Opportunity Route Map Options

[David]

Isn't it amazing - we are so close to Victoria Crater now, almost the range of Eagle to Endurance....but we can essentially see NOTHING of it.

Heh -- I'm still waiting for the "hell of a view"! Granted that Opportunity's had a good view out to the horizon for a while, it's still not everything-visible panorama I expected. The land's too flat and the horizon too close, I guess.

[Tesheiner]

About the horizon, it seems we have the false impression that it corresponds to the near rim but it's actually a fair distance of that rim.

I made the following composition from pancams taken on sols 855 and 864. Beacon aside, there are some dark features which can be seen on both shots and there is clearly a parallax effect due to the rover's movement towards BC. Given the beacon at the near rim, obviously those dark features are not very near the rim. The leftmost dark feature is quite at the horizon line and that's what convinced me that we are actually not seeing the near rim except for the beacon.

[Bill Harris]

The truth will be that the Beacon is stranger than strange. I'd propose that it _ought_ to be named "Escher" because of the optical illusion property! Except that name has been used before.

Victoria is indeed strange. A flat ejecta blanket, no appreciable outside rim (with the exception of that enigma) above the ejecta blanket so it won't be visible until we are virtually upon it. Endurance at least had some rim above the plain, Erebus had the "Dunefield" and the Payson bluff but Victoria is stealthy...

--Bill

[Bob Shaw]

Victoria is indeed strange. A flat ejecta blanket, no appreciable outside rim (with the exception of that enigma) above the ejecta blanket so it won't be visible until we are virtually upon it. Endurance at least had some rim above the plain, Erebus had the "Dunefield" and the Payson bluff but Victoria is stealthy...

--Bill

Bill:

Is it possible that somebody has stolen it? Ustrax was previously in the frame for the Ultreya Heist...

Hmmm...

Bob Shaw

[Pando]

Isn't it amazing - we are so close to Victoria Crater now, almost the range of Eagle to Endurance....but we can essentially see NOTHING of it.

I think we'll be *very* close to Victoria until we see the ground open up in front of the rover, and we'll say "holy $#!%"! Looking at the satellite images Vicky's pretty deep. It will be quite a sight when Oppy will be perched on one of the triangular rim remnants looking into the hole.

[RNeuhaus]

Sol 866 (today) and 867 (Sunday) there will not be any driving. Oppy will just by observing the sky.

CODE

866 p2600.09 0   0   0   0   0   0    pancam_tau
866 p2627.01 0   0   0   0   0   0    pancam_sky_radiance_thumbs_L457R247
866 Total    0   0   0   0   0   0

CODE

867 p2631.01 0   0   0   0   0   0    pancam_sky_spot_L234567R34567
867 Total    0   0   0   0   0   0

Rodolfo

[alan]

Taking advantage of the long weekend to finish downloading the software update?

[Tesheiner]

> Taking advantage of the long weekend to finish downloading the software update?

Not necessarily given that different antennas are used for sw/commands uplink (HGA) and for data downlink (UHF).

> Sol 866 (today) and 867 (Sunday) there will not be any driving. Oppy will just by observing the sky.

I think the main reason for this lack of new sequences is to give a chance for less priority data still on the rover to be downlinked.

[CosmicRocker]

I can't help but wonder, "How the blazes are we going to draw accurate route maps once on the apron?" Unless we are sent that postulated MRO image of the region by the gods above, we'll all be squinting pretty hard to find navigational markers to correlate to the MOC image. I have no doubt that we'll finally refine a process, but does anyone have a plan? Mine's pretty rough...

[djellison]

Not necessarily given that different antennas are used for sw/commands uplink (HGA) and for data downlink (UHF).

They can also do uplink via UHF now as well - but there's a long lead time for getting the data ready to send as it has to go up on whichever uplink to Odyssey is before the UHF pass, and it can be 24 hrs or more.

Charge batteries, downlink some lower priority mid-drive imaging (such as a sol 812 and sol 856 L1 albedo pan), , do some more flight software uplinks, all good stuff.

Doug

[Bill Harris]

My guess, Tom, is that we will be making good guesstimates based on direction and odometry. Being very flat, I'd reckon that waypoints would be easily visible. Being a very firm surface, I'd suppose that wheel slip would approach zero. Advanced WAGs, in other words.

--Bill

[Shaka]

I can't help but wonder, "How the blazes are we going to draw accurate route maps once on the apron?"
...does anyone have a plan? Mine's pretty rough...

Tom! Repent! Thank the Good Lord for THE BEACON!
With that, Beagle, the smaller apron craters, and other landmarks we haven't seen yet, the apron will be Triangulation CITY! . I expect Tesh, Dilo, Rod, Ustrax, fredk...hell, I might even take a whack at it... should be able to calculate our position to about 2.5 gnat's eyelashes. Of course there won't be slabs of evaporite to sit on and positively identify from orbit, but sooner or later we have to learn to trust the geometry! This may be a struggle for the Far-rimmers, but it's my fervent hope that the sight of that glittering, white slab of evaporite perched up there on the near rim will at last free them from the shackles of....of... abdominal intuition.
Brothers, let us pray.

[ElkGroveDan]

sooner or later we have to learn to trust the geometry! This may be a struggle for the Far-rimmers,

One of the things you first learn about geometry and trigonometry is that common points between two calculations must be just that, points. Different points along a wall that appear to be the same point source from different perspectives will really throw your calculations out of whack.

So I am now forced to wonder. If we are going to use the conclusion-jumping trigonometry practiced by the near rimmers to navigate Opportunity up the ejecta blanket and to the precipice of this massive crater , did JPL do any roll and tumble tests on the MER craft?

[RNeuhaus]

> Sol 866 (today) and 867 (Sunday) there will not be any driving. Oppy will just by observing the sky.

I think the main reason for this lack of new sequences is to give a chance for less priority data still on the rover to be downlinked.

At the Pancam database, I have found many pending pictures from past soles to be downlinked to Earth. As the MER is getting a new uploaded mobility software, I seems that it is wise to clean all memory of kept past pictures just in the case before upgrading a new version of Mobility software. This will avoid that any problems related with the upgrad might loose any remain pictures in the board.

Rodolfo

[Tesheiner]

I can't help but wonder, "How the blazes are we going to draw accurate route maps once on the apron?"

I would try a similar aproach as for Spirit.
You must find similar features (e.g. rocks) on both pre and post-drive images and calculate the net driving distance using any Parallax Calculator. For the driving heading I would take the beacon as a reference.
This approach, together with periodic corrections (if possible), worked quite well for Spirit's route map.

BTW, when I say "I would" is because I will probably have no time to do that. My summer vacations starts on Jul 15th and I'm quite sure by that time we will still be at Beagle Crater.