Look at the mild slopes around Womp. 15 degrees perhaps - at best. That escape hatch slope is worse - much worse at the end. Go back to the where you were guys - leave by a way you KNOW works. You will at best waste a week, at worse, break something!

Look at the slippage - they've almost dug a trench with the FL wheel!!!




Doug

I've taken the tabulated TAU data from the analysts notebook just to have a little play around...

http://mer.rlproject.com/mer_tau.gif

Ignore the trend lines - they're essentially useless - but - whilst they both follow the same post-dust-storm down trend ( which, by the end of the 0-90 sol data we have available isnt levelling off ) Spirit has a strange peak at around sol 50-60 (about the time it was approaching Bonneville) - Anyone know of any local phenom. that might have caused something like that. A dust devil might have chucked something up for an afternoon, maybe for a sol or so - but not a 3 or 4 sol increase followed by a 3 or 4 sol decrease.

There's other data within the released sets but I'm not too confident as to how it might be relevant to opacity per-se

http://anserver1.eprsl.wustl.edu/anteam/mera/mera.htm

CC'd to Alex's Plan.Sci. YG.

Doug

30cm.

That's too close!

I think any member of this place would have been able to tell them "umm - guys - you're going to get > 75% slippage around this place, and there's a nice solar-array-height rock that wants a whole piece of MER action right there - are you SURE you want to do this?"

Thanks for clearing up on the RAWID - I wasnt sure - makes me even more worried now really

Hey ho - here's to 150% slippage on the way to Burnsie.

I still say their planned exit point is a total no go They'll back out the way they came, I'm sure of it

Good news though - Oppy's getting almost as much power now as it did at landing. Possibly clumping of the dirt on the solar array, nice tilt angles, and the end of winter.

At this rate - Oppy's got every chance of making it to Victoria - if they're prepared to put their foot down after the heatshield.

Doug

Carefull you're not mistaking the day's that images appear at the exploratorium for days of the mission.

They're not the same. The Exploratorium just whacks them online in the order they come down from mars - which ISNT the order in which they're taken - you can decode the file name, or just trust the JPL site and look at images on a sol-by-sol basis there.

Doug

I wouldnt want my rover in that particular spot ether - I'd have gone much further clear of it than that

They got v. close to the empty next back in Eagle Crater when traversing from the point-and-shoot routine to the first trenching, but that was only a few degrees, not the 20 or 30 they're using here.

Interpolate from these...





And you can see where the rover is now - very close to the brain



Doug

It's the later - these observations will allow them to tighten up the orbital params for Iap. so it should happen in the future

Doug

I dont know what the hell makes them think they'll get out the crater to the left of Burnsie. They couldnt even get out of Eagle on the first try for goodness sake.

I've got £5 that says they end up leaving by the same door they came in

Doug

Yup - deep sleep turns it off totally. Sure - it's in use all the time the rover is actually ON - but that's often less than 8hrs a day.

I think Oppy is going to suffer power-wise once it leaves the crater. It's had an almost permenant 10 -20% tilt toward the sun for the past 6 months wandering around Endurance crater - and it wont have any tilt at all once it's back out on the plains. This will cause it to drop quite a lot of it's WHr/day budget.

Spirit on the other hand - has many months of climbing ahead, and whilst, yup, that's hard work - it's going to remain fairly sun-pointed for the duration.

Doug

No.

A little further than I managed in my recent mosaic - but certainly not as far as Bonne

Doug

Look like they've got to 'the brain' and they intend to have a poke about

From this - http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...49P1311L0M1.JPG looks like they drew a large arc from infront of Ellsemere to the Mars Attacks Brain

Doug

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-249

Engineers on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover team are investigating possible causes and remedies for a problem affecting the steering on Spirit.

The relay for steering actuators on Spirit's right-front and left-rear wheels did not operate as commanded on Oct. 1. Each of the front and rear wheels on the rover has a steering actuator, or motor, that adjusts the direction in which the wheels are headed independently from the motor that makes the wheels roll. When the actuators are not in use, electric relays are closed and the motor acts as a brake to prevent unintended changes in direction.



Doug

Dont be so sure - they're taking lots of what I would classify as planning imagery for an exit route

Give them a week.

Doug

And here it is 18 months ago


http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=19695



http://mediaarchive.ksc.nasa.gov/detail.cfm?mediaid=19690

Low and behold - the joys of raw imagery...



No comparison. This is SUCH good stuff to play with !!!

Doug

I'm poking around old threads while I work on new raw imagery of old images

This one just made me laugh

240 sols?

249 and 269 not out

And looking good for the triple century, if not the full earth year

Doug

Yeah - I did some searches that didnt quite work out as I expected - I just thumbed thru the notebook instead. I'm using .RAD's at the moment ( non linearized ) - as I prefer them for panorama stitching using PTGui. The linearized ones stitched well in photshop if you have just a few frames though

Doug

To give you an idea of what benefit the proper release of imagery from the PDS offers....


Best I could do using JPL raw JPG's


Proper PDS raw images ( not stitched properly yet ! )

The difference is just SO good!

Doug

I cant imagine where they could exit apart from the western edge where they 'sampled' the inside of the crater - and then drove down into it.

I hope they dont make as much of a mess of this as they did of exiting Eagle crater

Doug

My image at http://mer.rlproject.com/end_vic_4m.jpg has been updated to include any and all MOC imagery I can find.

This covers an area of 2.6 x 7.3 km

Doug

They're basically heading up the ridge toward Husband Hill. They've not made a lot of progress though - infact, as I read it -

Doing science
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...1121L0M1-BR.JPG

Backed up a bit
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...1212L0M1-BR.JPG

Turned left a bit
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...41P1201L0M1.JPG

Drove forward a bit
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...45P1212L0M1.JPG

Then forward a bit more

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/fo...45P1212L0M1.JPG




Doug

How did you find that little bastard I've been clicking and clicking and clicking!!!

I even shrank my machine to 800 x 600 so I'd have more chance of clicking each and every pixel

Nice find - I can now do a proper job on the route map!!

Doug

From what I've read - the Haemetite conc. drops off towards the ethched terrain - so no more blueberries

Doug

Arr - you see - I'm telepathetic or something.

That - or I figured we were due the next MOC batch which would include the weeks post landing I thought we'd have to wait till October though

Thing is - I'm fairly sure that if they take that picture again - we'll see tracks all the way down to the hills And we'll see the mess it made about 40 metres infront of clovis on engineering flats

Of course - no images of the Endurance area taken after Oppy left Eagle crater - so no tracks there - but going on the fairly dark soil, I think it's more unlikely that we'll see them.


Doug

Yup - I was looking at the new releases yesterday - that first CProto image gives me, what, 3 more km to the south - so quite a bit of the way. - And you can see that theres a dark 'point' in the etched material pointing up in the first image - and it's also at the top of the second image. Also - a pair of eagle sized craters match up well as well.

My Victoria route map's getting upgraded to 1.5m res


So yes - I'd say that IS victoria at the end of it - and OH MY - what a hell of a messy bugger it looks like

Makes Oppy's Hole ( Endurance Crater ) look like a small puddle




Doug

Holy CRAP!!!
http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/09/27/index.html

Doug