My take on the Sol 180 drill:



The original size image can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5151rhkt159d66u/taladrosol180.jpg

I think the plan is to first drill a full depth hole, but not collect the tailings into CHIMRA, then if they consider that test OK and the tailings suitable for entry in CHIMRA, they will perform another series of drilling for collection, but that will be used to clean the drill, its sleeve and the tailings collection chambers inside CHIMRA of any contamination from earth and then the rest of the chambers of the remaining Regolith from the scooped samples taken at Rocknest. Only when they are happy with all that cleaning will they process samples for SAM and or CHEMIN

A Sol 180 example of the subtle MAHLI focus stacking mechanism, using 16 low-res images (size 130%):

Nice GIF Gerald! It's a pity that some of the tailings are still in the hole, or maybe we could have estimated the full depth of the hole using this method?

One could calculate the dpeth by the position of the shadow and the local solar time.

Wow. You having a bad day?

It's hard to take images near dawn and sunset because of thermal and Chemcam sun-pointing constraints. The ops people have been very conservative about focus, exposure, and data volume and that's led to fewer sequences that take longer than I was expecting.

That said, I think we've done pretty well considering, and your criticism is a bit over the top. I'd have thought that you, if anyone, would appreciate that.

Here's the location of the new drill hole on the mosaic posted earlier by EdTruthan.

Phil

Sol 180 Front Hazcam before/after drill animated stereo gif:

Except, as Paul mentioned, we don't know how deep the tailings are in the hole, so any such estimate would be a lower limit. Another idea would be to estimate the depth of the tailings mound on the rim of the drill hole using MC imagery (when it's down). Then use the stereo imagery or depth map to scale to the (visible) bottom of the hole.

Here's the MH view in stereo. Not perfect because of different shadows between the two frames:

If I may add to the OT, your own mosaics, Ant, prove your words wrong! And your latest 170/176 late afternoon mosaic is perhaps the best yet! The fact that there's a patch shot at different sun angle proves that this is not easy, like shooting panoramas from the Eiffel Tower would be. This is Mars.

Here's a comparison of the hole to the calibration target/penny with both resized to the same scale (assumed hole = 16mm which is just larger than the 5/8-inch drill bit diameter; it could be a bit larger).

Maybe my math is wrong due to scale issues, but could the hole be 0.85 cm. (0.33 inches) deep?
I was using my own DEM to do this calculations.

And here are 3D views (anaglyph/crosseye) of the first hole synthesized from MAHLI depthmap.

From the status report this mini-drill test was to penetrate less than eight-tenths of an inch...

I want to be careful here... Damien, I feel your frustration. Personally I wish that all NASA programs had a deliberate policy of "pretty pictures", not by accident but by design. So you'd lose maybe one percent of your science time and go for the most telling, dramatic images you could design - your ideas are a good start. But I'm grateful that the MSL team shares what it does and that some of the participates are here commenting. I'm tremendously grateful that you and the others are doing such great stuff with what is out there.