Post Conjunction: Santa Maria to Cape York, The Journey to 'Spirit Point' Options

[ElkGroveDan]

Starting a new topic to include Eduardo's Google overlay for the rest of the journey to Cape York:

http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/gmars_ma...41_1775_RED.kml

Follow the link above and it should load right in to your Google Mars features.

I took a low crow's flight along the final 6km this morning. Below in green is what I think the final route will look like. Also an interesting feature along the way that appears to be a cluster of rocks, possibly Santa Maria ejecta, or large meteorite fragments. Note how the dune has evolved around the three (or more) objects. Object is at -2.199395°, -5.396676° -- roughly 3km down range from Santa Maria.

EDIT: bad link replaced, wider context image added for three rocks.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Burmese]

And an overall downward slope the rest of the way can't be bad for those poor, sore wheels!

[serpens]

And an overall downward slope the rest of the way can't be bad for those poor, sore wheels!

Hardly a slope. 1:160 means effectively dead flat. The visual representation of these graphs with such different axis metrics can be misleading. But the MOLA passes are pretty far apart here so there could well be swales, bumps and hollows to be found. But overall it does look life the sediments did a real good levelling job on the terrain.

[djellison]

Hardly a slope. 1:160 means effectively dead flat. The visual representation of these graphs with such different axis metrics can be misleading.good levelling job on the terrain.

Remember - Petes chart is from a HiRISE derived DTM - probably three orders of magnitude better than any MOLA gridded product.