I wonder what the fuel budget is to keep Rosetta in view of Philae?
The comet must have a pretty wonky gravity field...

Since writing above, via the live blog, the constraints on Rosetta have been explained. A big consideration is protecting Rosetta from the expelled gas and debris from the comet....

Nice icy dirtball!

The ice screws may hold it for now, but maybe not whne the comet gets more active.

There are also screws, did they deploy?

While we wait for the dune traverse, I was wondering if the proposed route up Mt. Sharp is visible at all and could be noted on a photo from near the current position of the rover? Do so? Much appreciated...

After the first briefing, I'm left with one question that this group could anwer...
Any young impact craters on proposed path of Curiosity?

So the layering-like texture we are seeing is actually wind erosion, not layering? Like micro-yardangs?

Martian Excalibur

It seems to me that there often seems to be a small area of dunes atop hills or crater edges, like at Victoria and the Columbia Hills and now here on the Endeavor rim. The rige of slope must somehow create a local lee vortex that accumualtes a small dune line there...

I presume that Oppy is now purposely parked daily with a north-facing slant?

The wetting/dessication cycle could be one in tens of thousands of years (orbital/precession cycles), and still be effective at creating "active" features in this profoundly ancient landsacpe.

Speculation: If the older buried rock along the rim has a lot of clays, expansion and contraction due to variable moisture content at some depth could generate large-scale cracking -- a periodic wetting and dessication cycle. The rock type boundaries of the rim would entrain the cracks.
Montmorillanite on Mars?

Actually reminds me of "Cowboys and Aliens", except maybe WE are the Aliens....?

Now THAT is an interesting rock. Glenelg is overwhelmingly fascinating....

"Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Finds Thrill of Newberries on Matijevic Hill"

...a nice convoluted rock and roll pun....

Just adding my congratulations to the long list. Having been with Bob Sharp in the field and seeing how he did his geology, he deserves the honor of the mountain name, even if informal.

In keeping with the current discussion...

EGD,
I'll see your "phhhhtttt!" and raise you a "BWHAHAHAHA!"

It is the scar made by Martians doing a wheelie in their ground transport unicycles, after laughing at the primitive Earth contraptions showing up...

Well, I think that the "dagger" will turn out to be a very old filled slump crack in the rim. If the Endeavor crater was formed amidst the process that was depositing the Meridiani sediment, the details of the "dagger" fill could be instructive, since they would be kind of a snapshot of the time. (Since the "dagger" extends into the Meridiani sediment a ways, it is younger than the rim, but probably older than the end of the Merdidiani deposition.)

This "edge", the contact between the Meridiani deposits and the Endeavor rim deposits, is actually one of the most interesting possible things to look at. How much Opportunity's remaining instrumentation can glean is a "good topic of discussion", but this contact could tell us a lot about an era or two of Marian history....

Those beds could be actually almost-overturned --A folded over flap of layers. I'm not sure we have been able to see which way is up in the strata yet...

The possibility exists that the notch is just a rim slump crack filled in (long ago) by sediment.

(or the scar from an errant laser blast in a long-ago interstellar conflict...)

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Looking at that orbital data, I would have to wonder if that is pretty much the closest to a constant-speed, constant-radius, circular orbit Dawn can manage, with Vesta so flattened and asymmetric.

I'm sure the little variations are yielding a picture of the source mass distribution. I can't devolve the gravity figure from the orbit data, doing the math in my head, unless I've had at least 2 beers, and it IS a weeknight. Maybe someone else can help...

Is there enough control in the arm and enough brush left to sweep out the grind debris? I remember that the brush bristles were a bit "cattywumpus".

This picture is starting to show some very fine surface detail and texture. I can see why the science pros are tossing out some of their early hypotheses. There is more than enough weird stuff not like anything else seen to make me want to shut up theorizing until I've had a closer look.
Some of the topics for thought on the shaping of Vesta...
Extreme seismic phenomenon from South Pole impact. Contributor to Equatorial grooves? To smaller terrain shapes?
Extreme-but-transient electromagnetic phenomenon. (Impact, CME?)
Large structurally detailed albedo features relatively independent of surface terrain. Impacts of globs of stuff? Exposed dike/craton forms?
Ring collapse onto wobbly Vesta? Unlikely, with many ridge-groove areas non-great-circle. But if the impact sent out heavily-"rayed" debris, could it produce the right terrain on fast-rotating Vesta?

So many questions. More than before Dawn arrived...

This is actually a very interesting picture, with the sloped layers in the soft bedrock and the two distinct size distributions of "blueberries". Oppy (I want to say "we") was descending gently towards Cape York, but still a ways away. How do these layers orient?