Hi echo and welcome! The party is nearly ready to start and that's good news to see that a newcomer ask about "Apron". Feel free to bring along beers and something to eat, next week will have NO night
Edit : Sorry not answering your question but your basicaly right and you can see Victoria's apron on ynyralmaen picture

Welcome, echo. If I understand your question, Opportunity appears to have crossed from the plains onto Victoria's apron between sols 898 and 907. Images of the boundary are apparent in images from some previous sols and some later sols. You can find labeled route maps in this thread, as you already know. You can go here to find all of the official images that are available from the rover's cameras by sol.

If you want to find other images created by members here, you will need to dig around in the various topics.

In response to others regarding the sub-thread, you people crack me up. I am very amused.

yes this will exactly be the one and only week I've been waiting for the most ever since we left Erebus ... hundreds and hundreds of
Sols we've been only counting ripples and pebbles ... while Victoria lived only in our dreams and imagination ..
She didn't even do us the favor of appearing on the horizon during all but the very latest day of arrival !

And then, sadly, of all the weeks it is this coming week that I'm away from the computer and can probably not follow the great Party

Nevertheless it would be a little consolation, if the arrival date would be exactly the 12. of September

well think of all the fantastic views you'll be able to see when you're back ....ALL AT ONCE!!!

I don't understand you'll be away since you KNEW the arrival date 4 months ahead of time

Thanks much folks, sorry I was away. Yes, I'll look up those dates and explore these fine forums some more. Just saw a new update finally on the the official jpl page and see they want to do some rock analyzing tomorrow, so I'll join you all in waiting patiently as we keep lingering at the doorstep before this grand prize of seeing Victoria crater. Thanks again!

Oops , seems that Oppy and Victoria have been waiting for me to return before starting the party

Welcome back, Nirgal.

As you see, we never know when the action starts. It happened to me this year; I went to my summer vacations thinking ... "gosh, I'll loose all the action 'cause the rover will be arriving VC during my holidays!" and came back when Oppy was just leaving Beagle. Last year was the same with Spirit and the summit.

So, take your seat and enjoy!

That's why I'm taking my next holiday during solar conjunction!

So now that MRO has settled into its orbit, I wonder when the first data transmission from a MER will be relayed? how does this bode for updates? Will the MERs be able to use the extra bandwidth from MRO in order to transmit more data, faster ?

Just curious.

John Cooke

Not really the right thread for it - but

MRO isn't expected to be used for UHF relay until the relay phase of its mission which will be when Phoenix arrives as I understand it.

Doug

The route map, updated to this to-be-celebrated-and-remembered sol 943.



Note: It's still a preliminary estimation; I want to double-check it with the pancam data web mobility info but, if it's correct, today's drive was of 75m or so.

Edit: No mobility info yet, but I did a second attempt using the navcam mosaic from JPL press release instead of my own autostitched panorama and it locates the rover a bit SW of my first attempt.

This post has been edited by Tesheiner: Sep 20 2006, 12:33 PM

This "route map" tread started on feb 11th 2005 and here we are 19 months later and nearly 1900 posts later ready to explore Victoria. Thanks Tesheiner and All to bring us there. We'd still be looking clues inside the elipse without your hard & fine work.

I second that climber. At the beginning of the thread I tried to do some crude maps combined with some guesstimates, but Tesheiner and others have taken this seriously to a much higher level. Many thanks to you and your hard work.

JPL site is very prompt for once and has a Sol 943 pan of Victoria, plus the following postional in formation..

"A drive of about 60 meters (about 200 feet) on the 943rd Martian day of Opportunity's exploration of Mars' Meridiani Planum region (Sept. 18, 2006) brought the NASA rover to within about 50 meters (about 160 feet) of the rim of "Victoria Crater," "

Can I add my thanks to Tesheiner for his wonderful maps on this long voyage...

Kenny