The western route, 5th leg after stop at Absecon / Reeds Bay Options

[Tesheiner]

Time for a new thread.
After moving southwards for ages, the "detour" by the western path has started with a 60+ meters drive on sol 1942.


There are no images yet --they should be available on the next update-- so this image was calculated solely based on the rover's mobility info. I'll update the route map later.

[fredk]

I've been watching Cape St. Mary (Beacon) in the rear view mirror. Our last definite sighting was sol 1942 navcam, though it was getting a bit hard to make out. I've marked it in this crop:

There've been north-pointing navcams since, but I can't make CSM out unambiguously (determining the exact azimuth might help). The lighting is bad (low contrast between sky and ground), but it may be that we're losing it due to topography. We're certainly no farther from CSM than we were at the last sightings.

The last good view was sol 1938 pancam:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/all...PGP2286L1M1.JPG

edit: this pancam view is so good (at half resolution yet), that given favourable topography we should be able to see CSM for a very long time to come, even from Endeavour (at least from the higher peaks that were visible from Victoria).