Southward from San Antonio to the Next Waypoint Options

[Zeke4ther]

It seems about the right time to start a new thread as we have now turned East to Endeavour.
Hope no one minds...

[fredk]

Squyres has a few things to say about the plans for Endeavour in the new PS update:

...the team firmed up the decision on where the rover will make "landfall" at the big crater. "We're going to go to the nearest spot on the rim," announced Squyres. "We kind of had that established already."... "We have no idea how long this rover is going to last," said Squyres. "So we're not going to take the long route. We're going to go to the first jut of stuff we can find. Then, having done that, we can talk about going other places too."

Judging from the images in that report, our Stu's known about this already...

Also from the new report, confirmation of the turn to the east:

This month, Opportunity finally made the turn from south/southeast to the east, Squyres said

And good news about the pancam lenses:

The gust also lifted a little more dust from the panoramic camera lenses, confirmed [Bell]. "The lenses have been clearing little on and off for quite some time actually, but this time it was noticeable and that's a good thing," he said... "We've had this problem in the right side in both fields of view, where you can see this darkening"... said Bell. "We've been seeing a slow clearing and a change in the dust in the front lens so that's improved over time. While we haven't taken all the test data we need to determine what percent improvement this event made, I do think when we do we will see improvement that will help us with mosaicking and won't have as many seams."

There's certainly been a big improvement over time - compare recent pancams with those from Victoria.