It's cos we've been there sooooo many times before, I think. Images of Endeavour are immediate, real, and - in several ways! - raw. The "water on Mars" story is interesting but still just speculation; they haven't so much found the smoking gun as found a gun, behind a dumpster in the alley. So while I watched the NASA TV media event with genuine interest and excitement, it didn't stop me from going back into my My Pictures/Aug folder and drooling over the latest images of Endeavour.

Buckle up, folks, it's only going to get better.

You're a long-time member - you do realize that sharing amateur-processed images is the original purpose of this place, right?

Jeff7 gets some kind of prize for predicting Endeavour arrival at Sol 2500 back around Sol 950 - he was off by less than 300 sols. But not too big a prize, or everyone will start speculating about our Iazu arrival date and getting banned from the forum.

John

Looks like we have a name for the crater at Spirit Point : Odyssey

perhaps it's understandable

@marsroverdriver Scott Maxwell "Hey, @barbylon, NASA discovered water on Mars again. Can I knock you over with a feather?"

Probably going to be the same when MSL gets to phyllosilicates

"Oh Hey. MSL is investigating Phyllosilicates!!"

"What? Didn't Oppy do that in, like, 2011?"

MER - Been There, Done That

...and we have some new names, for features on the "island" to the south of Cape York... I won't spoil the surprise, you'll have to go look for yourselves...

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-...B_Sol2676_1.jpg

No. Seriously. That's the name they've chosen*.

( * actually for a very good reason, being serious... )

If I read it right, the slope goes down about 10m each 100m or so, quite everywhere around. This is ~10%

For those who have trouble viewing anaglyphs try this trick:

Walk your eyes into slowly, step-by-step, so to speak:

open one only, for a few seconds, then open only the other, again for a few seconds, THEN open both eyes.

If I heard right today, they're going to pull short of the last 150 meters because of the ~30 feet downward still left to Spirit Point, indicated by that map. We can't quite see over the edge to SP -- like the opposite of a false peak when you're hiking.

In any case, two cool things:

1) A lot of non-critical but delicious imagery is sitting on board waiting to be downlinked.
2) A lot of additional delicious goodies will be done over the weekend, sols 2678-2680.

When we "catch up" in the coming weeks, there'll be a lot of great eye candy.

-m

So what is it: up or down?

Come on! Odyssey? Odyssey as in like Odysseus' 10 year long journey home from Troy to...Ithaca? Naa...just connecting stupid dots...

From the maps Stu & eoincampbell posted on their page.
I would say we are dropping now into Endeavor Crater

Of course Spirit's last targets were Odyssey-themed and we're near Spirit Point... but yeah, it is pretty awesome

We are most privileged to live in this era, and be aware of what's happening.

Today is a great day for humanity; Oppy approaches a once-unimaginable goal, and Juno launched for Jupiter.

.