Post Solar Conjunction/Santorini Study Drive, The second leg in our Journey to Endeavor Crater Options

[jamescanvin]

And suspiciously named 'pancam_drive_dir_4x1_L2R2' as well.

Of course just because drive direction images have been taken is no guarantee that we are leaving soon. The view is unlikely to change much however long we stay.

[RoverDriver]

And suspiciously named 'pancam_drive_dir_4x1_L2R2' as well.

Of course just because drive direction images have been taken is no guarantee that we are leaving soon. The view is unlikely to change much however long we stay.

On 1759 we sequenced the ffirst RAT Brush since using the IDD as a 4 DOF arm. There were some questions about the activity and in case we had decided not to go ahead with the brush we would have been ready to drive off instead. Since we did not have drive direction PANCAMs and the NAVCAMS were from the previous location (I know, just less than a meter away) I had requested a set to be ready to drive.

I don't know when we will be ready to drive, but I would be surprised to see us drive off in less than a week.

Paolo

[nprev]

Santorini confirmed as a meteorite:

http://www.planetary.org/news/2008/1231_Ma..._Update_As.html

[Gray]

nprev,
I couldn't get the link to work, but here's an excerpt from the post:

"As Opportunity returned to its normal schedule following solar conjunction, it continued its close-up investigation of Santorini taking measurements with its alpha-particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS) and some close-up pictures with its Micrcoscopic Imager (MI). The cobble, Squyres announced this week, turns out to be another meteorite, a type of stony iron meteorite called a mesosiderite, basically “a dead ringer” for Santa Catarina and Barberton. “You don’t see this type of meteorite very often on Earth, but of the four meteorites we’ve found at Meridiani Planum, three are like this,” Squyres pointed out. “They are so similar to one another that we suspect they may be pieces of the same thing.”

[nprev]

Oh, my apologies; I screwed up that link copy! This one works.

[Phil Stooke]

Here's James's recent pan in a polar format with a more map-like geometry than the one posted in the original thread (now closed). North is at the top.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

... and another one more stretched out...

Phil

[CosmicRocker]

Here's James's recent pan in a polar format with a more map-like geometry than the one posted in the original thread (now closed). North is at the top.

Thanks. I liked that one very much.

[Phil Stooke]

Here's another view derived from James's panorama. This is Victoria, seen with a very large vertical stretch. Old-timers will recall the big debate on UMSF during the approach to Victoria - was the "beacon" (a rock on the top of Cape St. Mary) on the near side or the far side? Parallax soon showed it had to be the near side. But from this perspective we see why it had to be like that. Victoria formed on a slope, so its rim slopes. The near side is significantly higher than the far side.

Phil

[Tesheiner]

Great job Phil!
Cape St Mary was clearly visible without stretching but in this view there is enough S/N to distinguish the whole crater from the much further distant terrain.

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Some new microscopic images from Oppy:

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...ger/2009-01-01/

[glennwsmith]

Darn, Zvezdichko, it's good to see those blueberries again! And maybe not so bad from a scientific standpoint, either -- while it's good, on the one hand, to be able to observe a variety of phenomenon, it's also good -- especially on a world we are exploring for the first time! -- to be able to establish a baseline and have some familiar "landmarks" -- almost like the trail of crumbs that Hansel and Gretel followed!

[Juramike]

The blueberries here are a tad puzzling.

From the past discussions, I'd gotten the notion that rock ablation leaves blueberries as residue, then a layer of blueberries armors up the surface and prevents further erosion. So, I woulda thunk that blueberries WOULD NOT be found in areas with big drifts.

(Unless maybe the big drifts are frozen and the blueberry armoring has now halted erosion, even if there were stronger winds.)

Call me clueless....

[Phil Stooke]

There might be a few blueberries here, maybe from Victoria ejecta, but many of these chunks are not blueberries. There's quite a range of sizes and shapes.

Phil

[dvandorn]

Also, these MIs look suspiciously like the MIs I recall from the dark soils north of Victoria (in the deposition vs. sweeping investigations). Are we certain these are MIs from recent sols? And not just old images being flushed from the flash?

-the other Doug