The original article is here -> http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c...MNGBNC2S9B1.DTL

"But if it isn't a barrier, then within the next week we're aiming for an old eroded crater called Erebus, and after that a huge crater called Victoria that's 900 kilometers (560 miles) across with 40 meters of exposed sedimentary rock on the walls. There's a target to look for water!"

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The rest of the article was pretty good, but the thought that Victoria is 560 miles across gave me a good giggle.

From the article:

"We were good to go for 90 sols when we landed," said Jacob Matijevic, the mission's team chief for engineering, "but at this stage it looks like 1, 000 sols -- that's our goal. Engineering-wise, we're in terrific shape."

Wow, that's the first time I've heard a member of the MER team mention such a long lifetime as a goal, rather than speculation. Usually they are quick to warn of sudden critical failures that could come at any time. Sol 1000 is basically up until the next southern Martian winter. Spirit could head a long way from the Columbia hills, and Oppy well past Victoria Crater, over such a timeframe.

In a few hundred sols from now, will it become harder to justify extending the mission, if the Rovers have explored enough of their surroundings that the missions start to suffer from diminishing returns?

I think it will becomer harder to justify - but not impossible. I'm sure that given a few more hundred sols they can get even more efficient at driving these things - less chains in the chain of command and so on.

This has always been my main gripe with people pitching for half a dozen MER clones - given a few hundred sols of operation, it's the running of the things that costs a fortune

But - even at $50m/year (which is about right I believe) - they are a bargin and should be used until they die.


Doug

Geez, I sure hope that you 1) don't have people working for you, and 2) don't have that attitude about your workers.
Use them until they die.
Work to death, dammit!!

Be really cool if, when the MSR's make it to Mars, they'd manage to meet up with one of their predecessors. Won't happen of course, as there's no point in examining the same place twice, but still, neat thought. Maybe it'd be funny to see Spirit absolutely covered in dust.

Thanks for the link. Looks like it will be impossible to climb into Victoria if they are right about the slope height. The article said 900meters in diameter. This promises to give us a spectacular panorama. The mini-TES should give some good insights into the mineral contents within the crater if the latest instrument glitches don't get worse. Anyone know what the maximum distance of objects is from which the mini-TES can take measurements? From the course map, Victoria doesn't look too far away, maybe 3-5 weeks of travel. ( I can't wait to hear Squyres on this one - he said a few months ago that he was almost sure they wouldn't get that far!).
Enjoying this forum (newbie).

Hehe. Apparently they have since corrected that error. But, you're right. The rest of the article was pretty good, and had some information I was not previously aware of. Thanks for linkng it.

Perhaps I missed it elsewhere in the forum, but I didn't know:

...that Spirit's RAT was having problems recently;
...that Spirit had found rocks with 60% salt (I can't help but wonder if this is a reference to the salt-rich soil at Paso Robles) That's a LOT of salt;
...that the "etched terrain" appears to be "absolutely flat;"
...that Victoria has 40 meters of exposed stratigraphy in it's walls (I thought we had already determined, in another thread, that the total depth of Victoria was less than that.)

Oh yeah...1000 Sols? It surprises me that one of the engineers would publicly go that far out on a limb with a prediction. (Not that I doubt the possibility.)

Finally, I think it would be harder to justify abandoning functional rovers on a mission that lasted longer than anticipated, especially when they are making discoveries around each new corner. I would recommend that NASA use the same philosophy I follow for my "paid-off" cars. Drive them into the ground before buying new ones.

Oh, I don't know -- if they do, indeed, delay MSL to 2011 and send two of them (as is being discussed), it might make sense to send one to Meridiani Planum. It is pretty well proven that Meridiani's landforms were shaped by standing water, and if the MSL rovers are looking for signs of past life, this would be a pretty good spot to start looking.

Also, Meridiani provides a pretty large stretch of absolutely flat "landing strip" for whatever landing system MSL ends up using. You could do worse than land near the edge of the extremely flat plains at Meridiani and drive off to more interesting-looking targets from there... If they do that, they might well land somewhere that Oppy has scoped out for them, give Oppy a once-over, and then drive off to some of the *really* interesting big craters and ejecta blankets to the south of Oppy's landing ellipse.

Whatever part of Mars they end up targeting for MSL, they're probably going to look at places that have good landing conditions closeby to interesting science targets, so the rovers can land on flat, level, relatively rock-free (if possibly boring) ground and then drive to more interesting spots.

-the other Doug

I agree. All the years of research and planning, and the other expenses of launching and building the things have been invested. The money used to run the things now is a pittance compared to that.
If I were one of the people who helped design and build the rovers, I would be royally pissed to see my good work turned off because they want to save a little bit of money.