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

[ustrax]

Thanks for the reality check Doug.

Now, for something different, did anyone noticed this feature (roughly 100 mts wide) on the image marswiggle provided the link?
A fresh impact?

[nprev]

Sure looks fresh to me, Rui; nice find! Anybody know how far away it is from Oppy?

[ustrax]

Sure looks fresh to me, Rui; nice find! Anybody know how far away it is from Oppy?

About 15 kms up North...
Here:

[fredk]

I sure did notice that "fresh" crater out towards the NNE. It appears to be on the "tarmac", and it's one reason I want to get back on the tarmac. And to AndyG, once we're back on the tarmac it would be easy to revisit Endurance and the lander if desired.

(And just to be clear, I'm not at all in favour of the "parking of a still-mobile rover [on the beacon] for little more than symbolic purposes." I only think it would be a great place for an immobilized rover to carry out its final lander phase. The trouble is, we likely won't have any say where she'll become immobilized.)

[nprev]

15 klicks...argh, tantalizing. That's a LONG haul, though, and sure looks like Oppy would have to traverse some mean dune fields. Still....an option. That crater's probably less than a century old (maybe much less, actually); would be damn interesting to study the dark ejecta enroute as well as the recently excavated substrate.

[climber]

I'm very surprised by your assesment, Stu : "there's nothing there"! I guess that if we've landed in Ithaca, Oppy would have made discoveries : better there than missing Mars altogether !
I say : Let's leave Victoria's orbit and go explore because we do NOT know what we'll find in Ithaca or at the fresh crater and on the way to there.
Oppy is ALREADY the most succesfull spacecraft on Mars, I do NOT want her to be turned as a monument that will be visited in a hundred year, I want to explore NOW. Pedal to the metal and no turn back.
As for science, let's compare Oppy going to Ithaca or elsewhere with NH going to Pluto : give most of the scientists a break and bring them back when we'll be there.
Note : I didn't say I want SS to replace Alan meanwhile

[Stu]

I'm really enjoying this debate, even tho I'm feeling a bit bruised under the eyes and sore in my ribs...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not wanting to turn Oppy into a monument anytime soon, but the time might well come when the controllers begin to realise that her days are numbered, and if that day comes SOON then sure, park her up on a high place, and let her end her days watching the sun rise and set, the clouds drift across the salmon-hued sky, the shadows sweep across Victoria's floor, and show us everything in Pancam colour for as long as she can.

"I guess that if we've landed in Ithaca, Oppy would have made discoveries"

Of course she would; she'd have been a new rover, with fire in her belly, ready and able to explore her new surroundings. Wherever Oppy landed she'd have made discoveries simply because she was seeing and exploring a new place, a place never before seen. But think of it this way: if she'd landed halfway between Ithaca and Victoria, and you were in the driving seat, where would you have headed? For the smaller crater to the north, with visible, dramatic outcrops and intriguing sprays of dark material spewing out of it? Or south, to the ghostly remains of a more ancient, eroded-to-the-point-of-vanishing crater, with no immediately obvious geological attractions? I think you'd have chosen to go north. Well, we're at that crater already, with more of it to explore and, what, a good year's drive away from Ithaca...?

Having said that, if Oppy is in good health after exiting Victoria, her demise is nowhere in sight, and the science team decide that there are no more obvious targets further around the rim, then I'm in the I'm all for striking out again - but not to Ithaca. I still think that it's just not worth the drive.

I'm thinking that there must be something, somewhere, more interesting closer to Victoria, somewhere that Steve and the gang have in mind but haven't let on about yet.

[centsworth_II]

I'm thinking that there must be something, somewhere, more interesting
closer to Victoria, somewhere that Steve and the gang have in mind but
haven't let on about yet.

Opportunity didn't continue past the dark streaks to this area,
instead returning to Duck Bay for entry. Perhaps at the time
it was considered more prudent to end further investigation of
the rim and enter the crater while Opportunity was still in good
health. Now that Duck Bay has been studied, they may want to
go take a look at those fractures.



"This enhanced-color view of the eastern rim and floor of "Victoria Crater"
...shows ridges that may be fractures surrounded by chemically cemented
sedimentary bedrock. The ridges are therefore potentially fruitful targets
for analysis by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity...."
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/mult...a/pia09191.html

[stewjack]

Now that Duck Bay has been studied, they may want to
go take a look at those fractures.

I was hoping someone would bring that up. I thought I was the only one who was
disappointed when the rover was turned around.

Jack

[Shaka]

I'm really enjoying this debate, even tho I'm feeling a bit bruised under the eyes and sore in my ribs...

The Agony and the Ecstasy!
If the masses aren't getting your message, Stuey, you may be using the wrong genre. From our Poet Laureate we expect a sonnet!
Ustrax has his pro-Ithaca poem; we need an anti-Itheca poem to weigh in the balance!
HTH
Shaka

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

"This enhanced-color view of the eastern rim and floor of "Victoria Crater"
...shows ridges that may be fractures surrounded by chemically cemented
sedimentary bedrock. The ridges are therefore potentially fruitful targets
for analysis by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity...."
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/mult...a/pia09191.html

Ahhhh I was looking for that image and the story that goes with it. This would be a better short term plan than wandering off into the dunes Lawrence "Titus" Oats style.

[Stu]

Stuey?!?! I haven't been called that since I was 6!!!!

Okay, I'll work on it...

[Stu]

Here you go Shaka...


("Stuey"... shakes head...)


TO ITHACA?

Oh how soon you forget!
When this gaping dust- and grit-filled eye socket
shocked you with its size you cried
“We are here!” and after peering over my shoulder
for months, watching the hump-backed horizon
crawl closer, suddenly you found yourselves
tumbling through a hidden door and falling
into a magical martian Narnia, where crumbling
cliffs and outcrops bathed in syrupy sunlight
promised wonders without end!

Now, before my fine-scratched digital eyes
have gazed at Great Victoria’s ragged eastern side
you would send me south - towards a
Time-worn hole that is barely even there?
Do you care nought for me? Have I not breathed
new life into this bold, cold New World of yours?
Would you despatch me to a distant shore
you all suspect in your conspiring hearts
is much too far for me to reach?
Has Barsoom bored you all so soon?

Fine. I will go. Ithaca shall be my goal,
my final “Holy Grail”. But when I fail,
when my worn and weary wheels cannot free
themselves from some unseen, undulating
dune you’ll rue the day you made me
turn my dusty back on Beacon and its company
of cliffs, and will admit that you were rash
to order me to dash towards a coffee-cup stain
“crater” so many crazy K’s away,
and watch me die.

I am just going outside… and may be some time…

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

[Shaka]

God, what can Portugal offer to beat that?

[edstrick]

I look at those "mountains" sticking up on the rim of Ithaca and I'm 4/5ths convinced they're pre-evaporite terrain or at least something substantially different from the sulfate and basalt-sand (with or without blueberries) we've explored so far on Meridiani Ithaca is a pre-mantling crater and was largely mantled itself. But the rim topography was high enough that isolated ridges of the original rim material appear to stick up through the eroded Meridiani layers draped over the rim. That's why I think the rim REALLY has a chance of being something different. If it's old crust, it'd be lile another stab at materials like those in the Columbia hills, only from deeper down, then eroded and modified before <and during> mantling before they were re-exposed as mantle over the topographic high of the rim was slowly stripped.

Other than that fresh impact, which would be "kewl" but probably not that informative on "follow the water" Martian geologic history levels, Ithaca offers one chance of really different geology that would be worth trying for. I have deep doubts about reaching it, but...