Post Conjunction: Santa Maria to Cape York, The Journey to 'Spirit Point' Options

[sgendreau]

Awwwwwww. It's cute.

[CosmicRocker]

I'm guessing this means that all (or most) of the outcrops around here have similar vugs. I don't think they somehow honed in on the only one that had vugs.

In retrospect, I think that is the only explanation that makes sense. My comment was prompted by the earlier rover update that stated that they had seen an outcrop 40 meters ahead upon which they intended to do some in situ work.

Opportunity Mission Update

The science team has spied an outcrop ahead to perform some brief in situ (contact) science. Opportunity moved a modest 41 meters (135 feet) to the east/southeast as the approach to this outcrop. The plan is to briefly examine this outcrop before moving on.

Easy - use the last two drives before the Memorial Day weekend to arrive at the 'next' piece of outcrop. Stop. Do science for 3 days.

I hadn't thought about that, but undoubtedly the holiday weekend had a lot to do with it.

[eoincampbell]

Gumdrop Crater...

Great color renders of late, it's like we're re-united with your filters again

[kenny]

With the precedent of Skylab, I'm assuming Gumdrop is also named after a manned spacecraft -- the Command Module half of Apollo 9.

[fredk]

Monolith on our tail:
http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportuni...0M1.JPG?sol2608

[Explorer1]

My God... it's full of blueberries!

[MoreInput]

That's the real reason why Nasa wanted to go this way - we are connecting to the elder civilization on Mars now! Endeavour crater was just a false pretense!

This picture of the monolith is really a reference to 2001: In Kubrick's film the first humans used for the first time tools (the rotating bone) - and now we are with a really cool tool (a rover is just a tool) on Mars! A tool can extend our abilities to achieve some task much easier, or even impossible for us as humans alone, and now we are extending this ability to other planets. Wow!

<philosophic mode on/>
It is fascinating, how much the people can do with a tool, and they are continously learning more, how to use this tool: The first humans found out, how to use a bone as a tool. And our beloved rover team also just get still more out of this tool - by driving it backwards, peering under the belly with the microscope camera, make trenches with the wheels. I think thats an important part of human development - and we are part of it.
<philosophic mode off/>

[Astro0]

We've been down the monolith road before
Here and here and here.

Now back on the road to Endeavour

[Tesheiner]

This last sol 2614, Opportunity left the vicinity of Valdivia and Gumdrop on a long 140+ drive crossing the 30km mark.
As it is written on the newest and beautiful logo made by Astro0, that's "50 times beyond the mission distance goal". Think of it...

[Pertinax]

If I lived 50 times beyond my "mission distance goal" I'd die at roughly 4000 years old. Note quite Methuselah, but that is rather impressive!

(was doing a little happy dance this morning when I saw James' tweet regarding 144m on the last drive and realized we broke through 30kms)


-- Pertinax

[djellison]

For an average car manufacturers warranty to match, it would have to be something like a 140 year, 3 million mile guarantee.

[Astro0]

30kms is an amazing milestone.
For anyone interested here's the banner logo in a desktop variation.


Link to a hi-res version here 1.2mb
and large banner here 6.17mb

[Tesheiner]

The current report on the mission's website include this note (highlighted by me).

On Sol 2611 (May 29, 2011), the rover used the Microscopic Imager (MI) to collect an extensive mosaic of the exposed outcrop. Opportunity then conducted a MI poker test, which exhibited anomalous behavior the last time it was used. The test indicated positive switch trip on just one of three tries. The project is investigating this further.

Does anyone know what that means?

[M@!]

According to this site the MI Poker failed when investigating Ruiz Garcia.

[Stu]

Does anyone know what that means?

I asked Scott. Paraphrased reply:

The MI poker is how the MI nominally finds the surface.
It's a thin rod attached to the MI with a contact switch on the rover
side; when it senses contact with a hard surface
you pull back a known distance and you're at the best-focus
position.