Post Marquette Island, The continuing journey to Endeavour Crater Options

[Guest_Oersted_*]

The new Pancams are up.
Here is a 'Stookian' stretch of Yazu crater to the south (4x vertical)
(contrast adjusted, but jpg artifacts rule!) Cheers

[attachment=20422:stretche...3jan2010.jpg]

EDIT: swapped out BMP for JPG (arg!)

That's a nice sonar picture from Loch Ness...

[jamescanvin]

Recent Drive Direction mosaics.

(all link to the same post)

2128


2130


2131


2133



James

[Ant103]

Can't resist to made this, an anaglyph of the last drive direction pan of Sol 2133 (beacause it's more complex to produce and heavy to upload… and because my website is going to its limits in term of size)


James, very nice pics Especially the last

[jamescanvin]

Just been playing around with Google Earth and thought this may interest some here.

It is at the limit of the the GE elevation data but I think this is a match. The pancams are at 3x stretch and I have GE with 3x vertical exaggeration as well. For orientation, the 'bright' bits on the GE image (middle and right) are bits of the interior of Iazu.



James

[ngunn]

Fantastic anaglyph! from this it does look as though the crater is right on top of a local high point. The vista seems to sweep away beyond it for some considerable distance. I know we have even better views to look forward to but this isn't bad.

EDIT Big thanks also to James. BTW I requested a long baseline Iazu anaglyph several posts ago (hoping to distinguish near and far rims) but I know how things get missed.

[fredk]

It didn't get missed.

Here's a long baseline view of Iazu, from sols 1987 and 2133, with 3x vertical stretch as well as considerable pixel value stretch to bring out the rim better:

You can pretty clearly make out what's near and what's far rim. I've marked them on this view from 2133 - white arrows indicate near rim features, and black arrows far. I'm not sure how well this fits with James' GE view:

[ngunn]

Great! (But unfortunately that one has the colour-changing problem in IE so I'll have to wait till I get home before I can view it properly.)

[Stu]

While we wait for genuine views of the crater to come in, here's a completely made-up, not-accurate-at-all, Sun's-in-the-wrong-place-but-I-don't-care-it's-just-a-pretty-picture-ok?!?! visualisation of Concepcion...

[Robert S]

Looks awesome, Stu! I liked that picture alot!

[Betelgeuze]

I wonder, if they follow the predicted route (seen on the previous maps), how much time would it take it get to Endeavour at this rate?
Would 2 Earth-years be a good guess?

[nprev]

I keep hearing slightly more than 1 year being cited as a likely ETA, but of course that's going to depend on many things (enroute science, drive system health, terrain, etc.)

[NW71]

I'm very wary of this becoming a sweepstake and thus incurring the wrath of senior figures within the forum but I would suggest we could still be nearly 3 years away from endeavour. 2 reasons to support this.

1 - In an article referenced previously on this subject it noted how Opportunity had set a new distance travelled record in 2009 of 3.6 miles but was still 10 miles away from the target.

2 - Given the travails of Spirit I can't help feeling Opportunity will become an even more precious item (now effectively our only rover) and thus a more cautious strategy could be implemented.

But I will gladly be corrected!

[Hungry4info]

So far, the progress toward Endeavour has not been aimed at the crater's direction, but rather, more south. This is to avoid the ripples to the East and South-East of Victoria. Not long after Conception, Opportunity can then head straight for Endeavour. Though you may well be right with your timeframe, depending on how long Opportunity stays at interesting targets.
I'm going to guess that Spirit's situation won't reflect further on how Opportunity is used. At least that is what I am hoping. They are already being careful with it as the right-front wheel showed some anomalies that resembled Spirit's before she lost that wheel. They let Opportunity's right-front wheel rest every so often.

[Floyd]

<pseudo admin on>
This is the map thread, discussions belong in the Post Marquette Island thread.
<pseudo admin off>

AGREED AND MOVED THIS AND THE PREVIOUS FOUR POSTS - ADMIN

[brellis]

I'm a distance fan, but lickin' my chops at all the rocks ahead!