Yes, I also would really like to see that channel at the north tip of Cape York.
But I want to see how this Cape York will look like, after all these years now ...

Nice move -- executing two turns across ejecta rays as part of one long drive.

Who knows, maybe the driving will be so easy along the East side of Cape York that they will make it up there.

We'll be counting laps around Endeavor eventually! Dream big!

Meanwhile, sol 2622 images are down. Someone seems to have dropped a mountain in her path. Holy smokes where did that come from?

Is Oppy driving to the high point we see, then turning right ?

Actually that is not the drive direction, my fault for wording my comment the way I did.. "Spirit Point" her first destination at Endeavor Crater is to the North, or left of this image. Hopefully we'll have enough images for a drive direction pan in the next day or so.

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Oppy is following the purple line towards Cape York. The hills visible so strikingly in the latest images are the ones ringed in red.

Edit:

Quickmessaboutwith...

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The new view of Cape Tribulation blew me away, too. In fact, I think it deserves one of my "poor man's superres" treatments. Here's the 2x zoomed, registered, average of all four L2/R2 frames on sols 2621 and 2622, to reduce jpeg noise:
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I've also tried to ID various features. Here's my best stab:
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A rare possibility for a long(ish) baseline 3D occurred between sols 2621/2622. Here, the R pancam images of Cape Trib from those sols are partly combined into an anaglyph, 3 x stretched so as to accentuate the topography.

Notes: I think I can see two different parts of the rim just to the left of CT, first in the foreground only barely above the horizon, tops of the lower hills north of CT, and secondly straight behind them and reaching higher, a part of the southwestern rim, which is probably visible now for the first time unless I am mistaken. In the farther background the mighty Iazu is again showing itself.

...results in a nice watercolor paper texture.
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If she could get going fast enough, maybe she could do a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over Endeavour!

Thanks everyone for the thrilling views, eyes ahead, the view is unfolding ...

Imagine how nice would be if, after exploration at Spirit Point, Opportunity will climb on top of Cape Tribulation in order to have, for the first time, a panoramic view of Meridiani plain...

The panoramic view on Sol 2622

taken with the L2 pancam.

Jan van Driel

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Probably nothing, but..... looking at a pancam image from 2621 a 10x stretch reveals two little peaks roughly in the direction of Cape York. But then again they might also be Moby Dick's tail.

That was the "beacon" crater/"cape approach crater" that we talked about a while ago - see this post onwards.

A stray thought . . Having recently passed by some craters named after Mercury spacecraft and another called Gemini we now (as anticipated by Stu) seem to be making a beeline for quite a rich cluster of craters. There seem to be about seventeen of them. Mmm.

Nice thought, but there weren't 17 Apollos as there was a lot of muddle at the start and numbers began again at 4, missing out 2 and 3. We've already had one Apollo craft name, Gumdrop, the Command Module from Apollo 9. I told Rusty...

3D view of "Crater Cluster"...

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...and to show how big this cluster is compared to Oppy herself...

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Too many pix to post here, but I've written up a kind of "Road Ahead" travelogue on my blog here...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2011/...r-monster-drive

..if anyone would like to drop by and take a look.

Yes, and we had Yankee Clipper and Intrepid shortly before arriving at Santa Maria. Plus we can't forget that the very first crater we saw was named Eagle. And although it wasn't a direct Apollo reference, Endeavour was the name of the Apollo 15 CSM.

Personally though I think it would be great to have a crater named "Snoopy".

Anyone know if they got the drive-by images. If they did, must be lower priority than dirve direction images.

Looks like a corduroy jacket with cigarette burns.

That's the question I've been holding off asking all day because I don't like to sound impatient .

I think they must have, but I don't know. I want to see the southern horizon.

Yes, they were taken (Don't expect anything spectacular though, a single colour pancan of a 'ray' and some navcams)

And yes, images like this always have a much lower priority, drive images are needed right away to plan the next drive, science ones can sometimes take weeks to make it down.

James, you obviously know exactly what to expect. Can you point us to the source of that information?

It's interesting to note that from "crater cluster" to Spirit Point, Opportunity has about the same distance to traverse as Spirit did on its trek from Bonneville Crater to West Spur in the Columbia Hills. Who could have known such a comparison could be made seven years later!
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Source maps:
http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/tm-spiri...rit-sol517.html
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=173814

... or viewed in the context of "almost there."

The Pancam tracking database holds that information. What's planned. What's taken. What's yet to be transmitted. What's received.

My advice would be to just enjoy the results of those who know where it is and how to use it. It's hard to use, slow, and a very constrained resource.

Taken!

Thanks for the information James--as expected on priority.

Yes, as Doug says the information is from the tracking site which is a massively useful resource (map making, MMB metadata, thumbnail images, planned sequences, etc.) and as such the last thing we want to do is overuse it hand have it closed off.

For those of you who don't know, over recent weeks I've started posting a daily tweet summarizing what Oppy is up to based largely on the tracking data. So even less reason for others to need to query the database themselves.

http://twitter.com/nivnac

James

Some navcams are now down:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2621

Gemini 5 crater navcam panorama:
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Full inline quote removed. You've been here > half a decade - you should know better - ADMIN

Wow, I don't recall ever seeing such clear images showing that the rocks excavated by the crater formation landed after the dune formation... and that the dunes haven't substantially moved since then.

That panorama deserves a special round of applause. Well done rover team! The beckoning distant crater rim hills and the dramatic foreground action in one view - superb. And thanks charborob for the nice mosaic work.

("some navcams" - James, you under-sold it. )

I'm wondering about the timing for exploration of the clay deposits on the southern slopes of Cape York. Oppy might be hard-pressed to achieve a North-facing or even level orientation for the solar panels once it is on those slopes. We might have to be content with the hydrated sulfate areas until the next Martian Spring. That would make it a real horse-race with MSL to be the first to reach phyllosilicates.

I like the look of that status bar!
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-...ty-sol2624.html

Thrilling, once again! How clearly do we already know the contents of what's underfoot as she traverses the area? Will there, for example, be an early right or left turn based on what is found at Spirit Point?

Indeed, that's a much nicer view than I was expecting. Shame there wasn't a pancam mosaic, but no time for that, Spirit Point beckons...

From Opportunity update:

but when looking at this map:

There is a 165.4m on last drive. Does it mean that Sol 2624 is now new backwards driving record Sol?


Anyway another 120-140m soon to come: http://twitter.com/#!/marsroverdriver/...509680526438400

Wow 165 meters.

Executed thisol and the images are on the net. One more drive and we are at the crater cluster.

How much lower is the base of Cape York compared to the rovers current location? It still seems weird we can't see any obvioius sign of it.

Not really; I think I'm right in saying that it's pretty much been agreed that CY is going to be hidden from us until we're almost on top of it, because it's more like a ledge sticking out of the inner slope of Endeavour's western wall than a peak on the wall itself. So we will need to get to a higher point in the landscape, I reckon 1.5km or so ahead, before we can start to see CY by looking down onto it.

Just to add: I think we saw more of the far rim of Endeavour from our higher vantage point near Concepcion than we do now. Until we see all that again, and more, we can't expect our destination to come into view. We're just crouched too low - and descending. Stu is right. The revelation will happen when the ground starts curving downward again and that may not be for a while. But at the current rate of progress it won't take too long.

If Cape York were a ledge off the wall, wouldn't a peak be evident to the West of Cape York?
Is there reason to think that Cape York is not a rim peak in its own right?

Good time to reread Emily's excellent blog article on elevation via MGS's MOLA: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002638/

This quick screen grab might suggest we'll see CY sooner rather than later?

(edit: it's soo much fun flying around on Mars!!)

Is CY a well-eroded formerly considerable peak?

Cape York may have been protected from erosion until recent geologic times by a blanket of sulphate layers that are just now being removed to reveal more of Endeavours' rim. I wonder if there was ever a time that the entire rim of Endeavour was covered or if the higher parts of the rim have been exposed to the elements since their formation close to four billion years ago.