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

[Bill Harris]

Any future target will have to be down-section, away from Victoria's ejecta blanket. That route will give the best science.

--Bill

[dvandorn]

I think we should look at the entirety of Steve's quote:

"Our adventure continues," he said. "We hope to travel to Duck Bay. If a careful safety review indicates that it's safe to go in, we're going to go in. We're going to do a lot of good science, and then we're going to come out again and keep going forward."

That statement doesn't necessarily mean that Steve thinks they'll be done at Victoria after they're done with Duck Bay. It just means that after they get everything they can from Duck Bay, they're planning on continuing with more observations -- in other words, they're not planning on entering at Duck Bay and ending the mission there. (I take that to mean that if they don't think they can get out, they won't go in. That's reinforced by the mention of a "careful safety review.")

Victoria has a lot more to offer, even after Duck Bay is explored. They've only traversed a third of the crater rim, after all, and there are interesting features counter-clockwise from Duck Bay, such as Bright (nee Sofi) crater and the apparently soil-stripped capes. There are also the Suspiciously Linear Features (SLFs) (take a bow, VP) in the east and southeast walls and floor.

Going forward doesn't necessarily mean leaving Victoria. There are many more things in and around Victoria they can (and likely will) take close looks at after they're done with Duck Bay.

-the other Doug

[ustrax]

Going forward doesn't necessarily mean leaving Victoria. There are many more things in and around Victoria they can (and likely will) take close looks at after they're done with Duck Bay.

You won...just got this from SS...:
"When I said "forward", I meant it in the figurative sense of moving forward with continued exploration. I didn't necessarily mean that we would continue south."

Ustrax, I believe the bottom image is a stretched view toward the South. And I believe the satellite image has South toward the bottom. So Ulysses Palace should be on the right, not the left as shown. Did you reverse the rover image?

MarsIsImportant, the top image was rotated 90º
...and don't trust the accuracy on those marked features...

[ustrax]

I've been bothering SS with the Ithaca issue, like someone distracting the driver from the road and taking his precious time...
Better stop doing that before Oppy makes an unexpected entry at Victoria...

According to SS, although there is, among the team, the curiosity of knowing how interesting that huge baby might be, and the fact of, even through an HiRISE image, the crater would help to make the Meridiani puzzle more understandable, he hasn't looked at it yet...no HiRISE pass is planned:
"If we decide to drive into terrain for which we don't have HiRISE imaging, then we'll get the appropriate HiRISE images."

...And here's a virtue I truly admire...:
"Mars is a big planet, and HiRISE has many targets. Patience is an important part of the game."


Untill that day arrives and I'm still more anxious than patient, I've gathered this image provided by slinted with this MOC image from algorimancer.

Here's the result, the heart of Ithaca:

[ustrax]

And the whole context:

[djellison]

The WHOLE context would show the distance between VIctoria and there - with a scale bar, and perhaps the entire Opportunity traverse to date for reference.



Doug

[ustrax]

The WHOLE context would show the distance between VIctoria and there - with a scale bar, and perhaps the entire Opportunity traverse to date for reference.

You are mean...

Like this?...

Looks impossible...doesn't it?...
Paraphrasing our dear Nix tow years ago...
I have this vision of Ithaca; it must be one awesome crater up close! Let's hope all goes well, I want to have seen Ithaca!

[Stu]

As much as I love the romance of that idea, it does look a ridiculously far way away to me ustrax... with many months potential dust dune traps and (relatively) featureless terrain to slog through and over before our brave gal finally reached the edge of a crater so big and so wide that surely all we'd see of it from the rim would be teeny mountains stretching across the distant horizon...

I think that when Oppy comes back out of VC she'll be kept busy exploring other features around the rim... Soup Dragon calls, as does Sofi crater, as do a dozen other farside features... there'd be a good chance of Oppy catching changes in the structure of the dunes on the floor with prolonged observation... it would be worth monitoring the outcrops for signs of landslides... so many more reasons for staying, I think, than for striking out for new targets when what is almost certainly the most fantastic scientific site the MER team could have hoped to reach is available.

But hey, who knows what lies out there in the deep desert?

[babakm]

Here's a perspective view from the HRSCView app showing the whole area incl Endurance, Victoria and Big Crater.

[djellison]

You are mean...

A brutal realist - that's all.

I think it's fair to take the 22 month treck from Endurance to Victoria as a fair measure of progress for a journey of this sort traverse. There will be things that are better ( software and planning) - and things that are potentially worse ( wheels that may break, more broken steering actuators, bad terrain ). Taking Endurance to Victoria (including it's two halts for technical problems etc ) it's a commitment of about 5 years driving. There's not point doing the "100m a sol x Y days = X metres a week" maths - it doesn't work. It never really has apart from primary missions on easy driving ground.

It depends on what HiRISE tells us - it really really does.


If it's all like that (which is isn't ) - it's potentially possible.



If much of it is like this (which it could well be) - it's madness.

To be fair - the route straight SE from Victoria doesn't look THAT bad to begin with. A few hundred metres of brilliant driving. Then a few hundred metres of typical purgatory-like dunes ( which we have to cross at 45 degrees, not traverse down the length of ) - but then you hit a large region of larger dunes mixed with sparse areas of expose rock - much like the north rim of Erebus that we diverted around by a wide margin - but there's no where to divert to...it's all like that.

Look at it another way - It took 230 sols to get from the Western edge of Erebus to Beagle Crater. About 1.5km - over terrain that looks to me to be a fair sample of typical terrain from here onwards. They didn't hang around very much - they got stuck once - but they averaged less than 10m/sol. Another 20km could potentially be 2000 sols further - or just over 5 years.

I see nothing to suggest it could be done quicker than that - I really don't - and I don't think committing to that sort of expedition is a wise use of the vehicle scientifically - nor within the spirit of the world 'exploration'.

It is a very romantic notion - but one that should remain within our imaginations, unless HiRISE shows little short of a paved highway leading the way there. Don't get me wrong - I would love Opportunity to be able to get there - I just see little evidence that it would be able to.

Doug

[alan]

Maybe someday the romantics will get their wish and a billionaire will fund a Mars Tourism Rover whose only purpose is to drive long distances over hazardous terrain and take lots of pretty pictures.

[fredk]

You guys want completely uncalled for, brazen speculation? I'll give you completely uncalled for, brazen speculation!

Perhaps we need to think outside the box on this one. Let's suppose we reach a point where it's deemed there's little to be gained staying at Vicky, and that we're still mobile and funded. Let's suppose the "big crater" to the southeast is deemed an interesting target. Instead of driving southeastish, the most direct route there, through what appears to be purgatoryish dunes, perhaps it would actually be far quicker to drive northeast, back to the flat tarmac we had around Endurance, and then skirt east towards the north rim of Big.

In this map I've sketched a route that gets us to the tarmac very quickly from an extension of Vicky's anulus. In total, we'd spend far less distance in dunes than we have in the past. Of course this all depends on how far the tarmac continues eastwards.

The circle is roughly where we first got stuck in dunes.

[ElkGroveDan]

...suppose we reach a point where it's deemed there's little to be gained staying at Vicky, and that we're still mobile and funded..... it would actually be far quicker to drive northeast, back to the flat tarmac we had around Endurance

I'm with you on part of that Fred, though I'm still way too skeptical about the chances of travelling 20 or so km. But if we have exhausted the obvious science at Victoria, then I could imagine getting back to the "tarmac" as you call it and heading back North or Northeast.

Among some of our tasks could be meteorite hunting (or global impact ejecta), since Meridiani has proven to be a sort of uber-Antarctica in its meteorite hunting opportunities.

Once on the tarmac again we could head back around to Endurance and Eagle, studying the dust deposition and erosion rates on different portions of Oppy's old tracks where we have a very EXACT timeline and season count since the soil was disturbed at each spot.

The chance to examine the chute and backshell site is also something that would excite the engineers among us.

[nprev]

The chance to examine the chute and backshell site is also something that would excite the engineers among us.

I'd go for that. EDL at Mars is so notoriously (and historically) difficult that it would be well worth the effort to dedicate some intensive study to the heat shield, backshell, and especially the parachute...valuable follow-up data for future missions.

[gallen_53]

I'd go for that. EDL at Mars is so notoriously (and historically) difficult that it would be well worth the effort to dedicate some intensive study to the heat shield, backshell, and especially the parachute...valuable follow-up data for future missions.

A bunch of us wanted MER-A or B to take a close look at the backshell. The Back Interface Plate (BIP) and the covers for the Transverse Impulse Rocket Systems (TIRS) on the backshell are made out of SIRCA (Silicone Impregnated Reusable Ceramic Ablator). It would have been very interesting to see how well the SIRCA had held up. However the folks at JPL were adamant that getting anywhere near to the backshell was a non-option because the rover's wheels could have become entangled with the parachute's strings. Fortunately they allowed us to take a close look at the forebody heat shield. That was quite interesting and almost made up for not getting close to the backshell.