Traversing the Clay-Bearing Unit Along the Base of VRR, Site 73-79, sol 2297-2695, 22 Jan 2019-3 Mar 2020 Options

[PaulH51]

~50 minute drive on sol 2297, unsure of the direction, but this partial pan from the 6 available L-NavCam frames may help narrow down the location. Roughly assembled in MS ICE, no additional image processing.

edit, typo fixed

[PaulH51]

A long-distance RMI mosaic from sol 2298, roughly stitched together in MS ICE, no additional processing.

[fredk]

We're starting to get a stunning view of the south edge of VRR:

[wildespace]

Sol 2297 ChemCam. Some little rocks got displaced by the laser? Or the result of drilling?



*flick GIF)

[Phil Stooke]

Just the laser. As if you can say 'just the laser' about firing a laser on Mars.

Phil

[atomoid]

Great works, keep them coming!
as fredk noted above, the south end of VRR is coming into view and it seems to be smoothing out a bit, made me think of the view into Endeavor just before going down into Perseverance..
fascinating looking at all the super-fine layering these sols..
here's an attempted stereo of sol2298 stitch anaglyph and crosseye

[jccwrt]

My takes on the recent RMI mosaics:

Sol 2295


Sol 2298

[xflare]

Reminiscent of parts of the interior of Endurance and Victoria Craters at Meridiani

[fredk]

Long-baseline stereo views from sols 2298 and 2299. Anaglyph:

And cross-eyed:

[Sean]

Sol 2299 Mastcam Right

DeBayered, repaired, extended sky...


Full width...

[jccwrt]

Hmm, I'd like to see some RMI mosaics of those erosional scarps. Looks like there's a couple good erosional exposures of the contacts there, might be helpful for doing some remote stratigraphy.

[Sean]

Sol 2299 mastcam Right with CG Curiosity for context, scaled using HiRISE reference...

Zoom...


Wide...

[Sean]

Here is a link to the Debayered MR files

Available for 1 week from today.

[charborob]

Sol 2299 Rmastcam panorama:


Thanks Sean, again, for debayering these images.


Sol 2299 Lmastcam post-drive view:


Sol 2300 Lmastcam post-drive:

[charborob]

Sol 2301 RMI mosaic:

[PaulH51]

Some lovely images, thanks all

2300 L-MastCam Weekend Workspace (MS ICE)

[jccwrt]

My take on the VRR RMI mosaic:

[PaulH51]

Soaking up the view after the drive on sol 2302

partial pan

[jvandriel]

Back from Hospital and surgery and now stitching again.

The Navcam L view on Sol 2302.

Jan van Driel

[PaulH51]

Back from Hospital and surgery and now stitching again.

Good to have you back...

[PaulH51]

2302ML (drive direction?) Looking fairly wheel friendly, but maybe not too many contact science opportunities

[Phil Stooke]

I'm glad you are back, Jan, and I hope you are doing well.

Here is your sol 2302 panorama in circular form.

Paul - I think that drive direction mosaic was taken assuming the rover would be at the top of the ridge looking out across the wider landscape. Next time, maybe!

Phil

[elakdawalla]

Ashwin confirmed to me today that they are "definitely on the clays," so I've created a new thread here.

A newly posted LPSC abstract by Valerie Fox et al. details the plans for this phase of the mission. They plan to do a Z-shaped traverse -- first drive northeast along the base of the ridge to look at stratigraphy and reach the lowest-elevation point where there is a strong clay signal from orbit. Then they will turn southwest and climb across the clay-bearing unit vertically, until they get to the Greenheugh Pediment (the plateau made by the inverted channel coming off Mount Sharp). Then they'll turn southeast, poking along the base of the pediment and looking into alcoves.

Here are a couple of maps from Fox et al.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[jccwrt]

Sol 2304 RMI mosaic of Greenheugh Pediment:

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2304.

Jan van Driel

[charborob]

Sol 2304 Lmastcam post-drive:

[elakdawalla]

According to Ashwin, sol 2302 was the day they drove in to the clay-bearing unit.

[Sean]

Sol 2302 panorama from mastcam left & right, debayered & blended with extended sky...

211 Megapixel


Curi context...


Detail...



Mastcam left deBayered frames for 2302

Mastcam right debayered frames for 2302 ( full batch )

Links are active for 7 days

[PaulH51]

Those are lovely Sean
Partial NavCam pan after the short drive on sol 2306, roughly stitched in MS ICE

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2306.

Jan van Driel

[atomoid]

Nice stitches and renderings <charborob and sean>. (if youre like me and want to download them, and find that Flickr's "flic.kr" abbreviated URL scheme resolves to an overlay that doesn't have download menu widgets or even allow right-click download, you can simply append "/sizes" to the resultant URL to force to the 'all sizes' download page).
the scale of Curi in the distance serves to remind me how my eye tends to overestimate the scale of landscape features.
Here are some quick stereo views from select sol2306 navcam sets

[Phil Stooke]

Here are Jan's last two panoramas in circular form, showing progress relative to the small ridge. We just drove down the other side of the ridge and turned left, so I can feel another map coming on.

Phil

Sol 2304:



Sol 2306:

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2309.

Jan van Driel

[Phil Stooke]

Jan's 2309 panorama in circular form. We are well beyond this now and I need to get onto the map.

Phil

[atomoid]

MAHLIs of the rock with the LIBS sweep from sol2309 share an overlap that works for stereo (crosseye/anaglyph):

[PaulH51]

A rather nice looking outcrop, images from sol 2311 by the R-MastCam before the long drive, should look much nicer in colour when debayered, but even in its Bayer format it looked good enough to share here

[charborob]

Here is the debayered image:


And here is the sol 2311 Lmastcam post-drive panorama:

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2311.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

and the view on Sol 2313.

Jan van Driel

[PaulH51]

Sol 2313 L-MastCam post-drive panorama, easy driving conditions ahead

[PaulH51]

Drive on sol 2316. Looks like an opportunity for some contact science, or maybe a another touch and go
Roughly assembled in MAS ICE using some of the post drive L-NavCams

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks! Paul's partial panorama let me find the location for the map, and here is Jan's panorama from sol 2313 in circular form, showing tracks.

Phil

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2316.

Jan van Driel

[Phil Stooke]

Very nice, Jan. Here is a circular projection of your panorama.

Phil

[jccwrt]

Enhanced movie of a dust devil drifting by on Sol 2310. Covers about 2 minutes, with 12 seconds between each frame.

[PaulH51]

I seem to recall an announcement that MRO would be assigned solely to InSight for the initial part of its mission, with other orbiters providing the DSN relay for Curiosity. The most recent image in the MSL JPL image server was acquired on sol 2320, 4 sols ago. Has anyone heard of any communication issues? Also are there any status pages for the Mars orbiters that would provide this sort of detail TIA

[PaulH51]

Sol 2320: Left NavCam post drive partial pan, roughly assembled in MS-ICE. Poorly stitched, but hopefully it will assist in narrowing down the new location

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2320.

Jan van Driel

[Phil Stooke]

Thanks, Jan. I made a circular version of this panorama to show where we are, after taking the liberty of patching the image to show the tracks behind us where they were partly hidden by the rear antenna.

Phil

[PaulH51]

The lack of images after Curiosity's drive on sol 2320 is explained in this release by NASA/JPL which documents a computer reset.
Link

[PaulH51]

Science activities resume in Gale crater, with ten images from sol 2333 returned by Curiosity, here is a rather nice target imaged with ChemCam's RMI

Edit: Added the mast cam context image, scaled using AlgorimancerPG, apologies for the de-bayer colour
Catch the rest of the images here

[PaulH51]

L-MastCam sol 2320 Workspace, assembled in MS ICE (unprocessed)

[PaulH51]

L-MastCam mosaic: Sol 2320 NNE - ENE and ~200 meters from a possible drill site. Stitched in MS ICE, no additional processing.

[PaulH51]

2338 NLA after a drive of ~24.4m ESE (Midnight Planets) roughly assembled in MS ICE no additional processing, may help identify the location

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L panoramic view on Sol 2338.

Jan van Driel

[Phil Stooke]

Jan's nice new panorama in circular format.

Phil

[PaulH51]

Jan's nice new panorama in circular format.

Looking like Curi is MIA again, today is sol 2344

[jvandriel]

The Mastcam L view on Sol 2312.

126 images Debayered and stitched.
Thanks Sean, Debayering took me now 2-3 hours instead of 2-3 days.

Jan van Driel

[djellison]

Update : https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7339

Updated March 12, 2019, 10:40 a.m. PDT (1:40 p.m EDT): Curiosity experienced a computer reset on its Side-A computer on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 (Sol 2,339), that triggered the rover's safe mode. This was the second computer reset in three weeks; both resets were related to the computer's memory.

The mission team decided to switch from the Side-A computer back to the rover's Side-B computer, which it operated on for most of the mission until November of 2018. Side-B recently experienced its own memory issue; the team has since further diagnosed the matter, reformatting the Side-B computer to isolate areas of "bad" memory. As of today, Curiosity is out of safe mode, and the team is configuring the rover for new science operations in the clay unit. Curiosity is expected to return to science operations as early as Wednesday.

[tanjent]

This sounds at least superficially similar to the events that caused Opportunity to shut down her flash memory. Does Curiosity have the same option if these problems continue?

[jvandriel]

The MAHLI view on Sol 2339.

Jan van Driel

[PaulH51]

Midnight Planets is indicating a drive on sol 2347 to Site 75/0000. However the front HazCams appear to indicate the rover remained at the same location.

Edit: Just realised this sequence was likely commanded as they switched to the other computer, so not an aborted drive.

[PaulH51]

My version of 'Fife' using the focus merged versions that were downlinked later:
Stitched and rotated in MS ICE, otherwise unprocessed.

[PaulH51]

Hard to be sure, but there appears (to my ageing eyes) that there could be some cross bedding in this bayer encoded R-MastCam from sol 2339

[PaulH51]

Looks like the MAHLI imaged a DRT site on sol 2349, I think it may be the site brushed back on 2339 before the reset. The MAHLI shows was looks like surface scratches from using the DRT(center of the brushed area). If these are scratches, it could bode well for easier drilling / sampling in this area.

[jccwrt]

Cross-bedding is a possibility there. I remember seeing some crossbeds of similar dip in the rocks coming off VRR so I would not be surprised if they are present in much of the clay unit.

[jvandriel]

The Mastcam L view on Sol 2339.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

and the Mastcam R view on Sol 2339.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

Nice view on Sol 2347.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2352.

Jan van Driel

[jccwrt]

Looking at a couple of posters last night, looks like the Clay-Bearing Unit might be named as "Glen Torridon". Not sure if it's still considered a subunit of the Murray formation, or if it's being split out into a new formation.

[PaulH51]

There seems to be a little activity in a planned DD search using the NavCam early on sol 2353, the brief activity can just be observed in the unprocessed frames, just to the left of center, maybe a gust wind raised some surface dust. The proper processing could reveal more detail

There are also several darker frames in the very large set of bayer encoded L-MastCam sequence on sol 2350, which was the sol they imaged the Deimos transit. Clearly they can not be the sky darkening because of the eclipse so maybe they captured a vortex or vortex's passing close to the rover? The entire sequence has yet to the downlinked, but there are over 100 already down. Sadly I can't create a GIF with so many images, but here are 10 frames assembled into a simple GIF from the beginning of the sequence, where you can observe one of the events. Note I set the blink rate at a quarter of a second

[PaulH51]

Drive direction (unprocessed) L-MastCam, sol 2352: Taking us further North into the clay deposits of Glen Torridon

[Phil Stooke]

Here are two circular projections of Jan's latest panoramas. I will use them to update the map when I can get to it, maybe not for a few days.

Phil

Sol 2347:



Sol 2352:

[fredk]

There are also several darker frames in the very large set of bayer encoded L-MastCam sequence on sol 2350

The darker frames' filenames end in "...C00_DXXX", versus "...K00_DXXX" for the rest, so there must be something different about the exposure or stretching on those.

[PaulH51]

The darker frames' filenames end in "...C00_DXXX", versus "...K00_DXXX" for the rest, so there must be something different about the exposure or stretching on those.

Many thanks for the feedback, I'd not spotted the file name changes. Disappointing, was hoping it was a DD

[PaulH51]

Long distance RMI of an outcrop located North(?) of the rover on sol 2354

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2350.

Jan van Driel

[mcaplinger]

The darker frames' filenames end in "...C00_DXXX", versus "...K00_DXXX" for the rest, so there must be something different about the exposure or stretching on those.

C means losslessly-compressed 8-bit raster image and K means losslessly-compressed 8-bit raster video, so by itself that doesn't say anything about the exposure (see https://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/msl/M...R_RDR_DPSIS.PDF ) but if you don't have the metadata you have no way to know what the exposure times were.

[atomoid]

Long distance RMI of an outcrop located North(?) of the rover on sol 2354

very nice, eons of wind sculpting have given its features a very appealing lens-like texture.
and yep its almost exactly North from here, part of the underexposed outcrop in the upper left of the navcam from sol2352 much better views in the bayered mastcam sol2353 or most recent color mastcam from sol2320

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2354.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

Playing with a few images on a Sunday afternoon.

Sol 2353 Mastcam L view.

Jan van Driel

[jvandriel]

and the complete Mastcam L view on Sol 2353.

Jan van Driel

[atomoid]

early easter egg hunting? finding scattered nice and clear (quartz?) grains and apparent concretions in the MAHLIs from sol2356 and sol2357

[PaulH51]

Looks like this is the L-MastCam drive direction section of what will be a wider mosaic from sol 2357 (MS-ICE / slightly darkened)
The mission update talked about speculation that the lone float rock (left of center) could be a meteorite or possibly or a remnant of a higher, eroded unit, but the next drive will take the rover to the subtle ridges (visible just to the left of the float rock) and image the float rock from there as well as the small butte in the middle of this mosaic.

[PaulH51]

Long distance RMI mosaic of another exposure of the Vera Rubin Ridge, this time looking Northwest of the rover during sol 2357.
I used the 4 enhanced data product frames for this mosaic, a fifth image was not available in that format when I assembled this in MS-ICE, no additional processing except for adding the annotations.

[PaulH51]

Posted this here to keep the signal to noise ratio down on the map thread. I've annotated my guesstimate of where the rover is after its drive on sol 2357 onto a crop of the JPL location map for sol 2354, but that's not the main reason for this post. For fun I'm looking at potential drill / sample sites in the clay unit...
I've circled three possible sites: A, B and C: My favourite at the moment is A, with C running a close second, C looks to have more potential, but it's a little off the published path.

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2357.

Jan van Driel

[fredk]

We had a transient darkening of the sky just after sunset on 2358. All I can think of is a Phobos transit, with centreline just to our north. Very cool. Here's an animation:

[djellison]

All I can think of is a Phobos transit

Well spotted

[Phil Stooke]

And not long ago we had that at InSight as well.

Phil

[serpens]

From Michelle Minitti's mission update 23 March "Finally, Navcam will attempt to capture Phobos, one of Mars's moons, transiting across the Sun in the Martian sky".
It seems their attempt was successful

[djellison]

What my version of it using the raw JPGs looks like. And a whole thread of discussion about it right here : https://twitter.com/doug_ellison/status/1110748122831978496

Kudos to FredK for figuring it out before I'd even seen the images

[fredk]

Nice. Here's yet another version, subtracting the smoothed average of all the frames from each smoothed frame, and adding a multiple of that to each frame:

This is about 8x faster than real time.

This site says this sequence spanned sunset, but I'm not sure how accurate that clock is. The optimal time to see this would be right after sunset - much later and the lower atmosphere wouldn't be illuminated directly by the sun so wouldn't directly experience the shadow.

[djellison]

That site seems to be accurate to within about 15seconds of what I'm seeing on the ground.

First frame took longer to execute as the mast had to slew from stowed up to the pointing, and then iterate the auto-exposure a couple of times.

Second frame was at 18:40:14, and the last at 18:43:13 - time between frames was around 7.5 seconds ( we didn't command a pause - that's just as quick as you can take images with the NavCams with some options turned off to speed things up)

Sunset was 18:40:26, but 'local' sunset behind the back of the Vera Rubin Ridge was probably a little earlier than that.

[Phil Stooke]

Jan's panorama from sol 2357 in circular form. I can't emphasize enough how useful it is to have these panoramas posted like this to help me find locations for my maps. Thanks, Jan!

Phil

[jvandriel]

Special for Phil,

the Navcam L view on Sol 2359.

Jan van Driel

[elakdawalla]

Looking at a couple of posters last night, looks like the Clay-Bearing Unit might be named as "Glen Torridon". Not sure if it's still considered a subunit of the Murray formation, or if it's being split out into a new formation.

I just asked Ashwin about this and got the following clarification: Glen Torridon refers to the geomorphological valley south of the Vera Rubin Ridge. It is more or less coincident with the CRISM clay signature, but not perfectly so. The clay unit doesn't have a name associated with it and won't until they've mapped its extent and figured out how it fits in with the Murray stratigraphy.

[jccwrt]

Thanks! Good to know.

NavCam caught a wind gust on Sol 2357, here is a processed video:




Also I tried my hand at processing and colorizing the eclipse sunset using a template sunset from Gusev Crater (thanks Spirit!) and some NavCam imagery taken the previous sol.

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L view on Sol 2361.

Jan van Driel