Here's the L2 panorama from sol 3044.

A drive sol on 3049. If this is another 100m+er they'll put themselves about halfway down Cape York.

Now that Oppy is rolling again, she's getting close to 35km total odometry. That's 95% of the current 37km record for the longest distance of surface travel of any extra-terrestrial vehicle, set by the Russian rover Lunokhod 2 in 1973.

This quick sketch (cropped from a NASA Geological Map) shows that Oppy will reach 36km around Nobby's Head, and set a new record somewhere near the base of Solander Point.

Although Oppy has just raced over 100m/sol, putting the record in theory within 20 sols, there's bound to be interesting targets along the way. An average of 25m/sol means the record will be broken on sol 3130. Anyone else care to hazard a guess?

By the way, I do hope that breaking this record is on the list of remaining targets for Oppy to achieve. She richly deserves to hold this distance record, and it throws the gauntlet down to Curiosity just as her own wheels start to roll.

Thank you Antonb. For the one that looks for more infos, see in "Statistics thread (post #223)": http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...3705&st=210

In achieving the stated science goal of studying Cape Tribulation, Opportunity will surpass 40km.

"...the planned exploration route goes south along the rim fragment "Solander Point," to "Cape Tribulation," where clay minerals have been detected."


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/mult...y/pia13708.html

That's excellent, many thanks, I hadn't seen that.

(BTW, I apologise for my faux pas on guessing, which I've been made aware of. It won't happen again.)

Remember that there potentially are clays not far away here on CY, which are our primary goal. If we found something, you can bet we'd spend a long time studying them. So it's extremely hard to predict when we'd hit the distance record.

40m, according to the "telemetry". Can't verify that with the navcams because they look "underexposed" (JPEG stretching thing) and are of no use.

I though they would stop to have a look at the rock (meteorite?) or the vein but that was not the case. However, it looks like there are some pancam shots on the downlink queue: Muruntau (the vein), Goldstrike (the rock) and a color mosaic of Shoemaker Ridge.

The odometry for B 3049 is about 40.8 meters. The drive was intended to be longer but I think we failed the second slip check because the terrain is so featureless that VO did not have anything to latch on and there are no rover tracks left because the soil is so hard. It doesn't look to me that glare in the NAVCAM was a problem (no glare in the VO Navcam thumbnails).

Paolo

Oh, I was refering to the "post-drive" navcam mosaic images not the ones used for VO. They look too dark, at least the public JPEGs, to register the mosaic with the map background and "refine" the current position.

Wow, those tracks sure are hard to see:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol3049
Made even harder by low sun (conspiring with tilt of surface here), perhaps.

Yes, the post drive NAVCAM are really dark because the SUN is shining into the field of view. What I meant to say is that the VO failure should not be attributed to glare. Sorry I was in a hurry to go and see the excitement of the first drive on the other side of the planet. ;-)

Paolo

Forgive me if this has already been posted (I did a quick search but can't seem to track down the specific posts), but I have a question about the glare. Has there been any publications or information NASA has published about the effects of glare on the visual odometry for Opportunity or Spirit? Has this been much of an issue on Mars for MER visodom? I have an understanding why glare affects feature tracking, I'm more interested in how it has affected Oppy or Spirit specifically. I'm in the process of writing a research proposal and this information would be very valuable. Even if it's just something qualitative to get the wheels turning, no pun intended Thanks.

Rob

I have never seen any VO image that was affected by glare from either rover. And tosol VO failure is not due to glare either. Typically we point the cameras down at about 30 deg below the horizon to
have a good view of the tracks. With such a low elevation angle it is difficult to have glare. Even Autonav pointing is pretty low as well. Here, as I was saying earlier, there were no features to track (remember the on-board processing uses 256x256 pixel images) and there were no track markings on the ground. Even if we had pointed teh NAVCAMs straight down it would have been likely that VO would have failed.

The glare in the post-drive NAVCAMs is mostly due to the dust deposition on the lens. Post drive NAVs are usually taken at -17 deg elevation and in early afternoon. Leave a digital camera for 8+ years in the desert, lens cap off, then try to take a picture late in the afternoon while pointing the camera at the horizon to the West. Assuming the shutter release still works after 8 years, that is.

One of the optical engineers (Reg Wilson) published a paper on the effects of dust deposits on the lens and CCD sensor. I don't have a reference, but if you look up Reg Wilson on the JPL web site very likely he has that paper listed.

Paolo