Oppy on the rocks... ain't no big surprise...

I wonder if they chose this route to try out some of the new automatic driving software on more challenging terrain?

Or if they have some science targets in mind?

Either way, this will provide a great opportunity (!) to try and correlate with predicted models as they drive over increasingly difficult terrain. (Are the drivers using this to test out their terrain models?)

-Mike

Sounds unlikely to me, the software can be easily tested on earth using simulations or backup hardware, no use to do the testing on Mars. Also, which ever route they select, there will always be challenging terrain ahead so not much use to run as fast as possible towards the highest dunes.



Sounds more likely to me, bedrock is a lot more interesting then sand and there might be other reasons. Looking at the HiRISE images I don't believe so much in the 'highway' story, there are some open stretches with bedrock but further on the 'wavelength' of the dunes gets less and there are a lot of cross-dunes, to me this doesn't look like terrain where you can make a lot of speed. But probably the real drivers have more information and certainly far more experience.

What worries me is the risk of loosing a wheel, this isn't the sort of terrain to drive through with only 5 wheels I should think... Why steer yourself into this maze if there is nice flat ground close by? But there is more on heaven and earth then thou hast dreamed of..



Or ours?

Sol 1695 navcam and pancam set

I hope not too soon

We studied this kind of bedrock literally a thousand times by now (like the long stop at Olympia etc.)

If I understood the new rover strategy correctly, then now is the time to reverse the priorities from rock studies to driving for a while ...

and spare the science for the important cases when/if we find something *really* new ...

Don't mention "science targets" we're on the road again...

An anaglyph of Oppy's current locations from HiRise imagery, looking to the south, shown at a slightly oblique angle. The resolution is full transversely (at the bottom) and ~65 % longitudinally. Note that the 'real' depth in the anaglyph is relative to the (image) surface, so there's no visual depth in the seemingly oblique perspective which is just a simple visualization tehcnique.

The beginning of the drift-free highway about 400 m south from Oppy is just visible near the upper right corner.

Some tidbits from the monthly status report @ TPS:
(thanks Bobby for the heads up)

Last weekend, we did a 216-meter drive that fell short of our all-time record by just 4 meters," offered Squyres.

Both Spirit and Opportunity are downlinking data every day to free up flash memory space in preparation for solar conjunction ... The solar conjunction begins at the end of November, so the team has charged the rovers with getting all recent images and science observations home so there will be plenty of room to store the data collected during the solar conjunction.

The plan is to head southwest “to intersect some terrain that has a fair amount of pavement-like outcrop on it,” Squyres said. Expounded Matijevic: "This area [which has not yet been named] is about a kilometer or kilometer and a half south of Victoria and we're moving pretty well along the rim of the crater down towards that outcrop." From that point, said Squyres, "we'll just follow the yellow brick road to the south."

... "We've been keeping our eyes open and every day we look around for a cobble to look at," Squyres said. The team would like to find one on which the rover can place its instrument deployment device (IDD) during solar conjunction, he noted.

We've had to go a little bit out of our way with Opportunity, but we have generally been traversing fairly well," said Matijevic. Even so, he added, "the path we sort of picked to the new crater goes around some of these obstacles, the purgatoids, and probably means we'll be driving more like a total of 18 kilometers to get to the edge of Endeavour."

Edited: During the final sols of September, Opportunity crossed the 12-kilometer (7.5-mile) milestone ...

... and already crossed the 13km milestone too (sol 1695, if I'm not wrong).

[ "we'll be driving more like a total of 18 kilometers to get to the edge of Endeavour."]

That sounds like a long way. But Oppy did 216 meters in one day. A 180 meter drive in a single day puts us 1% of the way there. We only need 100 of those 180 meter drives to get there!

A little reminder : she was garenty for 600m during her whole life

Has done 13k, asking for another 18k, so a total ask of 31km

Which would mean she is getting closer to the all-time record set by the Soviet Lunokhod 2, which travelled 37 km (on the moon). Never thought that the MER's would get anywhere near that distance, there is a big difference in how both machines were run (reflecting the difference in distance earth-moon and earth-mars) and the Lunokhods were moving a lot faster.

Some older images came down. Here's my attempt at the Sol 1691-1692 Navcam QuickTime VR (2.3 MB). I've adjusted this one so you can zoom way out; pan all the way down for a pseudo-polar. And it starts out looking south.

Wow, that's nearly perfect. Thanks Michael!

Tap, tap. Is this thing on? Well, it seems that for the time being I can post, with some restrictions, to UMSF!

--

These subframe RHAZ were taken to monitor the path taken during the autonav portion of the drive. Autonav is pretty CPU intensive and it depends on how wide is the area analyzed in front of the rover. If we use only a single NAVCAM frame we can only drive straight ahead. In this configuration autonav will only stop the rover in case the road straight ahead is blocked.

As you are aware, the stuck RF wheel makes our "straight ahead" driving drift to the left. So from time to time the rover needs to correct the heading but in order to do so we need to use ore than one NAVCAM frame, which makes it a much slower driving. We are experimenting with some techniques to reduce the wider field of view autonav to a minimum and therefore make as much progress as possible given the alloted time for driving.

Paolo