MSL at Rocknest, First scoop samples - sols 57-101 Options

[elakdawalla]

Curiosity has put more than 400 meters on the odometer and tosol (sol 56) she bumped up to a sand drift that we now know (via Twitter) is named Rocknest and will be the site of the first sample grab. In last week's press briefing, John Grotzinger warned that we will be here for "what seems like a very long time," 2-3 weeks. They will have to run several samples through the SA-SPaH (Sample Acquisition, Processing and Handling subsystem, pronounced "Saw-spa") and in particular CHIMRA (Collection and Handling for In situ Martian Rock Analysis, pronounced "chimera") in order to "clean" it of any remaining Earthly contamination with good Mars dirt before they deliver the first sample to SAM or Chemin. So this seems like a good place to start a new thread.

As usual, discuss stuff that happened through sol 56 in the previous thread.

[EdTruthan]

Damien's (Ant103) much better at seamless stitching of Navcam mosaics than I, but I just had to see this one ASAP.... so here's a quickly stitched anaglyph of the Sol 60 Navcam panorama. Gives a pretty good impression of the lay of things around MSL today. Phil's "sea lions" can be seen in this one too just above and to the right of the RUHF antenna. I'm fascinated by the long "petrified tree" looking formation on the ground in front of them. You can see it even better in the Sol 54 MC100 mosaic. What the heck is that? It looks for all intents and purposes like a fallen log...very strait, very long, and even looks very round...hmmm. Here's a closer look at it.

[stewjack]

I just had to see this one ASAP.... so here's a quickly stitched anaglyph of the Sol 60 Navcam panorama. Gives a pretty good impression of the lay of things around MSL today.

That is certainly worth staring at. Trying to place the terrain from the orbital images with the panorama view. I have no trouble identifying "rocky point" - particularly if I look at the crater rim in the background. That gives me an additional check! Those 360 panoramas are handy orientation devices.

However: In the North East direction, there is a somewhat circular depression that is possibly a crater or perhaps a deeply eroded basin in Glenelg. I can't really place it with the overhead view. A lot would depend on it's distance from MSL. Trying to tempt some Pano/orbilal comparisons. With the MERS we had programs that allowed distance information to be recovered from NAVCAM images, but I haven't used then for years and anyway the cameras are different.

~ North East Cropped section of Ed Truthan's Pano:
edit corrected direction

[ngunn]

Trying to tempt some Pano/orbilal comparisons.

It would be great if someone could match visible features with Peter's map (see Geomorphology post 46), particularly the little 'island' at 137 27 05E, 4 35 32S which should be quite prominent.

[stewjack]

It would be great if someone could match visible features with Peter's map (see Geomorphology post 46), particularly the little 'island' at 137 27 05E, 4 35 32S which should be quite prominent.

I looked at that image and could not see any island at that location. It seemed to be a location in a basin. The problem of not being able to measure distance accurately would probably make any identification difficult, but copying the image and then drawing an arrow to point out a feature would simplify the problem for whoever tries to solve your problem.

Crop of Peters Map