Who could ever imagine that this mission would last 7+ years?

Sol 2554 left Pancam

I wonder if nprev's comment has more to do with KC-135s or B-52s lasting 7 decades.

...yeah, kinda sorta!

Kapton's just nasty stuff, is all. When it goes, it goes for good. It's REALLY good at producing hard-to-find high-resistance shorts to ground & all kinds of quirkly little problems. I've had too many long days and nights troubleshooting problems with kapton-clad wiring and it's left me an aged & bitter SOB, so don't mind me at all, please!

[edited for specific reason why I hate kapton]

"it's left me an aged & bitter SOB"

Ohhh... that's what did it!

Looking ahead:

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Phil

You got me cold, Phil; kapton is the devil!

EDIT: Forgot to add the traditional "Watch it, Map Boy!" Apologies for the oversight...

And I foolishly edited the last post to insert an image, so now it's in the limbo of the previous page.

Phil

The RAT could chew off the Kapton if it becomes a problem. Probably not.

No it couldn't. Firstly - even a healthy arm wouldn't be commanded to touch that as it's well within the keep-out zone for self-contact. For goodness sake, it's ON A SUSPENSION STRUT and RIGHT NEXT TO TO CABLES THAT DRIVE A WHEEL. You would have to actually want to kill the rover to put the rat to work over there.

Secondly - the arm ISN'T healthy - and can't reach there anymore anyway.

Oh, I love this rock...

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Looking back and around on Sol 2552 with
the L0 Navcam.

Jan van Driel

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Some very interesting features up ahead - circular, pedastal-like domey...things... which have been catching my eye for quite a while now. There are many more of them closer to Cape York, so it'll be interesting to get a close look at some of them early on in our drive.

To provide scale I've dropped some virtual Oppys onto this image, which shows one possible route (bottom to top = west to east... ish... kind of...) for the next few sols, taking her towards the features.

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I've made a lot more images relating to this, but, again, rather than bombard UMSF's server with them I've put them in a post over on my blog, which I hope some of you will take a look at:

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2011/...the-great-plain

(Stu, I think that should read bottom to top.)

Those domey things are interesting, and I don't recall seeing features like them before. They're surrounded by the "darkened terrain" that mhoward pointed out long ago. Though I can't see any depth on your 3D pic, Stu, I get the impression the domes are a bit higher than the dark terrain. But hopefully we'll find out soon. Presumably the "domes" are the insides of old craters that were perhaps filled with a harder material than the outsides (unless they're lower than the dark terrain, in which case the outsides were harder).

We can also see how much we've climbed recently looking back at Santa Maria - the rim doesn't even cut the horizon any more:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2554

Right Fred - plus that pic shows why Santa Maria was so hard to spot coming from the uphill side.

Looking at the little hazard avoidance dance steps, you have to ask - why worry?

Phil

Looking back - sol 2552 Navcam



Sol 2554 Navcam



That last one in particular should look great with PDS images instead of compressed JPGs.

What's with the little wheel slews in the tracks every meter or so in the latter panorama? Is that an anti-dig-in measure, or a traction check?

Check out this post.

Yeah, I saw that, Fred, but the puzzle pieces didn't click for me till just now; thanks!

Uh! Really?!?

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Heavy, man!

We've seen something like that before...

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However, in sharp contrast, Big Rock requests that you call it "Daddy"...

Large 3D view of the road ahead for Oppy... liking the misty hills on the horizon and the countless small stones strewn over the ground...

http://twitpic.com/4gxhzi/full

Slightly more realistic view of our big ugly crumbling friend...

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(what is its real name? I'm a bit confused, I'll be honest...)

Bagua

Thanks, James.

On 2556 we were sitting on one of the slightly darker patches visible in the orbital imagery. Looking south, you can see more dark patches (circled in this navcam view), that basically look like low areas surrounded by light ripples:
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You can see more to the north, in the upper right of this frame:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2556

I saw that too and made this polar view in an attempt to correlate it to the HiRISE image.
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No luck.

So... adding a bit of a stretch factor to Tesheiner's polar pan, and comparing it with Tim Parker's latest route map at JPL, we get this:

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Phil

For my millennial post, let me say that I agree with your ID's, Phil. I'll just indicate the darkened areas I circled in my post above by circling the corresponding areas on your map, Phil:
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Enhancing the orbital view really brings out some fascinating detail in this area. It sure would be cool to know the whole history here...

Thanks a lot!
I logged-in just to post yet another map update (sol 2558) and found your posts above. Now, I'll redo the 2556 plot with Phil's ID and post the map later on (edit: done).

Meanwhile just say that today's drive was "only" 65m ESE to the vicinity of crater "C".
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Scott tweeted that the drive would be longer, stopping mid-way for some crater imaging. Is it possible your map shows the midpoint of the drive, or was the drive terminated early?

Phil

Admin: A few posts on the Peugeot advert were moved to the Mars Rovers in Advertising thread started last year when this first appeared.

The latter, I would say.
Yestersol pictures are still missing but, based on the info available on the pancam website, the "post-drive" hazcam images correspond to the sequences I'm highlighting here below and no movement actually happened between the two navcam mosaics with SeqIDs 1993 (mid-drive) and 0663 (post-drive).


For some reason, the drive "faulted" after taking the midpoint navcam mosaic.

The Pancam L2 view on Sol 2556.

Jan van Driel

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... and doing a 10x stretch of that image, we get a sense of what those mounds might look like close up. Looking at this, it seems most likely that a layer has been stripped away, leaving those mounds and a larger area at the right - but so thin you can only see it if you do this to the image.
Phil

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It's about 770 meters since Oppy left Santa Maria, in just 17 sols.
What's the current odometer?

Around 27500m.

Loving the depth of field here...

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Why not ? Some friends told me recently that they had to made route and timing projections to fine-tune Oppy's operational budget and staff issues in the near future. But, of course, any incident can occur while travelling, so timings are only guesses... As we used to say in France : "Ne soyons pas plus royalistes que le Roi" ("Let us not be more royalist than the King") !

Route and time projections are absolutely valid calculations, of course!
What is not so valid, and that was the reason to my previous comment, is the easy math extrapolating data from a single week of driving.

Mean per sol from October 12th to December 8th (before getting to Santa Maria) was 39.9 m.
What about that viKINGmars

Beautiful horizon...

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It's just like the approach to the Columbia Hills all over again

Here's a comparison of the view from Concepcion crater and the view now (from Stu's post above), with a 10x stretch of course.

Phil

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And closing in on Cape Tribulation, there's a crater on its slope that I had not noticed before, though it was probably visible a long way back.

Phil

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Could it be a JPEG artifact? I can't see it on the HiRISE pics.

WRT today's drive, I have no time to work on the map but I checked the "telemetry" and Opportunity covered around 140m today! Let's keep this pace.

This link:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=23696

to one of Stu's images also shows it - so not an artifact, I'm pretty sure. I also tried to match it with HiRISE, and still not sure, but I'm still thinking about it. The crater it could be seems a bit off where I would expect it.

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EDIT - should be about here... subdued, and facing the sun so no shadow in it...? Maybe I'll say it's not a crater but various patches of rock.


Phil

I don't know if it helps with that crater, but here's the link back to Nirgal's 3Ds of Tribulation: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=156417

Interesting! I forgot about that. Looks like my feature shows up better on that - the last one of the set.

Phil