Alan -

Ray Arvidson mentioned in his overview of Opportunity at LPSC that the names of the next crater targets are Viking and Voyager (?). I suppose those are the two sharper rimmed craters about 2/3 of the way down to the big eroded one.

Damnit -it's Gatepost NE and Gatepost SW

They'll probably have a better name for Albert as well

Doug

Correct. They'll arrive at Viking first...



I wonder where the name "Albert" came from?

So could the two black features on the horizon (in the picture I posted) actually be Viking and Voyager, or something more close to the rover?

Queen Victoria's husband. I also came up with loads of other names ( the flat area next to Albert with little etched terrain I called 'Albert Dock' which is in liverpool, and lots of smaller craters after Albert and Victorias children. There's one quite large bit of etched terrain that I called 'The V&A' after the Victoria and Albert museum

Doug

Anyone care to bet on the date on which Opportunity will 'overtake' Spirit? Shouldn't take too long. The winner gets a (fun size) Mars bar.

We're seeing more bits of bedrock as we move south - I wonder if we're going to see a gradual transition to that from the sand and ripples as Opportunity approaches the etched terrain.

Oh, and I thought it was after Einstein as the crater kinda looks like his hair... silly me...



Ok, how about "Victor" though we'll see...

Vostok
Viking
Voyager
Victor
Victoria


edit: nevermind... not a spacecraft name... ok, how'bout "Vanguard"...
http://planet4589.org/space/misc/names.html

Looking at the route map Pando posted, parts of the etched terrain in the west extend quite far north. Opportunity is taking pictures with the L7 and R1 filters for plotting each drive - however outcrop rock looks quite dark in those wavelengths, it might show up better with the red or near-infra red (L2) - which makes the outcrop appear very bright.

Example, approaching Endurance:

L2: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P2556L2M1.HTML

L7: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...0P2556L7M1.HTML

I think that is very likely. And I don't think it poses a big obstacle to the rover since the exposed rock is most likely eroded smooth.

There appears to be some mighty big dunes though on top of the exposed bedrock, that would be an interesting sight to see. It almost looks like some big rolling ocean waves 33 meters crest-to-crest, frozen in time...

Venera
Vega
Voskhod


On the dunes in the etched terrain; I wonder if these 'fishscale' features around Viking and Voyager are dunes as well :

That's my impression too. Either them, or dark spots/dunes/ground near them. Not the big one yet I guess.

Speaking of dunes, those are just little baby ones in front of the rover right now. I think what starts showing up on the horizon now are some of the big monsters, each one a meter or more high and with 30 meters of wavelength . The rover will probably disappear completely between them.

Hey Pando do you have the drive manefest for the next couple of days? which days will be driving and which ones limited due to uploading the auto drive pics?

Thanks

John Cooke.



on a side note, I too am from the UK, Leicester, and moved to the states in 2003, on wednesday I got my work permit and am now legal to work woohoo. well just thought I would share some personal good news.

John

It's in the map. Looks like no drive on 409 and 411.

http://mer.rlproject.com/index.php?act=Att...pe=post&id=7019

In that case, they're going to have to make sure to park Opportunity on the right side of the dunes in order to have the solar arrays facing toward the Sun. Could be a little tricky.

It couldn't be Viking and Voyager. Its been visible for far to long, all the way back to Endurance.



It now appears nearly twice as large as it did at Endurance so Opportunity is about half way there.

Fascinating... If you look at the features seen by Oppy and the overhead view, the rim features appear to match. Alan, you may very well be right

Hey Marslauncher, welcome to the good old US of A. I sent you a pm.

Not only have the dune-forms been changing very perceptibly in recent sols, but so have the depths of Oppy's wheelprints in some areas.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...TAP1607L0M1.JPG

..and so has the the quantity of coarser lag deposits in the inter-dune areas.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...TAP2388L7M1.JPG

As these babies grow into potential monsters, the going is likely to get tougher. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that's the point Pando was making.

As I recall, we are moving "up-section" in the bedrock as we move south. If that's the case, we cannot ignore any outcrops discovered along the way. I still contend that if Opportunity makes it to the etched terrain, there will be so many obvious science targets to be had, that the big and bigger craters will fall off the plate.

But, we've got to get there, first...

Some larger bumps on the horizon now (sol 409)...

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2663L5M1.JPG

Agreed, I think it would be rovercide to try to go over a big dune. Keeping Oppy as level as possible should help keep the displacement and slippage to a minimum. As Spirit's experience has shown, hitting deep sand at an angle has caused problems.

If they are driving as far as they have been, I think currently slippage must not be a problem at all. The fact that the tracks are are very crisp and detailed in the images confirms this, even though they are getting deeper.

I'm not entirely convinced the dunes are currently getting much bigger. The most recent batch of navcam images were taken quite late in the day, and the lower sun accentuates the dunes makeing them appear more prominent. But if you look at the hazcam images they are still only a few inches high. That may change as we get closer to the ethced terrain though.

Presently I would say the "babies" are circa 25 to 30 centimeter high by comparison with the (max.) track width of 122 centimeter.

When I look the satellite images I'm also not sure whether at the beginning of the etched terrain (just by Viking) are big dunes with direction southwest to northeast or already bedrocks. In the "normal" southward direction seems to have the well known dunes. Around "Albert" it seems to have higher rock-like bedrocks. Those could we see on the horizon too.

.

.

why bother?
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...EFF0006R0M1.JPG

Is this Viking (left) and Voyager (right), with Albert behind? The direction of the dunes, and the relative size and distance of the craters seem right.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu:16080/mars/opp...MGP2390R1M1.JPG

I think Viking and Voyager are almost Eagle-like in size - so I dont think that's them to be honest. There are a number of smaller craters en-route in the Argo scale

Doug

Do you think Viking and Voyager haven't been resolved yet? I've attached a picture showing what I think the pancam image shows. I'm assuming the picture was taken at the Sol 410-11 location that Pando marked on his latest map. If the extended features on the horizon are Albert, then it's hard to see what else the two smaller, nearer features could be apart from V and V.

Still, there's a lot of WAG work in this analysis. So I'm not putting any money on it!

It would be exciting IF we actually are that close. I don't think we are though.

If they ARE V'n'V then we're about 50m away - and have covered hundreds and hundreds of metres in the past 3 odd sols

Doug

I'm with redstone on this, the size and spacing and direction with respect to albert is right. Looking back at previous images they were visible on 408 and 407(barely) It appears that oppy covered 20% of the distance toward them on sol 410.

Also Pancam images seems to magnify things more than navcam

Right.

Here's the navcam image from the same location looking towards Albert.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu:16080/mars/opp...MGP0703L0M1.JPG

Pretty hard to spot V and V.

Judging from the size of albert in the pancam images (424 pixels vs 371 pixels) Opportunity appears to be past Pandos predicted location. Possible record drive?

If Oppy had a 15-meter high camera mast, this is what it would probably see from estimated current position. Looks like the craters in the image Redstone posted are likely the twin craters Viking and Voyager.

So they really must have driven a heck of a long way over the weekend!

Thinking again about the great fortune we had in Oppy landing where it did. Can you imagine if they had landed here, and had to wait weeks/months for the MGS to find out where they were? Which direction would you have headed from the data you had available just from the local shots? Anything would have seemed like a crapshoot. The bumps on the horizon are just about as far away as the 'warranteed' drive capability for the rover. We might have feared we would never see anything but sand. I guess we would have found blueberries but wondered where they came from, unless a random drive happened to take us near a piece of outcrop.

Go, Oppy, go!

Yikes...here's the first sign that the dunes might present a problem for Opportunity:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...Y2P1969L0M1.JPG

Well maybe, but I'm guessing right now this is more a quirk of the autonavigation system. Time will tell... these rovers have done some amazing things. Can you believe little Oppy climbed all the way up to Burns Cliff? I look at the distance shots of Burns Cliff and find that more and more amazing.

She did do a bit of a two-step on that near dune, no?

I'm sure that the Rover drivers/programmers will have to tweak the autonav software. Terrain like this is novel and she needs to get used to it.

--Bill

As Oppy was at Burns Cliff I made a picture from JPL pan that shows how the scenery could look like:
Oppy at Burns Cliff

Would say rather bold.

Could it be that the dunes get brider somewhat?
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...Y2P2391R1M1.JPG

Wow, I love that image! I vote that the next rovers have little 'PR rovers' that ride shotgun and hop off every so often to take glam shots of the main rover doing it's thang.

Nice! Looks pretty real. Now the only thing missing from that is the rover tracks/disturbed soil behind the rover...

That may be do-able. With the deep-sea submersibles, ROVs (Remotely Operated Vehicles) are used where the sub can't go. A mini-Oppy on a tether has possibilities.

--Bill

I guess this is what made Sojourner so 'cute'. We could actually see it driving around with Justin Maki's 'rover movies'.

I so desperately want to see a 1 x 1 x 456 pancam image taken from about 10m away from Spirit - hell - even if it was just a pancam unit on a little platform that could be dropped by the rover, and a cable reeled out. Sadly - it would be of no scientific value and a waste of resources.

Who knows - perhaps one of the MSL's will land in Meridiani and might image Opportunity from afar. MRO might help a bit - a few colour pixels of rover will be nice.

One day - an astronaut - probable one of our children, will walk on mars and see Sojourner and Pathfinder - and perhaps bring Sojourner home.

Doug

Well, there's the Cliff Bot - no relation to the Cheers character.

And those jiggy rover tracks remind me of trying to cross railroad tracks on my motorcycle - maybe there's an angle of lean limit and Oppy is trying not to straddle the dunes.... keeps adjusting automatically. Doesn't look too scary thought....not deep enough yet.

Tman: thanks, your image is wonderful!

Lyford: many thanks, your image...!

....is wonderful? Of which do you speak? That one above is actually a failed cliffbot test, but I think the idea of a little retractable piggy back probe makes sense, especially if you want to investigate the Really Big Strata...

Back to Meridiani:

The more I look at Oppy's tracks, the more I notice how cohesive the ripples are:



Oppy rolls right over the crest at an angle and there is very little displacement, and the tracks are very crisp still. This is not like the sandy area that got Spirit in trouble. Even on the way down the steeper side, it seems to support the rover's weight without crumbling. Perhaps the "desert pavement" effect has really cemented these forms in place.

Perhaps the drivers were swiveling the wheels on purpose to test how supportive the ripples are?