Perseverance - Early Drives, Sols 14-72 Options

[Explorer1]

In the telecon yesterday they made clear that they will be staying away from any EDL hardware for contamination reasons.
We'd all like to see it, but Oppy's encounter was a confluence of circumstances. All the hardware was visible as soon as they left Eagle crater, the heat shield was right on the traverse path from Endurance crater, and there were far fewer concerns about close proximity negatively affecting the science mission.

Look on the bright size; Mastcam-Z allows imaging at a distance with much more detail (if local topography allows), so no need to get super-close.

[vikingmars]

You'd think the Blue path would be more interesting with a large crater and the heat shield not far off the path that I'm certain the engineers would like to have a peek at.

Yes for sure
But also, like many, I would like a visit to see (even from a distance) the colorful parachute and its backshell.
This would be a great opportunity for Education & Public Outreach and would offer the public great memorable pictures to see.
And we will not have other opportunities to take such impressive pictures for decades to come

[MahFL]

“But perhaps the most visible change is in the grousers. They are ten percent taller and run across the width of the wheel in a near straight line. It’s got a slight curvature to it to help give some strength to it,” says JPL engineer Patrick DeGrosse.

That Percy wheel looks pretty good for doing 60Km.

[erwan]

It seems Perseverance is now roughly 30 metres NNE of Octavia E. Butler site : the blue path is maybe already the chosen path.

[erwan]

I think here is approximately the location of Perseverance after sol 15 drive, marked in a sol 11 left mastcam Z image.

[neo56]

Picture taken by Navcam Right on sol 15 showing tracks left by tosol drive.

[alan]

Why are they avoiding the area directly to the west?

[erwan]

Alan, maybe they want to avoid sand dunes traverse ?

[Explorer1]

From the MRO images, it seems like there is room between the ripples to maneuver (it's not a solid field like what Curiosity had to go around to reach Mount Sharp), but presumably the team does not want to take even a small risk at this stage of the mission.

[Marvin]

Looks like they're sticking to the "Smooth Unit" and avoiding the "Fractured Unit".

[MarkL]

You'd think the Blue path would be more interesting with a large crater and the heat shield not far off the path that I'm certain the engineers would like to have a peek at.

Definitely a "Blue" fan too. The crater is like an amphitheater with a view into the layer underlying the main delta. Also smoother driving and will let them make faster progress. I'd love to see photos of the heat shield in its new forever home even from a distance - good test of the zoom cams.

[Phil Stooke]

This is not the main traverse - they are looking for a place to drop the Belly Pan (which protected Ingenuity from the landing event), and will then return to a smooth area near the landing site to do the helicopter tests. Only after that will the main traverse begin.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

In the absence of Navcam panoramas for each location I am using rather rough Hazcam reprojections to find the points to plot on the map. Here are the sol 14 and sol 15 images.

I think Erwan's site is very good.

Phil

[erwan]

In the absence of Navcam panoramas for each location I am using rather rough Hazcam reprojections to find the points to plot on the map. Here are the sol 14 and sol 15 images.

I think Erwan's site is very good.

Phil

Thank you Phi for your comment ; and there is also an helicopter...

[Andreas Plesch]

I have updated my interactive map based on EDL downlook at

http://bit.ly/PercyMAP

with an animation showing the traverse. It is based on geojson path data from the Where is the rover page. The azimuth of the rover is following the path. That means that the first 150 degree turn is not represented.

The way point geojson from the web page has additional yaw orientation data and shows for the current position a yaw of 88 degrees which I think corresponds to the front being pointed to the east. Is that what the latest camera images show ? Was there some turning in place on the final position of the last drive ?

[edit] The answer was yes. But the traverse continued more on a 72 track. I updated again http://bit.ly/PercyMAP .