Well, the farther the current low region extends, the quicker and more dramatic will be the Dropping of the Horizon and the Revelation of Endeavour!

Shhh!


It was posted yesterday (PDT) so it means "today". But his references to driving are actually to drive planning / sequencing so we should probably have it executed during sol 2649 and downlinked friday morning CDT (GMT+2). Easy, isn't it?

one drive in almost 2 weeks

Yes, but don't worry - we'll still be at Cape York before ExoMars launches!

Phil

Two hour drive today, about 120-140m.
http://twitter.com/#!/marsroverdriver

For what it's worth, a slapped-together Approach Crater video. There are more recent images to add, I believe, will do so later if I can find the time. the pictures are from Sol 2594 to 2635 (does not include every shot taken, as some were shot near same location). The distances were measured on GoogleMars, using Tesheiner's most excellent route map.

 ApproachCrater.mov ( 829.21K ) Number of downloads: 423

Same set of images as above, but sped way up for different effect.

 ApproachCraterFast.mov ( 985.42K ) Number of downloads: 547

Very nice, walfy!
And on the last frames I have the impression that the crater disappears a little bit, meaning that it is slightly after the next high point.

A cool movie,walfy!
It seems to me that the crater walls (left and right) of the Approach crater are spreading.

Yup. That's exactly what we should expect for a target three times closer on the last frame than on the first one, isn't it?

So we just still don't see Cape York. So I think, it is just a myth, we will never reach it .. after more than two and a half year we are just before the destination and we we still see nothing ... that's frustrating. Maybe we just turn around and drive somewhere else?

I know, but it's just geography and topography. The Cape will show itself soon enough. I have faith in my little red flag.

While we're all scrutinizing the view to the E-SE which has been getting worse, the view to the NE has opened up pretty dramatically in the last few weeks. Here's a navcam animation of the N rim of Endeavour (with 3x vertical stretch):

You can see that a subtle rise that was blocking our view has moved to the left, giving us a clear view. I don't think we can yet see more than back around Santa Maria, though.

I have a couple of (earthly) experiences where I couldn't see my destination until being almost there. And what happened in both cases was that the view suddenly opened up and the OMFG effect was great.

Exciting? Yes. Frustrating? Definitely not.

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Back to the usual topic (driving, driving, driving), yestersol they managed to drive 140m SE. I will post the map update in a minute.

Ever since Opportunity landed its the apparent flatness that has been one of the sites striking features. And with it being so flat you expect to be able to see for miles and miles, in some locations you can see further, but just a small change in elevation changes the distant horizon dramatically.

According to measurements on Google Mars, Cape York is about 780m in length, after the SOL2649 drive we are about 1400m away from it's closest point, just twice the length of Cape York itself, yet it is still totally invisible Amazing really.