My God... it's full of blueberries!

That's the real reason why Nasa wanted to go this way - we are connecting to the elder civilization on Mars now! Endeavour crater was just a false pretense!

This picture of the monolith is really a reference to 2001: In Kubrick's film the first humans used for the first time tools (the rotating bone) - and now we are with a really cool tool (a rover is just a tool) on Mars! A tool can extend our abilities to achieve some task much easier, or even impossible for us as humans alone, and now we are extending this ability to other planets. Wow!

<philosophic mode on/>
It is fascinating, how much the people can do with a tool, and they are continously learning more, how to use this tool: The first humans found out, how to use a bone as a tool. And our beloved rover team also just get still more out of this tool - by driving it backwards, peering under the belly with the microscope camera, make trenches with the wheels. I think thats an important part of human development - and we are part of it.
<philosophic mode off/>

We've been down the monolith road before
Here and here and here.

Now back on the road to Endeavour

This last sol 2614, Opportunity left the vicinity of Valdivia and Gumdrop on a long 140+ drive crossing the 30km mark.
As it is written on the newest and beautiful logo made by Astro0, that's "50 times beyond the mission distance goal". Think of it...

If I lived 50 times beyond my "mission distance goal" I'd die at roughly 4000 years old. Note quite Methuselah, but that is rather impressive!

(was doing a little happy dance this morning when I saw James' tweet regarding 144m on the last drive and realized we broke through 30kms)


-- Pertinax

For an average car manufacturers warranty to match, it would have to be something like a 140 year, 3 million mile guarantee.

30kms is an amazing milestone.
For anyone interested here's the banner logo in a desktop variation.
Click to view attachment

Link to a hi-res version here 1.2mb
and large banner here 6.17mb

The current report on the mission's website include this note (highlighted by me).


Does anyone know what that means?

According to this site the MI Poker failed when investigating Ruiz Garcia.

I asked Scott. Paraphrased reply:

The MI poker is how the MI nominally finds the surface.
It's a thin rod attached to the MI with a contact switch on the rover
side; when it senses contact with a hard surface
you pull back a known distance and you're at the best-focus
position.

Opportunity Passes Small Crater and Big Milestone

Nothing really new on this press release except for (yet) another unit of distance.

30km = "12 times the distance racehorses will run next week at the Belmont Stakes"

According to the Google calculator, Opportunity has reached another milestone: 150 furlongs!
Click to view attachment

Oo-aarh, that be still half a furlong to go by my reckoning (unless we've moved since the last map update).

Just some more drives, and oppy reaches it's first Pico-Parsec: 1 ppc = 30,856 km (if I calculated correctly)
(Distance to Alpha Centauri just a little longer way: 1,3 pc)

Moreinput,
Your math is accurate.
The distance to Alpha Centauri AB is 1.338 ± 0.002 pc (that's a lot of pico parts!)

Wow! If I'm reading the data correctly, Opportunity drove almost 4h today for a total of 165m.
Map update will follow.

165m..?!?!?!

Spirit is pushing her on. I knew it.

Check the map. We are heading to (yet) another crater.
Since they are naming them upon exploration vessels/assets I would really like to see one of those being labelled "Spirit Crater".

Oh, please, Please, PLEASE let them name that big crater blasted out of the farside hills of Endeavour after Spirit, that would be just magnificent.

(emphasis mine)
So, is it that Opportunity has actually travelled a thousandth of a picoparsec?

Another impressive drive - that must be 150 furlongs now. This crater is the one I've been thinking could be 'Young Blocky'. Out of idle curiosity it would be nice to know if that's in fact the case. At any rate there should be some great images on the way.

An interesting tidbit in the latest MER update:

I've wondered whether the new side-to-side "jig" on the blind part of the drives is putting stress on the steering actuators. This answers that - apparently they're in much better shape than the drive actuators.

No, 1 picoparsec = 30856 m = 30.856 km. But some countries use the comma where many English-speaking countries use a decimal point.

Here's our next waypoint in the route. Image taken on sol 2617.
Click to view attachment

...and in 3D...

Click to view attachment

And yet it is the right front steering actuator that has failed on Oppy, not the drive actuator.

True. And yet they still decided to go ahead with all of the extra steering with the "jig" procedure (is there a proper name for this?)

Maybe another factor that goes into this is that a steering failure is not necessarily a really bad thing - as long as the wheel is pointing more or less straight ahead, we can still function, as the RF wheel shows. Does anyone know what the max steering angle is during the jig procedure?

In reality I'm sure it's a complicated decision process, weighing increased risk of steering failure against increased risk of some other failure since it would take longer to get to Endeavour without the jig procedure.

Looks like every other small Meridiani crater. Has everyone used the restroom? Let's go.

No. I've been on bus tours in places like this before. It's the damndest problem: not a bush in sight. I'm off to have a pee behind one of those blocks. You could take a picture of the bottom of the crater while you're waiting.

Oooh, not sure that's a good idea. Didn't you see that documentary, TOTAL RECALL? Remember what happened to Arnie's eyes? Just imagine what would happen to -



And hey, I like the crater stops. Just imagine how fascinating this bus trip would be if we didn't have the odd crater to look at every now and again. And remember, every crater was made by something falling out of the sky... something from Somewhere Else...

But you're right. What we need is another big shiny meteorite!

Nah, Stu. We'd be fine. We'd just sing the theme tune to The Flintsones every now and again.

Andy

Where on Mars was TOTAL RECALL filmed at and on Mars a future city would be like The Flinstone's city of Bedrock!!!

Wow... look how clear and detailed the hills on the horizon are...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2431L2M1.JPG

Can't wait for the view of the rest of the hills...!

It cant be long before we see Cape York?

It'll be a good while yet, I think; CY is "under" the horizon as the land dips down into Endeavour crater, and CY isn't that high anyway, so we might not see it for another couple of km yet. I think there's a *chance* we *might* catch a glimpse of it in around 1.5km's time, but my money's on the oft-quoted estimate of "we won't see it until we're almost on top of it"...

The 3x1 pancam mosaic.
Click to view attachment

I was looking at that earlier and was having the same thoughts.

3D view... pretty place...

Click to view attachment

This reminds me of the time many years ago when we were sitting in a movie theatre and I overheard someone tell their companion that the reason why Total Recall was so expensive to make was the high cost of filming on Mars.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci...0,1842971.story

"For Mars rovers, a friendly rivalry: NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, will be deployed to the planet to study rocks that may shed light on whether life existed there. But its cousin Opportunity, which is already there, may steal its thunder."

Registration, if needed, is free; some entertaining quotes.

Scott Maxwell tweeted: "What's better than driving a Mars rover? Driving a Mars rover with Paolo. Today, maybe ~ 100m with drive-by imaging of a crater for Matt G.".

... But then tweeted later that the drive was off due to DSN problems

Tosol will thus be a runout, I presume...with the drive getting an uplink tomorrow.

Destination "Spirit Point"

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20110608.html

That small crater could be an interesting target.

Fantastic! What a great memorial.

I'm glad it's not one of the craters passed on the way to Cape York named for Spirit but rather the landing spot on Cape York itself.

Great. Great! GREAT!!!
The mission and the people behind it deserve this recognition.

A small adjustment to this thread's subtitle.

Spirit points the way....
Lovely (naming) gesture and emotive target.
Oppy drivers - we're thinking of you...

Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye.....

I've been crying too. Really wanted to head around the Northern tip of Cape York.