Victoria Annulus, Discusions about Victoria's Apron Options

[RNeuhaus]

From today, Oppy will start to head toward the Victoria Crater which is about 500 meters away. The drive would take about one month (that is 15 soles of driven with an average of 33 meters/sol, the other 15 soles would be for other purposes or restrictive soles).

The surface around Victoria Annulus, I seems it won't be as smooth as the way between Eagle and Endurance craters but the surface would have no uniform or parallel wave of sand and dust in small size of ripple. See Phil's Victoria Annulus partial map, Tesheiner's one Victoria Crater picture

Otherwise, the surface might have ripples smaller and alike to the ones of El Dorado, on the skirt south side of Columbia Hill. Besides, the Anuulus has no outcrops except to around of few small mini-craters.

This is a change of morphology of surface around the Victoria Annulus. What does it explain about this developing kind of surface of sand? Its extension is just around the inside of Victoria's ray of ejection. That is coincidence. Around that has no bigger ripples as the outside of Annulus.

The explanation would be that around annulus has smoother rock or outcrop surface, no blocks which had not helped to build ripples by the winds. Other factor, I am not sure, is that the slope from the border of Annulus to crater is positive (going up by few meters), then this might be another factor not to build ripples. I have seen that anywhere in the desert that have a slopes does not have any ripples but only flat surface.

Any debate about why the Victoria Annulus does not look like ripples as the outside of Annulus.

Rodolfo

[WindyT]

Let's not forget the slightly arcane math question that might be answered by those so inclined:

What's the approximate value in cubic meters of material excavated by the crater, and does it approximately match the Victoria Annulus (the ejecta apron material)? Several assumptions would have to be made about the height profile(s) of ejecta material, and I suppose we'll eventually get to see some interpretations using cross sections at some future date.

I'll add a couple more questions I don't necessarily want answered, but did want to idly ask:

While I'm assuming the answer would be "Not enough information to tell, but probably, 'NO'", is it possible for a measurable fraction of this evaporitic material to really have been be "vaporized" by the initial impact to the extent that it's missing from the ejecta apron material and the surrounding region?

How much got powdered just enough to have been a significant fraction of the dune material outside the annulus that Oppy has been traversing for the last several months?