Getting to 'Big Crater', A little premature speculation Options

[algorimancer]

I don't think anyone here expects or wishes for less than a year of exploration at Victoria. Still, it is fun to make plans for a rover still going two years from now.

On the contrary, I'd prefer to spend no more than 3 months at Victoria, then head east for Big Crater (BC) with minimal stops along the way. If I were driving I would immediately drive down Duck Bay, stopping every few meters for instrumental measurements of the geological section, then skirt the dune field while on a slope which maximizes the sunlight on the solar arrays, taking lot's of color panoramas as we go, then drive up some bay on the opposite side (with perhaps a few more geo stops going up the vertical section), then spend the summer going all-out towards southern BC, and spend next winter on the sun-facing slope of BC's south-rim hills (or at least on the west-rim hills).

[ToSeek]

Oh, of course...that was merely unbridled wishful thinking. If Oppy made another 35 km, Lockmart should come back to the government at that point and demand royalties!

Why? The rovers were built in-house at JPL. Lockheed Martin was only responsible for the aeroshell. Even if they were the prime contractor, I'd say LM can get royalties as soon as they reimburse NASA for the Mars Climate Orbiter, Genesis, and HESSI.

[sranderson]

Why? The rovers were built in-house at JPL. Lockheed Martin was only responsible for the aeroshell. Even if they were the prime contractor, I'd say LM can get royalties as soon as they reimburse NASA for the Mars Climate Orbiter, Genesis, and HESSI.

Ball Aerospace built the pancam mast, the high gain antenna and gimbal, the power distribution and control modules, the pyro firing circuit modules, and the REU avionics boards (telem for cruise and lander).

[Bill Harris]

BC ought to be a goal since that is the way our primate psyches are wired. But the purpose of the journey has to be science stops along the way since Down Section is the actual Prime Directive.

--Bill

[edstrick]

If they ever decide to make a dash for the big crater, it will be with ***FAR*** better routemaps than they have now... with highest possible resolution data from HiRISE and probably 3-D high resolution topography as well.. and CRISM spectrometry of the route, they could plot a route that can likely be navigated much better than the route to Victoria, and pick "5 day" science stops every 2 weeks or some such with more assurance they'll hit the important en-route variations.

[djellison]

, I'd prefer to spend no more than 3 months at Victoria,

You want to spend less than half the time they spent at Endurance, to explore twice, three, four time the exposure of outcrop?? That woudl be selling the place short wouldn't it?

Seriously guys - 'Big Crater' may be a nice pipe dream, and it may be somewhere worth aiming for if we were totally and utterly finished with Victoria....but to cut short investigation of the most extensive and amazing opportunity yet for a goal which realistically we can not expect to reach would be silly imho.

Doug

[ngunn]

BC ought to be a goal since that is the way our primate psyches are wired. But the purpose of the journey has to be science stops along the way since Down Section is the actual Prime Directive.

--Bill

Maybe I'm not primate? Having spent years crossing an interesting-because-unearthly but nevertheless monotonous plain to get to this wonderful place I have absolutely no desire to set out on another long trek. Let's just stay and get to know Victoria really well. Not just the solid geology but every aspect of the local environment - dawns and sunsets, microclimate and crater wind patterns, dust transport processes, seasonal changes.

[Bill Harris]

Oh, I agree. If the old girl is still able to rove and seems healthy after a thorough Victoria investigation, we might consider extending the traverse. But OTOH, setting Oppy in good locations to watch erosional-depositional processes as a semi-sessile base station would work as well, or better.

As a geologist-primate, my ancestral urge is down-section.

--Bill

[nprev]

Ball Aerospace built the pancam mast, the high gain antenna and gimbal, the power distribution and control modules, the pyro firing circuit modules, and the REU avionics boards (telem for cruise and lander).

I stand corrected, sranderson & ToSeek; was just trying to make a (pretty lousy, really) joke...

And actually, I'm coming around to the idea of staying at Vicky for quite awhile. It looks like there's a lot of stuff to do here, and risking Oppy on a mad dash to a distant goal at her advanced age seems unwise unless and until VC is first thoroughly explored.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

On the right tip of the landing ellipse, just outside of it, there are two eroded craters. They both have white features in the middle. Are those dunes or large mounds of eroding outcrop? There was also one North of Endurance Crater, about the same distance north as Victoria is south.

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/01/24/

[Oren Iishi]

I stand corrected, sranderson & ToSeek; was just trying to make a (pretty lousy, really) joke...

And actually, I'm coming around to the idea of staying at Vicky for quite awhile. It looks like there's a lot of stuff to do here, and risking Oppy on a mad dash to a distant goal at her advanced age seems unwise unless and until VC is first thoroughly explored.

I have an idea. Why doesn't NASA use the spare rover at the JPL lab and send it as close to BC as possible. Obviously, it's a proven design and probably could be done very inexpensively. Plus, this should fill the gap nicely until the Mars Lab Rover gets to the planet. MRL shouldn't go to BC, it should go to region on Mars that gets very little sunlight since the RTGs will supply the power and not solar cells.

[algorimancer]

My recollection (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) is that the rover at the JPL lab is more a prototype than a spare, and not really "complete" in the sense that it could be dropped on Mars and function. On the other hand, at this point it would likely be relatively inexpensive to assemble a genuine duplicate rover, as the design work has already been done. I have had a recurring fantasy of setting-up a little assembly line to mass produce these things and drop them all over Mars. Still, building the rover is only a small part of the cost; it remains terribly expensive to actually deliver it to Mars.

I agree that MRL shouldn't go to BC, there are plenty of unexplored regions with interesting geology.

[ToSeek]

I stand corrected, sranderson & ToSeek; was just trying to make a (pretty lousy, really) joke...

I realize you weren't particularly serious, but I still didn't want LM to get credit where credit wasn't due, particularly since they have a long history of million-dollar screwups.

[algorimancer]

You want to spend less than half the time they spent at Endurance, to explore twice, three, four time the exposure of outcrop?? That woudl be selling the place short wouldn't it?

Seriously guys - 'Big Crater' may be a nice pipe dream, and it may be somewhere worth aiming for if we were totally and utterly finished with Victoria....but to cut short investigation of the most extensive and amazing opportunity yet for a goal which realistically we can not expect to reach would be silly imho.

Doug

Why less than half the time? To begin with, this is all fantasy, the JPL folks aren't gonna do what I recommend, and I know it. At the same time, let's place the exploration of Endurance and Victoria into context. Endurance was the first major exploration target of the mission, so a lot of caution was appropriate. We were still learning about managing rover operations, and didn't know much yet about how the rover would interact with the new environment - slopes and different materials and so on. A lot of learning needed to take place. Subsequently the rover ops have become pretty routine, we have a pretty good idea of how the rover will handle the different terrains and slopes associated with Victoria, and today's navigation software is a lot more robust. In principal, we can do a lot more science in a lot less time (barring Mossbauer (integration, assuming that's the instrument with the decaying radioactive source). The main thing of interest in Victoria is the vertical geological section, which can be surveyed neatly during crater ingress and egress, horizontal exploration won't add much to that. So, we make an initial pass through the geology on ingress, identify portions worth additional exploration, and hit those in depth upon egress. We take lot's of pretty pictures along the way, along with mini-TES. The main limiting factor that I see is how densely to sample the surface during ingress/egress, and considering the depth of the crater I may be underestimating this. In summary, I'm not suggesting that we cut-short the investigation of Victoria, merely that we be expeditious about it, and move on once we've reached a point of diminishing returns. Yes, 3 months is probably ridiculuously optimistic, but I think that 1 year is excessively pessimistic. Perhaps 6-9 months would be about right. What I'd like to avoid is getting into the mind-frame that Victoria is where Opportunity goes to die.

[BrianL]

Perhaps 6-9 months would be about right. What I'd like to avoid is getting into the mind-frame that Victoria is where Opportunity goes to die.

Spirit has demonstrated, albeit out of necessity, that you can spend many, many months in one location gathering information. There is easily enough science work at VC to use up its year of funding commitment.

Should that funding be extended yet again? Is the science to be gained on a post-VC trek worth allocating money that might be better spent on another mission?

Everything I've had access to painted VC as an ultimate goal. Probably an impossible one, but one to consider if it lasted long enough. If there are other targets beyond VC that JPL wanted to get to, let me know. As it stands, I think the best course is to let Opportunity finish up its roving science at VC, then largely pull the plug next autumn. Put Opportunity up high on the rim of Victoria Crater to finish her days making long term observations and measurements. Let the MER team walk away by choice, heads held high that not one goal... no matter how pie in the sky it seemed initially... was left unfulfilled.

Maybe there are better spots from a scientific standpoint, but from a purely emotional perspective, I know where I want Opportunity to come to rest. We saw it from afar, even if we couldn't agree where it was for the longest time, and the romantic in me can see it as Mars' way of saying, "I know it's tough, but keep going little rover, you're almost home".

Let Opportunity find a home at the Beacon... call it Opportunity Point as a fitting tribute to the team of people that gave us this wonderful adventure. Do you really want to wake to the news that motor failure has left the rover stuck in some anonymous ripple out on the plains, half way to nowhere?

Brian