Check this stereo view out taken with the nav cam on Sol412...looks like Oppy passed right by an interesting rock. I've looked to see if there's any other images of it but couldn't find any. If any of you find it, let me know...thanks.

Looking at the stereo image carefully, I'm wondering if that is, indeed, a rock. It might be a rover wheel track cresting the ridge of one of the small dunes.

-the other Doug

Speaking of rocks, I notice more smallish, angular, darkish rocks in the dune troughs. Has Oppy had the time to look at these with the MI? I've not seen anything, but I've not had the time to look at each image coming online.

--Bill

Looks just like the fore-shortening of looking at a track over a crest.

Doug

Apparently the short term mission goals continue to be in a state of flux. As I recall, the plan leaving the heat shield was to cover ground and examine unusual plains rocks along the way. The concentrations of interdunal debris appeared interesting to me, too. Could it be that this stuff is not all that interesting to the remote sensing instruments, and not worthy of a pause? I thought it was worth a shot or two.

I can see sense in not stopping to look at every pebble along the way, but these interdunal deposits are dark, angular and look different enough to warrant a quick peek. IMO, but I'm not in the left seat...

"It's five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life
and new civilizations- to boldly go where no one has gone before...", in a manner of speaking.

--Bill

I think they want to get to, or near to Viking for the weekend, at which point some IDD work and some major auto-nav downlinking can take place

Doug

They changed the flight software to use navcam imaging in help of autonavigation in the first or second software update. This additional imaging would presumably take a lot of memory in the rover and Pando has confirmed the memory use.

But I don't see why they would need to downlink this data, unless there was something going wrong in the autonavigation. There hasn't been any of such images in the published raws as far as I see (movement within endurance was almost surely all commanded movement), only some front hazcam sequences after the FSW update.

Oppy has travelled close to 1.5km within last two weeks, so the flash memory would presumably be filled to its brim, if in fact they haven't been cleaning it along the way. It was suggested on this board that they couldn't be doing this sort of travelling exactly because of the memory usage of autonavigation. But Oppy has once again performed feats that apparently no-one thought possible.

It looks as if they are taking a peek.

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P1131L0M1.JPG

Is there a mixture of light and dark sand in this image?
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...00P2956M2M1.JPG

Hey, yeah! The sand in the sun is a *lot* lighter than the sand in the shade...

Seriously, yes, I think there are some noticeably lighter grains in the sand here. Looking at the high-res orbital imagery, we should expect to see an increasing population of lighter-toned sand, preferentially distributed along what appear to be the leeward sides and bases of dune formations. A lot of the "etched" terrain detail appears to be made up of lighter-colored soils displayed preferentially along leeward dune sides as you get close to stretches of true evaporite outcrop. (Whether the lighter dust is displayed via depositional or excavative processes is hard to say, of course.)

I would think that the regolith in the area we're approaching (that looks considerably lighter in the orbital imagery) is of different composition than what we've seen thus far. Maybe it contains more evaporite erosion products than the soils on the flatter plains to the north? And a smaller proportion of concretions and concretion erosion products? That could point to either different erosion patterns (because of the relief from the large, old degraded crater cluster that includes Albert) or a change in concretion production from north to south.

Either way, it's just *fantastic* that Oppy is capable of driving several kilometers from its landing site in order to characterize such differences over distance. Brings tears to my eyes, I'm smiling so hard...

-the other Doug

My suspicion is that Navcam imaging is fed into a local simulator to refine the autonav software.


-Bill