The zoom cameras were unable to be used due to time for testing and budget reasons, so the original fixed focus cameras were used.
The Mastcam 100 does show far objects in good detail.

Also to the general public it will look exactly the same...

The main point is though Sandra has nice legs, apparently. Also it's a movie, not a space documentary.

I believe they hope to fly past maybe two KBO's.

Remember Oppy does not travel very fast but she has tons of torque, so she could crunch herself pretty bad.

Why does the JPL article use "yards" ?

So about 1/6 of the way there. A fast pace indeed.

I am slightly surprised how much the wheels were steering left and right. You'd think it would just plough pretty much straight ahead.

Well one thing is known for sure, the EDL hardware worked pretty well this time .

Dust fall never ends on Mars does it......
Also is of note, some of the smaller pebbles have disappeared, blown or fallen off the rover deck ?

They can just image the rover deck to do that.

Remember, MSL is on battery power, the batteries are recharged by the MMRTG, so you can't operate anyway 24/7 with fully charged batteries. Also no driving during the Mars nighttime which of course could be Earths day time, depending on the synchronization of both planets. So sometimes it's "2 days" between drives, e.g.
Also they have a budget to adhere to ( so they can't just have a whole spare team ready to occasionally take over ), and are in this for the long term.

Is that part of the rover swaying in the wind ?

I think I may have equated 'margin' with 'over engineering'.
I still think though the team was staying with the 90/180 day thing, as the costs for a 10 year mission would not have been at the time favorably looked at by the beancounters...... . There was even conjecture at one time one rover would be turned off to save said beans .

JPL engineers admitted the MER's were overengineered and that the 90 day mission time was very likely to be exceeded, barring some unforseen problem. So comparing to the 90 day required time is not really a valid reference point. The main reason Sprit died was it got trapped in sand and could not tilt it's solar panels to the Sun. That of course could have happend on the first drive if fate had meant that to happen.

Actually you referenced slide 32, and it's slide 31, that threw me a bit, lol.

Your going to have to regularly reassure us.....it looks bad to the layman. Of course at least the wheels can be regularly photographed as MSL roves accross this amazing landscape .

It does not scan, it stares to see changes, you can't stare with only 2 wheels.

Unfortuneatly clicking on the "next" for the third image results in an error.

Correct me if I am wrong but the same software is not used for ground ops as was used for EDL, thats why they changed the software after landing.

They did say they are no where near having ran all the scripts they can on Sam and Chemin, so new findings should be expected as time goes by and they gain more experience with the equipment in situ.

MAVEN was always going to serve as a relay, and it's orbit was going to be changed to enable that.

For some folks this will be the first time for a vacation since landing. They can then come back refreshed and ready for work. But its not suck bad work is it ?

This article says all of MSL's mission objectives have been met.

MSL story.

Is the comet still visible from say Florida in 8x40 bino's ?, as I can't see it anymore.
Thanks.