After Victoria..., .. what next? Options

[Stu]

I know we've had rather light-hearted discussions about this before, with most people agreeing that Oppy is likely to end her days inside or on the edge of Victoria Crater, simply because there's nothing else to investigate within reach, but has Steve S got it in his mind that Oppy will head off somewhere else after Victoria? This report could be read in a way that suggests that...

[dvandorn]

You read my mind, Doug! When I proposed my "escape route" onto the "tarmac" through the shortest stretch of dunes to the northeast of Victoria, I was eyeing those Victoria-class craters (A, B, C) as the first major targets, followed by (Hirise images favourable!) a drive southwards to the north rim of Big.

Yeah -- like I say, *if* HiRISE imagery shows there is a relatively clear path through the northeastern apron of Victoria back up to the "tarmac," as you put it (as good a name as any), and *if* there are no major drive-around obstacles along the route to A-B-C, at an average of 200 meters per sol driving, it would only take 100 driving sols to cover 20 km. And I'm not even positive that A-B-C is as far as 20 km, that complex may only be 12 to 15 km away.

While that kind of traverse would have seemed like a completely unreasonable goal at the beginning of the mission, we know now that, if we choose, we *can* drive an average of 200 km per sol for extended periods. And heck, even if Oppy adopted the drive-three-survey-one sol plan used by Spirit on its way to the Columbia Hills, it ought not take more than 150 sols, max, to get from Victoria to A. Perhaps as little as 100 to 125.

I'm not too worried about it at present, since we're probably looking at spending the entire Martian summer and fall at Victoria. But for a long-term plan, I think that any traverse plan that places us back on the tarmac stands a good chance of getting us to another interesting location before winter solstice.

I'd be far more comfortable with an extended mission plan that gets us to a new set of interesting targets before winter solstice, than with a plan that calls for us to just sit at Victoria for the entirety of the next winter -- assuming we're done with Victoria by then. And I have to agree with Doug, I just don't see a clear straight path to Ithaca from Victoria.

And, of course, we have to understand that Oppy could die, become sensor-crippled or become hobbled at almost any time. I will rather diffidently make the point that if we lose Oppy's IDD in the midst of the Victoria campaign (and the IDD is the logical item to be lost next, since it is the most degraded of any of Oppy's sensing equipment up to now), it will take considerably less time to gather as much information as possible from Vicky and it may make more sense to observe what we can of other interesting targets before anything else dies, and especially before she completely loses a wheel and becomes hobbled like her sister. Without the IDD, you only have Pancam and mini-TES for detailed scientific analyses, and it will take far less time to gather that data than will be taken deploying the arm and running week-long Mossbauer and APXS integrations.

But, of course, we *will* have to get some decent HiRISE coverage of the whole area before we can do more than engage in energetic arm-waving...

-the other Doug