Phil Stooke's Mars mission maps, Changes in the New Year Options

[Phil Stooke]

I want to look ahead to the new year and beyond, regarding Mars mission mapping on UMSF.

My book 'The International Atlas of Mars Exploration', vol. 2, covered events up to June 2014, coinciding with Opportunity sol 3700 and Curiosity sol 669, the end of its primary mission. Ever since then, for the last 7.5 years, I have been mapping activities on Mars for UMSF, but those maps were always intended for a 3rd volume of the series. You have been able to follow, sol by sol, the construction of the maps that will fill the atlas. That work will conclude at the end of this year. Then I begin a period of intense editing work to pull roughly 250 pages of text and 250 full page illustrations into publishable form.

I hope you will understand that I cannot go on making new maps while also editing the book. So many things are happening on the Moon (my other love) and Mars that mapping has been a full time job, but now my efforts must be redirected. I will still be doing some things - I like making circular panoramas and will keep doing that as time permits, but making them for Perseverance is time-consuming and they might not happen with every drive unless I have access to a panorama from someone else. I will try to keep up with Zhurong whenever there is an update, but almost daily updates for Curiosity and Perseverance are no longer possible. I must give up Curiosity altogether, but I will follow Perseverance with less frequent updates. I will be following events on the Moon (Chang'e 4 and future landers) and when the Mars editing work concludes my focus will be mostly on the Moon.

I hope someone else will be able to take on the role of Mars cartographer. We have had other contributors, and as a start someone could simply annotate the mission maps after each drive with names taken from status reports and other sources. I will be checking in every day, I just can't continue mapping as I have in the past. But I will see you on the Moon!

Phil

[PDP8E]

recovering enough from unexpected wrist surgery to get back to a keyboard .. have a 20 Sol backlog dust devils to check... see ya soon
(Tau, awesome work on the downhill DD!)