While the Google Earth elevation profile tool is quite useful, you must be careful using it on Mars. The Google Mars elevations are not accurate in areas where elevations change more rapidly than the MOLA shot point coverage does.

Nice job with those identifications, John. Things are definitely getting clearer...

From Maxwell:

The complete colourized navcam view of Endeavour Crater on
Sol 2679.

Jan van Driel

You may be right. I thought Wopmay in Endurance might be that big, but Wopmay was only a meter or so across, though other rocks near it may have been larger. Which makes the boulders near Odyssey all the more interesting, because they appear to be in a location that's more prone to wind-driven erosion than the interior of Endurance.

I have a Question?

I know how important it is for Opportunity to find phyllosilicates at Cape York on Mars but has any rover or any orbiting
Satellite ever found any rare Metals like Gold, Silver etc. I've all ways wondered if Mars does have any rare metals?

I would also like to say Thanks to all the image wizards in UMSF for doing such a Great Job. I love reading all the posts
members put in here. Just a fan watching this amazing time for Opportunity. The flux capacitor on Oppy must be reading
Full right now.

Take Care,
Bobby

As far as I know, the rovers arn't capable of detecting any precious metals like gold or silver. Please correct me if I'm wrong though. APXS can detect elements like aluminium, iron, nickel, sodium, magnesium, titanium, silicon, calcium, chlorine, and some other elements possibly carbon and oxygen I believe.

Single color (L257) image from sol2667 has seen the light of day on Exploratorium.
3 images are from this sequence:




Crater on far wall of Endeavour can still be seen, unlike now.

That's due to the increment on tau on this latest sols, I think.

Where are are going after Cape York ?

I've been confused for a week or two as I was expecting Cape York to be a big hill, it's like a gentle rise really.

I just realised today that that's Endeavour Crater in the distance.



That's exactly what confused me.

The Endeavour central mound looks to me like its a windblown basaltic sand dune like el dorado at spirits site...i'm not seeing any layering there....besides it seems to be too dusty and dangerous for Oppy to drive on it...most likely it will get stuck just as it did at purgatory!

Hmmm, Oppy could be doing good 'steal her thunder' work on that central mound before Curiosity arrives at Gale!

P

I expect we'll be watching Oppy working around the rim for quite some time.
That crater down there is her entire 7.5 year journey laid out in front of us.
That central mound is a long way off and with a lot of ground inbetween.
And please don't even think about talking Iazu.

First job, characterise the geology, lock down the phyllosilicates and then sniff out what else we can find out about Mars' past enivronmental conditions.
That's a prime mission right there.

My opinion (a two cent value!) is that the mound is the same built up sulphate layers that surround Endeavour and cover all of Meridiani that Opportunity has traversed. The reason it is a mound is because wind patterns, influenced by the crater rim, have eroded away more of the material filling the crater near the crater rim, leaving more in the center.

By the way, this GIF has been placed in the LTP reports at our SOWG meetings both Friday and Monday. I forwarded it on to the team Friday morning, and it got everyone's attention.

It is referred to as the "now infamous UMSF .gif"!

-m

With regard to the layering in the central mound and edges of Endeavour, for years (since I first advocated that Oppy head this way and was laughed at for such a crazily ambitious notion), it has made sense to me that many of these features were neatly interpretable as remnant "beaches" and other associated features from an evaporating ice-covered lake which once filled the crater. This may be a bit of a stretch, but it seems reasonable to me that, if the plains were saturated by groundwater (which appears to be the case), then the lower altitude Endeavour ought to be filled with water. What I don't see is flow features, so if this notion is correct, the source of the water would have been entirely groundwater seeping through permeable geology.