Was wondering if anyone had a chance to look at the route to the west, best guess?

Here is my (wild) guess. Time will tell...

Here is my WAG. The problem is that the North side is a Sea of Dunes and we're going to have to ziggy-zag the way through. Possibly the most hazardous route we've had, but evidently the rover planners think that this is a good enough outcrop.

Map attached, with possible routes.

--Bill


PS: apologies to Tscheiner, I wasn't trying to upstage you with another map; our posts crossed in the mail.

PPS: revised the Erebus map image; didn't like the first version.

Steve Squyres Update: September 26, 2006(?)

--- The decision's made... we're going to go west, counterclockwise around Erebus Crater. ---

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

"Counterclockwise" *phew* for a while I worried they would just browse the eastern side and go on yet another long trek again. So your maps Tesheiner and Bill Harris surely do show where the rover might drive now. Yes I do think those outcrops are interesting enough for a closer investigation. Not that I have any real influence in the matter.

From Space.com
(http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/050928_opportunity_update.html)

(...)
The decision has been made by scientists and engineers operating the robot to go west, counterclockwise around the crater. Erebus is nearly twice the diameter of Endurance Crater, an earlier “pit stop” of Opportunity that produced a bonanza of science data.

“We’re there, for all intents and purposes,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Squyres is principal investigator for the Opportunity and Spirit Mars rover science instruments.

“We can see most of the crater from where we are right now, and we’ve made the decision that we’re going to traverse around it on its western side,” Squyres told SPACE.com. “We’re actually going to start the drive around the crater by going north a little bit…to get onto terrain that’s mostly bedrock…before we swing west.”

Squyres said that as Opportunity makes its way counterclockwise around the crater, the science team and rover drivers are keeping their eyes sharp, looking for a safe place to possibly enter Erebus Crater.

“The goal being to get to a place we’ve named the ‘Mogollon Rim’…on the western side. If we can find a safe place to go in, that’s great... if we can’t, we’ll just continue on to the south,” Squyres added.
(...)

So it looks like we'll be hanging around Erebus until the new year at least - which is cool. I know a lot of folks - myself included - are itching to get to Victoria - but I guess that'll have to wait.

They must be either very optimistic or very pessimistic about ever getting to Victoria, i.e., the decision regarding Erebus doesn't make much difference one way or the other.

Well I don't know about them but I'm verry pessimistic...Winter is comming fast these days...
Victoria is still more than 1 mile away...and there is no "highway" to there...
I would like to belive that Oppy is going to make it in the end but.....that's just me...

update...

It ain't over 'til the rover spontaneously explodes.

The first image is an exaggerated pan of last night's Pancam offering, 1P180830677EFF6200P2383L2M1 and points rightward.

Oppy is still on the SouthShetlands exposure. Erebus is on the left side with the beginning of the Mogollon Rim visible. The "monster dunefield" seen on the MOC maps is next, and the ripple field on the North rim of Erebus is between Oppy and that dunefield. The possible path on the evaporite bedrock is to the right of that ripple field and is not visible. In a Sol or two she'll be positioned to look along the pathway.

BTW, if you want to see the view un-exaggerated, resize this image: 100% horizontal, 20% vertical (5x exagerration, 1/5=20%).

--Bill

PS-- an earlier series of Pancam images, 1P180569210-, was taken on the way to South Shetlands and shows the pathway next to the ripple field. I'll add this second image in case we don't get "new and improved" imagery til next week...

Oppy has joined Spirit with at least 600 sols.

Congrats to the MER team!

Expected EDRs by sequence number and image type:

Sol Seq.Ver ETH ESF EDN EFF ERP Tot Description
--- -------- --- --- --- --- --- ---- -----------
...
600 p2387.06 19 0 0 19 4 42 pancam_front_outcrop_4cx1r_L234567Rall
600 p2388.06 8 0 0 8 2 18 pancam_rear_outcrop_4pos_L7R1
...

The road ahead from ground level. Are we heading for slghtly left of middle? Or going around wider on the path at right?