Extricating Spirit, Digging out from Troy Options

[briv1016]

5 downsampled navcam frames from sol 2078 are down. Someone might want to make an animation.

[imipak]

I don't remember seeing any estimates of how far back along her path Spirit needs to move to have all five working wheels on solid ground. Does the thin crust over the bright, dusty material extend further back than the visible piles of powder excavated by the left hand wheels?

And - forgive me if this has been answered, I've searched but not been found it - do we know what the pale material actually is? Silica or sulphate salts, or something else?

(Edit: Found CosmicRocker / Paolo :

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...;p=142244"]http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=142244

...which doesn't shed much light )

[fredk]

I don't remember seeing any estimates of how far back along her path Spirit needs to move to have all five working wheels on solid ground. Does the thin crust over the bright, dusty material extend further back than the visible piles of powder excavated by the left hand wheels?

Presumably she needs to get away from the crater that she's dug into. And we finally have a map showing the outline of Scamander crater ("Scamander plains"), with the latest Spirit map update.

With the crater taking up a sizable stretch of the middle of West Valley, I wonder what the approach would be if we drove out of Troy forwards (northwards). Would they continue to VB/G east or west of Scamander?

[climber]

With the crater taking up a sizable stretch of the middle of West Valley, I wonder what the approach would be if we drove out of Troy forwards (northwards). Would they continue to VB/G east or west of Scamander?

Now that we know of Scamander, we can see it... but we didn't before been stucked. I think I can see more crater-like features ahead in the 5.4Mb route map. Assuming Troy is "inside" a crater, I'll choose to drive on the "rims" of the craters to come whatever main direction will be selected.
This means will have to field prove that what we can see from MRO is what we actually can predict from Navcam & Pancam picts.
I'll be intersted to know if you see crater-like features ahead as I do.

[climber]

Assuming Troy is "inside" a crater, I'll choose to drive on the "rims" of the craters to come whatever main direction will be selected.

It's basicaly what Ray Ardvinson's saying at this time !!!