Santa Maria! Options

[Julius]

think it deserves a topic on its own

[Astro0]

From the most recent monthly Rover report on TPS:

1) Although there is no detailed exploration plan for Santa Maria, Squyres said that he does not anticipate the rover will venture into the crater.
That's qualified of course with: “We may pull up to the rim of this thing and find something different.”

2) “We're very excited about Santa Maria, because it is the last really spectacular thing we expect we’ll come across before the rover gets to Endeavour,” said Squyres. “Because it's in the same size class as Endurance, but appears to be a little fresher, we think there might be some interesting things to see in the ejecta," he noted. "We'll go into it with eyes open, and we'll make our decision about how long we will spend there when we see it,” he said.

3) “One of the most valuable things we did at Endurance is we took big panoramas from a couple of points around the rim that enabled us to developed a very, very good 3-dimensional digital elevation model for that crater and terrific science has come from that,” Squyres pointed out. “We will probably want to do something very much like that at Santa Maria.”

So the plan is:
1) There is no firm plan until they get a closer look
2) They think that the ejecta will be interesting (and it looks like it is) so they'll be studying the rocks (big surprise there!)
3) Expect some really nice panoramas from a couple of angles (get your favorite stitching software ready)

Then of course, as we've all come to expect of the MER mission...something will catch the mission team's eye and everything will change.