground.

and now the new hypothesis :

4) the hole follows to the strange surface of outcrop under sand.

Rodolfo

Looking carefully to Sol 533 PanCam images, closest Erebus rim is only 12 pixel (10mrad) below horizon; this should translate in a mere 150m distance!
Click to view attachment
Meanwhile, this is the stitch+polar projection from Sol531:
Click to view attachment

Oops, I made a mistake, using the NavCam resolution figure instead of 0.28mrad/pixel of Pancam. So distance is more than 400m, in agreement with last officail route maps. !

400m? I'm sure we're much closer than that. Remember that map is now about 8 days old.

You're right... more precisely, from last map Click to view attachment I estimated a 320m distance on Sol 528 (6 Sols ago).
An overestimated distance could arise from slightly elevated Erebus rim ... in fact, the far rim appear almost on the horizon for the same reason.

This is a combination of last 3 days vertical projections of NavCam Panoramas, showing the path over the etched terrain:
Click to view attachment
From waypoints, movement was:
SOL541: 21.9m
SOL542: 9.1m
(official odometry should be slightly higher, due to slippage and deviations from linear path...)

Trying to match up your image, with my old 1m MOC mosaic..

Dilo that map is amazing!( via_Meridiani.jpg) I hope to see more of those!

You can be sure, Decepticon! stay tuned...

Doug, I believe Oppy is located just a bit to the left (west); at this point: Click to view attachment.
I made a similar exercise yesterday to plot the rover position (based on dilo's vertical projections and MOC image R1500822, but plotted on Phil's image - see here: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...indpost&p=16125).

Some meters to the east or to the west, it is not a big deal. I hope we have soon an updated route map on the MER webpage.

But when trying to plot the rover position, and looking to this very nice MOC image (be careful! the full resolution GIF is about 20MB!), IMHO there shouldn't be too much fanfarre about speeding up now that we are at the etched terrain.
Ok, the way to Erebus is clear. But have a look to the way to Victoria. Plenty of rocks (same etched terrain, that's good) *and* dunes. Some of those dunes looks *big* and I fear that it will be like going in a maze.

Tesheiner

yes, it won't going to be much easier than the part from purgatory to Erebus ...
but also probably not harder

There are two big points working for us:

1. luckily the dunes run in north-south direction
2. the underlying bedrock in-between the duens seems to be very flat

so I'm optimistic that with the new driving technique we could still maintain
the 30-meter-per-day average which will be sufficient to reach Victoria
within about two months of driving...

The dunes orientation is definitely playing in our behalf.

But note that if we want to stay firmly on bedrock a lot of traversing will be needed. Well, traversing will be needed in any case because Victoria is not exactly southwards but about SSE.

When Oppy got stuck, one of the possible reasons was because it was quite steep. Actually, they later drove backwards looking for an easier path.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic but assuming that the ripples seen on the MOC image are actually dunes, the way to Victoria is filled with quite "nice" (to not say *big*) ones.
Would Oppy be able to traverse or avoid those dunes? I think so, but the pace will be slower.

Updated projected route map (added Sol536/539 and last color Panorama!):
Click to view attachment
I tried to match with MOC image, reducing to the same scale... not easy, but this is best match in my opinion:
Click to view attachment
If correct, a lot of distance remain to cover: 380m from North Erebus rim!

According to the latest Flight Director's Update, it's 150m