That interview just plain rocked. I don't really want to go into the superlatives it deserves; understatement says it all. Go, Scott (and brilliant work, Stu!)

Loved reading that interview Stu - like getting a wee shot on the passenger seat

I'm going to have to be honest with you Stu. That was a darned good interview. You asked some great questions, and Scott provided some quite enlightening answers. Congratulations to both of you.
Perhaps one of the most interesting comments you coaxed out of Scott was this one:


If I could reply to that statement, I would say: "We know what you are saying, Scott, but we're all certainly glad that you got beyond being a Martian dusthugger. The indelible accomplishments that Spirit and Opportunity provided to Humanity will hopefully endure in history forever.

Thanks.

The Navcam R0 view on Sol 2563.

Jan van Driel

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Polar version of jvandriel's latest panorama.

Phil

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Nice Jan van Pan <-- couldn't resist, after all this time!

Q: How do the Hills of York measure up to the Columbia Hills traversed by Spirit?

Don't know about height, but as far as a direct scale comparison is concerned, here ya go...

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Larger version here

I do not think that Scott was talking about Cape York in the following quote:

... it’s gonna be fun to go hill-climbing again, too. We haven’t done that since the early(ish) days of Spirit...

This is because, as has been discussed before, Cape York is little more than a low bank on the edge of Endeavour Crater. Instead I think that Scott was talking about the huge hills around Cape Tribulation.

The following paper shows that the clay deposits around Cape York are not very extensive:

http://www.planetary.brown.edu/pdfs/3954.pdf

My guess is that Oppy will not spend more than 6 months around Cape York. It will then zip down to Cape Tribulation where it will spend many Years after it arrives climbing hills and examining the extensive clay deposits there in great detail.

To me the real attraction of Cape York is that the view from there of the far side of Endeavour Crater will be one of the prettiest ever taken in the history of Space exploration.

We now have better CRISM data than that paper used. See:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2011/pdf/2199.pdf

So there will certainly be an attempt to find clays and other materials at Cape York. I'm sure you are right about Tribulation being a better place to look, but it is more distant, so the nearer target will be examined first. Just in case... !!

Phil

Hmmm. Interesting how our view of Tribulation etc has changed in the past year or so...

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If Oppy does go climbing in those hills to the south of Cape York, what will the terrain be like? Well, I can't lay my hands on any altitude figures, and I don' trust Google Mars to give me accurate figures, so the best we can do is - purely for fun, ok? - look at how the Columbia Hills and the Tribulation-Dromedary range compare visually...

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More comparisons in a long blog post here: http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2011/...ng-up-cape-york

Latest view of the western hills...

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We can almost touch them!

Absolutely...

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More images here.

A special Pan for Brellis

The pancam view on Sol 2569.

Jan van Driel

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The shortish bright line in the middle distance - anybody know if that's the crater Stu pointed to, or is it just part of the next raised outcrop of bedrock?
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&id=24168

That crater is still too far away to be visible on the pancams.

Edited: Check Phil's post below.

That crater's a good 740m ahead yet, Nigel.

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Here's a match to the local topography. That white object is in the right direction to be that crater, and the intervening outcrop is probably the line below that crater in this image. In fact, I think my stretched image and the GE image match quite well.

Phil

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Definitely Phil-o-vision is the right tool for this purpose and I have to eat my words!

The outcrop 300m ahead is so subtle on the stretched mosaic, in contrast to the much far away crater, that I have the impression it is located in a local low point. The terrain seems to rise in a slight slope afterwards the outcrop, making the crater visible. My 0.02c.

Thank goodness not all craters are hiding in hollows. (As I recall 'Rockaway' was visible from 9 km or so.) Since this one seems to be in plain view and lies on the route ahead I expect it will get a proper name soon.

Well spotted Nigel!

Very quiet in here lately.

Like sailing on a quiet and waveless sea.

Here's some info about this week activities, as tweeted by Scott Maxwell (comments in italic were inserted by me):

Quiet around here today, so I thought I'd better post this.

Phil

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Quiet here, indeed, but actually not on Mars.
Yestersol (2574) post-drive pictures are already down and I will post an updated route map in a minute. Opportunity is currently parked next to feature D, I think.

Sol 2574 images:

Phil

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broooommmm

The Pancam L2 view on Sol 2572.

Jan van Driel

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Might be a possible dust devil at the extreme left border of jvandriel's panorama, just below the horizon, visible only against the dark ground. The original (right eye) frame here .
Or then another outcrop, but at least to my eye it looks a bit too 'fluffy' and misty for stone.

I spotted that one as well, thinking it looked like a dust devil or gust too. But if you look closely, it's visible in exactly the same spot in this navcam, so it's got to be a fixed feature:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2572

"Double Crater" up ahead...

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Size compared to Oppy...

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More images here: http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2011/...er-crater-ahead

Crater? What crater? I don't see a crater, or two.

Oh look! over there, a sand dune, just past the crater. Let's go have a look at the sand dune. If it's uninteresting we can just keep on going.

Neat! But, yeah...we gotta keep going. Distant vistas await.

BTW, Stu, knowing & fully supporting your meteorite interest...what do you think the odds are that many if not most of the ones we've seen to date were from a single fall? They were all iron/nickel, and distributed throughout a fairly small geographical area.

Well, we appear to be heading right for it, so I'm thinking a quick potter about there, if only to take a brief breather, will be the plan. And we can never have too many 'crater beyond a crater' shots, can we?

...as for the meteorites, I'm no expert but looking at them a single fall strewnfield isn't too outrageous an idea, but I'm really not qualified to say anything more than that

Quite a few papers have been written about the meteorites discovered by Opportunity at Meridiani Planum. I've read five or six of them and none of those claimed that all or many of the Fe/Ni meteorites were from a single fall. Most of the papers do point out that three of the metallic meteorites (Heat Shield Rock, Block Island, Shelter Island) are quite similar, and are classified as Type IAB iron meteorites. The fourth iron meteorite (Mackinac Island) was not investigated with the IDD instruments, but a pancam spectrum was obtained which was very similar to that of Shelter Island. Apparently all four of these meteorites are pretty similar.

I think it would be pretty difficult to prove that these were all from the same parent, with measurements Opportunity can make. One paper, however, did mention the possibility that iron and stony meteorites found by Opportunity may be evidence of two overlapping strewn fields.

Ah. Thanks, Tom! (I really should get off my shiny metal etc. & look up these papers before posting such questions...)

Oh heck, Nick; none of us can keep up with everything surrounding these missions. That's what this forum is good for.

Tribulation registered and averaged over four L2/R2 frames (sols 2569 and 2561) to reduce jpeg noise (not a proper superres treatment):
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The latest Oppy map update includes a route to Cape York (of course the route has to be tentative). The route basically consists of several straight segments connecting up at craters, starting with the "double crater" we can see in pancam about 400 metres ahead, and ending near the south end of CY. Most of the connecting vertices are obvious craters, although one is labelled "young blocky" but there's no obvious candidate that matches that description exactly at that vertex, to my eye at least.

Oh, Great to hear of the insights to the journey like this, thanks Fred.
I dedicate my working week to Oppy's goals, let's see where we are Saturday

I wonder if that last label refers not to a vertex but to the prospective route's endpoint. It certainly would be a good description of the prominent crater at the South tip of Cape York, in the direction the route is headed.

From Stu's view of Cape York, complete with scattered little orange-highlighted Opportunitys:
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Actually, near the end of the January 31, 2010 Mars Exploration Rovers Update By A.J.S. Rayl. Steve Squyres refers to another crater visited by Opportunity as "young" and "blocky".

Concepcion.... is estimated to be about 1,000 years old, making it the youngest crater explored on the mission. Being young, it’s “very blocky, very rugged,” said Squyres. “And we're going to tiptoe around this thing pretty very carefully because it is a real rubble pile.”

If anything, the crater on the South end of Cape York looks even younger and blockier than Concepcion (on the left, below). Of course Concepcion being formed in soft sulfate rock would presumably weather at a faster rate than the Cape York crater, which I estimate is about 18m diameter to Concepcion's 10m (based on the 100m grid in Tesheiner's route map)
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I've been waiting for someone to comment on this different looking texture we will be approaching in the next week. But no one has, so I will. It almost looks "inverted" the way some of the ancient craters have been filled and then their structure eroded away on other parts of Mars. I know the term "etched" has already been used to described the Meridiani Planum on a larger scale. But when you get right down to it, this really looks "etched" in the truest sense of the word. It's difficult to tell from Google Mars, but there doesn't appear to be any relief to the region, or at least not enough to present a navigational obstacle.

Do your speculating quickly. We're almost on top of it.

I suspect THIS is Young Blocky.

Looks like just another instance of the 'dark terrain' type which we've already passed over and found surprisingly unsurprising.

Agreed - EGD, check out the posts around #130 in this thread. It looks a lot more interesting from orbit than it does on the ground... although it must have something to tell us that is not immediately apparent.

Phil

It makes wonder if these aren't the remnants of once-large dunes that have since been scoured away from a regional change in prevailing winds. Is it possible there is some kind of weak cementation that occurred from the pressure and eons of a time under the formerly larger dunes, leaving a "footing" that is just a tad bit more resistant than all the other sand out there on the planum? Might it be worth a brief wheel scuff and MI peek into one of these zig-zagging shapes?

Wouldn't you expect to see more alignment and less crisscrossing if these were the remnants of ancient dunes?