Did Oppy just drive 283 meters in two drives ?

Give or take a few meters, depending on if we are talking about net distance or "odometer", but the answer is basically YES!!!!


Now, wait a minute!

That means we have already crossed the 12km mark!!!

Only 11.717 to go!

Cool to know that if Oppy kept this average (141.5) everysol she would arrive Endeavour in 82 sols!
I'm deliberately not taking into account that we're not driving in a straight path towards the crater...but, optimist as I am I see the 2 year drive as a very conservative timeline...

I tried to correct the penultimate rhaz. Here it is.

Paolo

It took 5 sols to cover that distance. Not two. Two drives - but five sols.

And this is just about the best driving terrain we'll ever have, and we wont have it for long ( at this pace ).

A fast couple of months, then it's going to be painfull.

I'm not moaning but:
Do you know why it took 5 days?
Restricted sols can explain 3 days instead of 2 ,and isn't MRO started relaying data from MERs?
Can there be a "restricted sol" with 2 orbiters relaying data?
Anyway.....these last 2 drives were just great.

The file with "25cm" in the filename is at the full resolution of the HiRISE mosaic. The Navcam overhead is rendered at 1cm/pixel for the planning tool, but unless folks can open something like Jpeg 2000 format, putting a 1cm/pixel zoom of the map on the rover website would be difficult. Easy to produce, though.

-Tim.

I averaged the distance we covered between the heatshield and Purgatory, and came up with something like 30m/day, which includes weekends and sols we stayed for science purposes. Between Purgatory and Beagle Crater, our average slowed to less than 15m/day.

But things are different now. We have this awesome HiRISE coverage (which, in a few days will be complete all the way past Endeavor's west rim) to help us plan our route through, or around the "purgatoids" south of Victoria. After about 3-5km of slogging through fields of purgatoids, the ripples drop off in size dramatically (and we go down a broad 60 meter slope), and so far as I can tell at this point, the surface should look more like the plains around Endurance than the ripple fields we've been dealing with around the Victoria annulus.

-Tim.

MRO isn't doing MER relay at the moment as I understand it.

Restricted sols are not a symptom of relay schedules however. Odyssey will usually get a good pass in most days at about 4pm, MRO would get one (if used ) at about 3pm local.

The restriction is a symptom of rover-night and pasadena-day being out of sync. i.e. you have to start planning for Sol N+1 before you have the data for Sol N. Sol N's data can only be used for planning Sol N+2

So - as a result, everything sort of takes twice as long as you might expect. Tie that in with the fact that they didn't get post-drive imagery down until the sol AFTER the first drive, then you can see how the days add up.

No, it's going to be wonderful. We have a long term goal again and we should savour each and every day that we are given to share on this journey. There will be days of tension and exhilaration, of confusion and outright boredom. We will see frustration for both the "Why are we stopping to look at this?" and the "Why didn't we stop to look at that?" crowds. I picture Tesheiner hunched over at his computer peering at polar projections and trying to match them up to HiRISE pictures to plot locations. I see anaglyphs from Stu of every rock and ripple we pass, with the occasional poem tossed in to keep things in the proper perspective. Our many route mappers will continue to show Paolo and the other drivers the way, and occasionally there will be instances where they will appear to have followed our advice. The image magicians will poke and prod at the handful of pixels that are the distant rim segments to try and pull details out. There might even be another beacon.

82 days? I'm looking forward to months of free entertainment. It doesn't get any better than this.

Okay...

I've been working on this for a while, time to set it free...

Some of you will like it, some of you will hate it. Fair enough. It's what I feel.


ENDEAVOUR CALLS…

What once was a beguiling, beckoning bowl –
A gargoyle-edged hole carved in the great
Meridiani Plain – is now falling far behind;
A rapidly-thinning line drawn between the high
Cathedral dome of Mars’ pastel-pink sky
And the pebble-spattered, track-trenched
Ground. What we found down there,
On the cliff-shadowed slopes of fair Victoria
Made us stop and stare in wonder:
Rocks sculpted into sheaths of brittle, broken blades
By millennia of dust-drenched wind;
Slanting shafts of sunlight shining
On the sea of sand dunes at its heart;
Book-leaf layers of ancient stone, glowing
Amber and gold as twilight faded to night…
What memories we leave behind..!

But on the flat and far horizon now
A new adventure calls, and if the fates allow,
If an already-weary rover’s battered body
Can somehow find the strength to carry on
For one more stolen year, one sol Opportunity will hear
Us scream and shout out in delight at the impossible sight
Of Endeavour’s Mordor hills looming up before her eyes.
And then, content, we will smile, re-living each heroic mile
Before telling Oppy “That’s far enough. Rest now, little one,
Your work is done.” And then, at last, she’ll sleep
A deep and dreaming sleep, with History as her pillow.
And here on Earth we’ll celebrate a noble rover’s
Journey across the endless dry and rippled sea
of the Great Plain of Meridiani.

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

I love it, Stu.

Tim53, that image is now on my desktop.

The Navcam view on Sol 1666 is iconic. Here is a partial QuickTime VR (1.7 MB).

The Pancams are also great, but I'll let somebody else deal with those...

Yeah, you were not here for Purgatory ripple. The adventure is wonderfull. The journey great, but, some of the footsteps can be very very painfull indeed.

Show of hands for those who enjoyed the stop-over at Purgatory and Olympia......wow - no hands

I see what you're saying - but it's not going to be like a path of joy the entire way.

Doug

Aren't you optimistic that Opportunity's new roving software will really shine and allow for a nearly trouble-free trip? Certainly no Purgatorys will be allowed. Maybe an aborted drive every now and then. One is not crazy to hope for this much, no?

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...23P1818L0M2.JPG

Any idea what the odd feature in the sky (top left) is?