MSL Route Map Options

[Greenish]

Here is a quick, very local contour map I made to help me visualize the area near WP2. I didn't do much more than crop & apply a 16-color map to the the DEM, overlaid on the corresponding orthophoto, so I'm not making a claim to any particular accuracy, but it seems to work well.


The contour levels should be about 1.1 m each; the highest (white) should be at about -4495 m according to the DEM.

[Phil Stooke]

That looks good! I took the liberty of merging it with my map to see what it would look like.

Phil

[pgrindrod]

Did somebody say DEM?!

Phil, I added some contours to your route map, and thought I'd try a different colour stretch than Greenish for the DEM, to see how it looks (a lot worse than it actually is).

[Phil Stooke]

That's great. I prefer your colours generally, but Greenish's were more appropriate for Halloween (sorry, Greenish!)

Anyway, back to monochrome. Yet another drive - I'm assuming a straight route until I know more, and the exact location may need revising.



Phil

[Greenish]

Phil and pgrindod, very cool - I had been getting jealous of inspired by the MER contour maps that Larry Crumpler posts on the blog, but I don't have the tools. So this is pretty much there for MSL, awesome!

[Phil Stooke]

Sol 439 - right there.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Even more right there!

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

On the road again - a bit of maneuvering to get up on the top of Cooperstown.

Waypoint 3 is not far ahead but from the sound of things it will be skipped. Waypoint 4 is as far ahead as Yellowknife Bay is behind us, but it's a really cool place to look forward to.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Here's the sol 454 drive. The location should be good but the route is conjectural until I have more data.

Phil

[dilo]

I made a comparison between the planned "Rapid Transit Route" published almost 3 months ago and effective route map until to now:

The team followed quite closely the planned route and now we are already half-way between way-points 2 and 3!
Just for fun, I tried to extrapolate future milestones based on the average velocity between WP-1 and WP-2 and assuming an average stop of a dozen sols in each WP:
Sol 461-473 : WP-3
Sol 513-525 : WP-4
Sol 620-632 : WP-5
Sol 705 : Entry Point
Obviously, these dates are extremely hypothetical and assumed speed is quite conservative... they could change if major issues or speed changes or even surprises will occur in next months!

[Phil Stooke]

Update to sol 456. The location should be good, but the last drive path is just a guess until I get more information.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Another map update after the very welcome drive on sol 465. I may update the new location when I get more information. (EDIT: it's been edited to fix earlier route)

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

The sol 470 map - terrain is getting quite rugged.

Phil

[Greenish]

A basic color contour overlay of the nearby area, again cropped so I could use 16 levels of 1m each.


EDIT: and a similar map for a somewhat larger area, along the proposed route. In a more typical (if less color-blind friendly) "rainbow" color scheme, since it's no longer Halloween. Here, the 32 levels are about 0.7m each.

[Phil Stooke]

Here is a mid-resolution overview of the route (reduced from but formatted for my book). I could use a few new feature names. Anyone? Is this thing on?

The white squares are places where the arm instruments were used on the surface - imaging and ChemCam were done most places. These still need to be updated in Yellowknife Bay so that area is not complete yet. More names will come from the PDS release on the 13th, but only up to sol 360.

Phil