If I am an detective, I would ask you if you have ever flown to Mars or not?
Incredible picture!

Rodolfo

First thing I thought after seeing dilo's picture was that Victoria is hidden behind the rise associated with Terra Nova. Some of the latest images seem to show the "unveiling" of a distant plain. e.g., the left side of the horizon in this one:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...D4P2353R2M1.JPG

Could any of the imaging gurus corroborate?

Good eye. I do believe you are correct.

Excuse the hatchet job, but I'm referring to the area in the middle of the attached stitch.

Really a good catch, babakm!
I made a Phil-O vision version of your stitch (a vertical stretch x10), and your first impression is absolutely correct:
Click to view attachment
Here you are looking to east, and if you look to the MGS images, the distant flat terrain in this direction appear connected to the North, dark plain:
Click to view attachment
So this should be exactly the same flat terrain which Opportunity traversed before to encounter Voyager/Viking craters...
Another interesting thing you could see in first picture is the slight rise of ondulated terrain in the right (soutern) side...

Such rising is the reason why we can't see Victoria rim yet.
(There is an older thread dealing with this issue)

The earlier discussions noted that Erebus and Terra Nova were on a slight topographic rise and once we got past Terra Nova we would be at a location initially named "Hell Of A View". I'm looking forward to that.

I think that Oppy is getting ready to move over to the east onto the Erebus Highway and head southward rather than cross the dunefield directly south of her. Also it will give better science to look at the bedrock than sand, sand, sand.

--Bill

has anyone made a map as to how far we have driven recently? would just like to see approx where we are.

Thanks

Marslauncher

spacedaily

An Oppy update I have not yet seen anywhere else.
Interesting stuff. Like a 2 cm. drive. A record?
They are also taking a Moessbauer integration of a cobble over the weekend!

This is last update I made (with linear distances calculation):
Sol550
Still valid (in the last week, Oppy didn't moved...)

Hope people will enjoy this divertissment: a new release of "flyng" route map with 3D text and anaglyph version...

very fancy
you guys keep improving yourselves. excellent!

Has anyone an idea what this new picture on the Exploratorium site shows:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...D4P2690L6M1.JPG

Could we be looking back to Endurance with the heathshield in front of it?

Gerard

Gerard:

It certainly looks like it - presumably a check against the route map would reveal the geometrical relationship of the horizon object and the bright dot quite easily.

Bob Shaw

A panoramic view of the Rat surface.

Taken with the Microscopic Imager on Sol 558.

jvandriel

A panoramic view of the same area before ratting.

Taken with the MI camera on Sol 558


jvandriel

Here's that view looking back towards Endurance:

Click to view attachment

But with a large vertical stretch... which makes very subtle horizon topography a bit easier to interpret.

It shows Endurance and the bright spot which is presumably the Heat Shield - my only reservation about that would be that the same image has a couple of other bright spots on it which can't be the Heat Shield. But presumably the one near Endurance is.

We also see Viking and Voyager craters as dark patches, and the rover tracks. The tracks are offset - coming from Voyager crater they stop in a dark spot and are offset to the right before continuing to the foreground. The offset is at Purgatory.

One other interesting point: look at the difference in tone between plains near Endurance and those near Viking/Voyager. There must be subtle topography in there. Endurance probably lies in a lower area, or perhaps it's related to dune/ripple size differences.

Phil

Impressive, Phil. I think you could be right on the heath shield, unfortunately we don't have other useful images in this direction in order to exclude hot pixel explaination...
Here I made a version with lower vert. exhaggeration (2x) but removed most jpeg/noisy artifacts:

Here's my updated traverse map.

http://xs43.xs.to/pics/05342/Opportunity_Sol_562.gif

Me too ...
Edit: (corrected some imperfections)

And that's my updated traverse map (Sol 446 to Sol 563 (yesterday)).

http://xs43.xs.to/pics/05344/Opportunity_Sol_563_map.jpg (144 KB)

Opportunity doesn't seem to be making much progress towards Erebus lately

I'm interested in seeing Erebus, but the tile floor is worth looking at closely. Also Erebus is an old crater full of dust and sand, so I expect that we won't learn much from it. It's the next big crater to the South that holds a lot of promise.

OK, is done (hard to play with so many arguments... )

dilo, it's been said many time before, but your work is astounding.

It looks as if they now need to decide whether to continue southward over a patch of probably higher sand dunes/ripples, without the help of clean outcrops to drive on, or make that left turn onto the highway. A few sols ago it appeared that they carved deeply into one of the dunes and had to struggle a bit to get through it.

So, which will it be?

I think going into highway is longer but safer and more interesting. However, I hope they do not stop to study each outcrop... Victoria is waiting for us!

They took already the decision to drive east, to catch the highway, instead of going straight ahead (south) to Erebus.

Dilo,

Any possibility of draping these over MOLA data? Maybe in cooperation with NIX?

Don't know if the resolution is too low to add any useful info in this scale.

Dilo, that is a great image. After all the excitement surrounding the Columbia Hills, it highlights that Meridiani is really ... flat

Now THAT shows me where we are! Fantastic. I know there's good science to do where we are, but I am looking forward to getting to Victoria Crater.

yeah. They are working thru some software issues...

I had the feeling that something might be worng.. hope it's not too serious.

If it truly is only a software issue, it should not be too bad. Software can be repaired; or is there a kind of software problem that can't be repaired (other than a failure of the core functionality to receive and execute commands)?

I would think Spirit would be having all the problems, climbing up a big (relatively) hill rather than traversing flat plains, but then Opportunity did go into that crater whose name I forget and there was that dune thing, so hey, why not. I too hope it is not serious.

From
http://planetary.org/news/2005/mer-update_0826.html :

Quote:

"Opportunity suddenly came to a stop last Wednesday, her Sol 584, as she was heading to the 'onramp' of the Erebus Highway. No one knows why yet, but the rover experienced an unexpected reset. In other words, her computer re-booted. When that happens, the rover basically stops all activity and waits. "We're in the process of trying to understand why this happened," said Callas. "The vehicle is otherwise healthy we believe, but she is currently stopped where she is and is in quiescent state. We're asking her to return more diagnostic information before we proceed from here." So for now, Opportunity is taking an unplanned rest, about 150 meters from Erebus Crater. "

We've been 150 meters from Erebus for weeks now.

Imagine if Opportunity had not got stuck in Purgatory Dune and managed to keep driving south to Erebus. They were covering at least 120M per sol - on one occasion 220 M !! Opportunity could have reached Erebus in about 3 sols LOL Isn't it exactly 4 months ago today Opportunity got stuck?

Now here's an interesting picture



Notice the "coxcombs" along the fissures. It looks as if the rocks fissured, the fissures were filled by some harder mineral than the surrounding evaporites (haematite?) and then the fissures were widened at some later time.

tty

tty -- that IS some interesting strata. Don't get me wrong, but it looks like the remains of an ancient Roman highway . Via Meridiani . . .

I thought the outcropping that Opportunity first spotted looked suspiciously artificial when the first images came down.. I thought I could see bricks and a 90-degree angle - the 90-degree angle in particular made me wonder. As time passed, though, it turned out that it was in fact utterly natural and not at all made by anything vaguely sentient, and I suppose the angle wasn't exactly 90 degrees after all.

It's possible that Meridiani is a giant (old) parking lot, or spaceship landing area, or factory foundation. It's also possible that it used to be a sea/ocean/lake and the water went away and the mud dried and cracked and hardened. I imagine that as history progresses the latter explanation will be considered more and more the most likely. The first explanation is certainly more intriguing, though, isn't it?

Actually, the geometry of those larger fractures is probably pretty close to 90 degrees, but that is not a good reason to ascribe them to some kind of artificial construction. Systems of 90 degree fracturing are really very common in natural rocks and are usually caused by external stresses. The finer fractures with a non-rectilinear, polygonal geometry really do resemble dessication cracks, but I think they can form other ways as well. Before I'd be convinced of a dessication origin, I'd really like to see some MIs of some where they were filled with rock and not wind blown sediment.

Those "coxcomb" structures pointed out by tty resemble the Razorback structures seen in Endurance. To me, they look like the vertical parts of the rinds they are observing on some of these fractured blocks. I find _that_ intriguing.

Yes, I should have noticed that from the recent map.

These rocks have already been determined to be evaporites -- not just from some theory as to their formation, or the cracked appearance of the surfaces, but from fine details in their layering and from their very compositions. It would seem to me that evaporites would *have* to have been formed via dessication processes; it's inherent in the type of rock.

Why do we have to propose much less likely processes to account for the cracking of the evaporite layer, when we know for a fact that the rocks are evaporites and were formed by the evaporation of water from this area?

-the other Doug

Times like this I wish we had the ability to dig on mars.

Looking forward to seeing victoria crater.

Are there any indications that the current glitch with Opportunty is just caution on JPL's part after an unexpected revoer reset? Is everything functioning?

Evaporites do not typically contain desiccation cracks. Most evaporites are actually deposited underwater when an evaporating brine pool becomes too concentrated to keep a particular salt in solution and it consequently precipitates. It is only at the very end of the desiccation process that desiccation cracks can form.

However I agree that the polygonal cracks might well be desiccation cracks, but not the orthogonal ones. Desiccation cracks are never orthogonal.

tty

Perhaps you misunderstand me. I wouldn't dispute the interpretation of these rocks as evaporites. That seems very well established. I was only saying that while the polygonal fracturing is suggestive of desiccation cracks, we'd need more evidence to be confident in that conclusion. Evaporiites can form in a number of different ways, and they frequently are deposited under water as the salts precipitate from a supersaturated solution.

Obviously these rocks did dry out early in their history, but to form desiccation cracks, material that shrinks upon drying like clay, needs to be abundant. I don't think clays have been discovered at Meridiani. That would be a major discovery, since it would be independent evidence of water on Mars.

The only information we have is this piece from the Planetary Society website:

http://planetary.org/news/2005/mer-update_0826.html

Opportunity suddenly came to a stop last Wednesday, her Sol 584, as she was heading to the 'onramp' of the Erebus Highway. No one knows why yet, but the rover experienced an unexpected reset. In other words, her computer re-booted. When that happens, the rover basically stops all activity and waits. "We're in the process of trying to understand why this happened," said Callas. "The vehicle is otherwise healthy we believe, but she is currently stopped where she is and is in quiescent state. We're asking her to return more diagnostic information before we proceed from here." So for now, Opportunity is taking an unplanned rest, about 150 meters from Erebus Crater.

The marswatch site shows no planned images for 567 and 568. This is a little scary. Anyone know what's going on? Pando?

Well according to the JPL RAW site, there are 320 new images as of 08/28/2005 04:02:43 PST. Perhaps they are transmitting all the images stored on board - as data seems to be coming down.