I'm interested in knowing the elevation we are at here. It's difficult to get actual figures. Larry Crumpler's excellent contour maps have no numbers on them (or am I wrong?). We were quite high around Concepcion crater. How high are we now relative to that point? It seems to me we descended a long way before climbing this hill.

Emily did a blog entry on MOLA tracks back in August 2010 and Conception is recorded as having an elevation of -1372m relative to Mars datum. Cape Tribulation has an elevation of -1380m so at the top of the mound near Conception Opportunity was a smidgeon higher than she is now. But relative to the approach to Cape Tribulation Opportunity climbed around 135 metres. Spirit climbed around 107 metres above the landing site but only some 82 metres above the base of Husband Hill.

Thanks serpens, that's very helpful for making sense of what we see on the far horizon. I was surprised to find the opposite stated in A.J.S. Rayl's article. (I know - a bit of a nitpick as there's only a few metres involved.)

I imagine this is the highest elevation she'll ever drive to.

Unless of course they manage to get down to the northern rim of Iazu.

A marathon is all very well, but achieving 100X the mission success drive goal would be something else!

Larry Crumpler's field report of 12 December had the summit as -1380. But his latest has it marked as -1390. As you say only a few metres, and either a typo or it is possible that in the first instance the elevation against Cape Tribulation actually referred to the elevation of the rover at that time, below the peak.

If -1380 was the rover elevation, not the summit, in Crumpler's previous post then maybe the summit is at -1370, not -1390 (easy to go 10m the wrong way when counting backwards). That would make Rayl's statement correct, by a margin of 2m! It's silly really but now I've started to query it I would like to find out for sure.

Another segment, another screenshot preview. This is the false color view.

Gasp!
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...2M1.JPG?sol3900
No Phil-o-vision required!

Wowsers! Finally I'm superfluous and can go back to my real love, knitting.

Very faintly visible above the ejecta of Iazu (right of centre) is a more distant ridge. It must be part of the rim of the un-named crater south of Iazu.

Phil

Good spot Phil. (I was looking at that very same area and couldn't figure it out.) Although these images will undoubtedly contribute to the complete panorama they also look like drive direction shots so presumably someone is already planning the next move.

While we're still on the top can I reiterate an earlier question: What is the elevation of this summit relative to Mars datum? Is it -1370, -1380 or -1390 metres . . or something else? Recent blog posts by Larry Crumpler and A.J.S. Rayl seem to give conflicting information. Somebody here must know definitively.

sol3900 pan segment anaglyph
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Remember that the MOLA samples are quite sparse. Emily's post shows that there are only a few samples very close to Oppy's route. (See also this post.) So we can't be very sure what the highest elevation we reached was. Given the uncertainty about our current elevation, I think we can only say that we're within 20 m or so of our highest point.

From this official DTM elevation map you can only crudely read our elevation, but you might be able to get something more quantitative from some of the other images there.

Pgrindrod did some elevation maps a while back; this one gives a good overall view of how we dropped from Victoria and then climbed back up.

Just to be absolutely sure I emailed Larry Crumpler and he confirmed that -1380 figure for the summit.

Thanks a lot ngunn.
Please, tell me if I'm wrong, but I recorded that the altitude of Opportunity's landing site is -1387m.
It means that with the -1380m figure we are now just sitting slightly above the landing site, knowing that we have travelled down a slope to reach Endeavour crater...

A local contour map from the HiRISE DTM fredk linked to. Values look good to me!

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And a context map too.

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Here's another PanCam view of the distant hill in a somewhat South-West direction. This time with 2x Phil-o-vision:
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Yes and the latest NAVCAM of your hill (dead centre here) shows another smaller but clearer feature about 15 degrees farther to the right plus a possible faint hint of the Miyamoto rim extending between the two.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...GKP0704L0M1.JPG

And thanks pgrindrod for those excellent, very readable contour maps. They're exactly what we need and I'm delighted you're still with us on this forum.

A Request: Can we please have some 'mystery men' stationed along the rim southward?

Here is a great boon for distant horizon watchers. Larry Crumpler's latest field report for 15th Jan includes a navcam panorama with an azimuth scale. The central image in the panorama is the one I linked to two posts up. This should nail the IDs of the horizon features.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j....83829542,d.d24

EDIT: Apologies for the messy link. Maybe someone can replace it with a better one?

My first rough estimates for the azimuths: charborob's hill 197, possible Miyamoto rim 205, smaller closer (around 32km) hill 210. James Canvin will tell us whether this makes any sense I'm sure.

The Navcam view on Sol 3900.

Jan van Driel

Click to view attachment

and the view on Sol 3902.

Jan van Driel

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Thanks a lot jvandriel The view is one of the most beautiful ever seen on Mars !
I'd love so much roving for miles, and miles and miles on the Endeavour crater rim crest...

The Summit of Cape Tribulation!



Gigapan:
http://www.gigapan.com/gigapans/167859

Thank you James, just ... WOW!

Thank you so much James : what a nice work !

James, your work is incredible! Thank you for sharing your skills!

OMG!

I am glad I have lived to see a view like this from Mars.

Thank you, James.

James, fantastic work. I assume this is 2/3 of a 360 degree view? Or is this the essentially complete pan?

I think that's got to be the whole pan, since we're not using flash at the moment so whatever's down now is all we're getting. The latest update says "The project plans to implement the masking after an independent review is held later this week."

But wow, what a view!

Thank you everyone for the comments on it.

On Sol 3902 we drove about 20 meters, so I took it at that point the pan was done so I then wrapped it up. The latest update also says that it was going to be a 360, so for what ever reason I'm assuming they terminated it early. My guess is a mix of ants in their pants to drive and get a better view of Marithon Valley and the preparation for masking off the flash. I was secretly hoping for a 360 pan with the possibility of a rover deck pan. But we can't always get what we want I guess....it's a wonderful view regardless.

While driving on the crest Oppy will be still high above the plains : they can image the missing horizon with PanCam L2/L5/L7, so that we can have a 360° pan for the far features...

Boy did I bite the dust! It had not occurred to me that the image of the RAT was part of the summit pan.I was looking for that missing pointing.... http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia19109

Just when we're discussing elevations, the latest traverse map includes an excellent elevation contour overlay! (And gives the summit height to the mm: -1379.857 m! )

Great map! Here are a couple of Navcam horizon sections from sol 3909 - with a considerable vertical stretch - st show the distant features. I think the sky is clearing a bit, but there's a long way to go.

Phil

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Thanks fredk for the link to the map, and thanks to the professionals who produced it and made it available. It's exactly what we need. Phil - can you provide a context (or azimuths) for those horizon views? I've been looking hard at one part of the the horizon but I can't locate it in your images.

Finally, a pancam view in the right direction . . I think that's Miyamoto on the left, big and very faint with a smaller hill in front of it.
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...BXP2351R1M1.JPG

Phil's stretched images reminded me of something. While Opportunity is near its current "mountaintop" location in dusty conditions, is it possible that at sundown it could image the mountain-shadow phenomenon that visitors to the top of Mauna Loa often can see?
http://darkerview.com/wordpress/?p=8766
The physics being the same on both worlds, I suspect that it could, since the "point" is more of a trick of perspective and viewpoint than of the steepness of the slopes. But perhaps the altitude is not enough to obtain that perspective.

I've had a crude go at tweaking brightness and contrast to bring out the outline of Miyamoto.

http://pancam.astro.cornell.edu/pancam_ins...847B_P2445.html

Doing anything in color much beyond that time will be hard as fringing between filters will dominate the effect. Navcam might be able to pull something off.

Just curious. Marathon Valley has been a key objective for years and now it's potentially a few days drive away. Are there any other targets of comparable interest within a few months drive? Curious about the next big goal and the overall mission strategy after this.

<edit: sorry this is probably not the place for this discussion, but I am not seeing an obvious way to delete it>

ADMIN: No need to delete, we just moved it from the 'map' thread to here.

Iazu crater has been talked about as a future destination for a while, despite being ridiculously far away (you know, like Endeavour was when we were at Victoria).

So it's interesting to see this at LPSC:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2015/pdf/2548.pdf

Nowhere does it say specifically that it's a future destination. But a co-author is Ray Arvidson. So maybe this will be the next goal. It would be several years away.

Phil

Thanks Phil for that reference. The image on the second page is spectacular.

There is something to be said for driving Opportunity until she fails just to see how far she can go for engineering reasons. I would never bet against her at this point.

Part of my question is really about the value of other parts of Endeavor vs. Marathon Valley. Is there any other destination in Endeavor that has major incremental value after Marathon?

Good question Craigmcg.
Lots of interesting minerals were identified from orbit along the rim of Endeavour's (see the 3 illustrations herebelow).
So... My gess is that, after the study of Marathon Valley (that will take 1 Earth year at least), we will rove again, following the rim of Endeavour Crater...
And this treck will make us going closer and closer to Iazu crater.
When we reach Point Hicks (maybe in 2017, who knows ?) and if the rover is still in good health (with many, many technical "ifs"), then we could start our ~12-km traverse on the Meridfiani plain to reach the northmost point of Iazu ejecta that overlooks the Meridiani plains (see the 3rd ansd 4th illustrations : it looks like the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy, a well-known place by our American, Canadian and British friends who fought the Battle of Normandy in World War II).
Marathon Valley is located midway between Victoria Crater and Iazu's cape. Well... there is still a loooong way to go before reaching Iazu crater !
But we have the big chance on our lives to be witnesses of all those exploration feats : maybe we'll see it up close and as we say, "Where there's life, there's hope" !
Click to view attachment Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
Click to view attachment (... and as a tribute also to those who died to save our freedom)

On the other hand....
https://twitter.com/CaseyDreier/status/562330771935883264

On page PS-43 of the budget released today (173 in the PDF):

Not again!

Picking on the little one is not nice!

Noooo!

Planetary Society's Casey Drier says this is actually routine; happened last year, but was fought over, so not a big worry yet.

If it ends up being a choice between Odyssey and Oppy, well....that's going to be a tough one.

One of these days I have to add a few things to the "Antisolar point" article at wikipedia, because this, along with "Glory" and Brocken spectre and sunbow and everything else that shows up needs some sort of master list.

Another glimpse of Miyamoto from sol 3921:

It's actually visible at the far right of Jan's latest Pancam panorama. (Not everyone's priority I know, but it's a lonely mountain on Mars and somebody has to love it.) I'm hopeful that as we descend towards the next crater target we may at last get a pancam view of Bopolu to 'complete the set' of distant features visible from Cape Tribulation.

I have this vague recollection that Odyssey is expected to run out of fuel sometime in the next couple of years. Does anyone here know for sure?

Same thing for LRO (which is also proposed for termination by September)?

MRO is projected to be funded (and presumably operating) through 2020, so it apparently has a good fuel supply.