To the Cape! (part 2), For real this time! Options

[Tesheiner]

This is a navcam mosaic taken after driving during sol 1559.


Mmm, remember the name of this thread?
To the Cape! Yeah!

[MahFL]

They are nice pictures. Makes a change to see something new after so many months.

[fredk]

It's great to see us thoroughly out of the Quackmire! We now have a good view of potential approaches to Verde. Here's a crop from Tesheiner's mosaic. I've sketched two approaches that appear to stay pretty well on solid rocky surfaces. The black gets us close to the cliff, but not very deep - we've studied those layers already. The white route gets us deeper but not very close to the cliff. Of course they could continue past the end of the white arrow (that's where the original target lies), at the risk of getting bogged down again in loose soil...

[Tesheiner]

Before the, mmm, "event", I thought Opportunity would move to a point that is after the white arrow. I think the terrain at that point is traversable enough to get the rover touching the wall.
BUT the situation now has changed. At least two new issues. imo. The first is obviously the fact(?) that moving up to the wall would mean getting stuck again on the way back. The second is that after this long time the shadows are getting bigger at Cape Verde.

[alan]

Winter Solstice occurs in the southern hemisphere of Mars on June 26 so the shadows will soon start getting shorter.

[Tesheiner]

Neither the black not the white path, Opportunity has followed the "yellow bricks".
Here's the current position plotted on the navcam mosaic from sol 1559.


And the latest view from tosol (1562).

[Astro0]

A lo-res SFX view based on Tesheiner's positioning.

Steady as she goes girl

[Tman]

And overcomes sand traps again and chocks like this:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...25P1815R0M1.JPG

Guess the two moved rocks is the spot where Oppy's middle wheel went stuck.

[Tesheiner]

I was a bit afraid with the path they were taking now (the "yellow" one), but have a look to today's drive results and compare with yesterday images.
Sol 1562 -> Sol 1563

They moved Opportunity downhill over the sand up to the isolated slab seen on the images then back uphill almost to the same spot as before. Looking to the wheel marks I fell that the terrain is much more stable then on the previous path where she got stuck.

[climber]

You may say that it's easy to say it now, but it seams they are driving the way I thought they will.
Rove straight down, back-up to be sure you can (back-up), and so on.
Once they are perpendicular and deaper to the place they want to meet the cliffs, they will do a ~80° + ~80° or so left turns and go up to the cliffs. Doing this, in case of been stuck, the'll can back up going down (on the same path) which will probably be much easier to get free. Any objection to this ?

[Stu]

Nice view...

[fredk]

Looking to the wheel marks I fell that the terrain is much more stable then on the previous path where she got stuck.

It does look like a successful toe-dip. After the quackmire, I'm still concerned about the sandy surface farther down. I wonder if they've been able to identify something about the appearance of the quackmire surface before we drove onto it that indicated it was dangerous. Or are they just trying again and hoping for the best...

Climber, it seems to me it's got to be risky to drive deeper than we need to...

[mhoward]

A lo-res SFX view based on Tesheiner's positioning.

That looks about right, Astro0. I was digging around in MMB for some views from other perspectives and found this one. The position based on the tracking data is only approximate, but actually it looks about right to me:

[Tesheiner]

We are getting closer!
This is from today's drive (sol 1564):

[fredk]

And the maneuvering at the end of the drive shows we've still got good traction:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...74P1312R0M1.JPG