The West Valley Route Options

[Tesheiner]

Here're the latest navcam pictures taken during sol 1850: http://nasa.exploratorium.edu/mars/spirit/navcam/2009-03-18/

Spirit is no longer stuck, but I think the attempt to go on top of HP via the NE path is finished and we are going to the West Valley. A pancam mosaic of the western route is planned for tosol.

[climber]

IIRC, one of the reason for not using the West Valley Route was because we didn't have enough visual informations as compared to crossing HP or using the East route. Not mentioning the laters were shorter, etc...
Once again, looking at Eduardo's map, I'd said that I guess we have very good coverage (even from to of HP) around Gibson then again around Tartarus; this leads to sol 1363 drive that will join sol 1350 way point.
Either I missunderstood or this is not enough to call the route "known enough" for a Rover Driver standard.
Anyway, even if we can use the pictures we have down to sol 1350 way point or so, this will cover half the distance to Von Braun.

[RoverDriver]

IIRC, one of the reason for not using the West Valley Route was because we didn't have enough visual informations as compared to crossing HP or using the East route. Not mentioning the laters were shorter, etc...
Once again, looking at Eduardo's map, I'd said that I guess we have very good coverage (even from to of HP) around Gibson then again around Tartarus; this leads to sol 1363 drive that will join sol 1350 way point.
Either I missunderstood or this is not enough to call the route "known enough" for a Rover Driver standard.
Anyway, even if we can use the pictures we have down to sol 1350 way point or so, this will cover half the distance to Von Braun.

Of all the routes to VB/G the west valley route was the one that had most coverage which indicated some narrow passages (meaning good driving terrain in some areas might be narrow). Aerial imagery seem to indicate that the terrain N and NW of VB can be difficult to traverse. Unfortunately there is no way to get surface imaging before the rover actually gets there. ;-)

And then you know that rover drivers don't ever have enough data about traversability. Not even after driving on it. ;-)

Paolo