Cape York - The "Lakelands", Starting sol 2703 Options

[Tesheiner]

Bye bye, Tisdale. It's time to move on.
Next target? Philosilicates.

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Edited on Sep 16 2011.

This thread is dedicated to the exploration of Cape York, starting on sol 2703 when Opportunity left the "rocky garden" and started moving towards Chester Lake.

[jvandriel]

The Navcam L0 view on Sol 2703.

Jan van Driel

[Tesheiner]

As soon as we move to the east edge of CY, I think the view to Endeavour's far side and the north rim will improve significantly.

[mhoward]

Sol 2703-2704 Navcam panorama (updated)

[Tesheiner]

I just finished reading this month's MER Report (by Salley Rayl @ TPS); a great reading with a lot of goodies, as usual. I'm copying here a reference about our next waypoint:

Opportunity’s next immediate destination is an outcrop on the southern brow of Cape York, located, as Nelson described it, "roughly 30 meters (98.42 feet) north of Spirit Point or the area of the southern tip of Cape York, and roughly 45 to 50 meters (131.23 to 164.04 feet) east of Tisdale 2."

Another type of gif animation of Tisdale 2:

A really rough surface, isn't it? Easy to understand why they didn't use the RAT on it.

[fredk]

I just finished reading this month's MER Report

Some good quotes about the future in that update:

"Cape Tribulation has an extensive exposure mineralogically of smectite, which typically forms in presence of water sitting on basalt. But it's a couple kilometers to south and the rover would have to climb an 80-meter hill, and then drive down a 25 degree slope to get to it," Arvidson explained.

"The plan beyond is to really look at those hills to the south – that's real mountain climbing," said Hartman. "Cape York is much more manageable, more weathered, more eroded, and there are some indications phyllosilicates are here, so we're going to sniff around here and see if we can find them, but the longer-term plan is to attack Cape Tribulation. That's going to be a whole other kettle of fish for us.”

From Squyres:

“Having said that, Cape Tribulation is the obvious next place to go for after we've really done our job at Cape York. So we're going to do the best that we can here. Then we're going to see what kind of a rover we've got and we're going to do the best we can with it. Are we going to Cape Tribulation or not? Don't know. I hope so. It looks pretty cool."

[Stu]

Some goodies from today...



Drive direction?



Rather yummy-looking outcrop/ridge?



A(nother) beaten up breccia of a mongrel of a rock...

[mhoward]

Some goodies from today...

In order, labels are: "HBC" (whatever that means; maybe "B" is for Bedrock?), "Kirkland Lake", and "Marion".

In the second one I assume "Kirkland Lake" is the largest feature. We've seen it from the side. The triangularish rock on the left in that one must be "Trailbreaker", then, I guess. (As Tesheiner figured. Of course, keep in mind this is still partly guesswork.)

[Phil Stooke]

To any Canadian, HBC can only mean Hudson's Bay Company... though maybe to a MER driver it means something different... did Oppy lose a hubcap?

Phil

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

So what might these 3 plus billion year old clay deposits actually look like to Opportunity's cameras? Are they likely to be dramatically obvious or very subtle perhaps indistinguishable from their surroundings?

[mhoward]

This may help visualize where we are: Part 1 Part 2

[Tesheiner]

This may help visualize where we are: Part 1 Part 2

Definitely yes!
Looking at Tisdale 1 from this perspective I think it's almost clear it has the same "bright top" as Tisdale 2. There were some pancams of it planned to be taken thisol (2707) and I believe those shots should confirm it.

Would like to know the meaning of "HBC" too; I presume it is related to the bright patch of bedrock to the right of those three rocks. Actually, the rover moved to that area some hours ago. Map update in a minute.

[jamescanvin]

Here is the HBC mosaic:

[ugordan]

Nice!

[mhoward]

Sol 2707 Navcam left right anaglyph

Position view (approximate)