[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

There's a very real possibilty of not being able to drive down into Victoria Crater - just as there was with Endurance, which I think we were lucky with. If that is the case, what kind of science plan will the team come up with? Perhaps drive around the rim and producing lots of large panoramic mosaics? There doesnt seem anywhere else to go a beyond the crater.

[djellison]

I'd be astonished if there wasn't a single way 'in' around the entire rim - on the understand that the interior of Victoria Crater would be a suitable place for the 'end of mission'.

However - if we can't / don't go in, then obviously one would do a lap of the place, work Mini-TES to the bone, I'd say three Pan positions ( 10 O'Clock, 6 O'Clock and 3 O'Clock ) - and then perhaps NE to some interesint white features and larger ammount of exposed rock in and around the area in the NE part of the Victoria Apron.

Other than that, anywhere else involved going through a lot of Purgatory like terrain...or even worse. The only interesting target would be the larger crater to the ESE, but that's more than twice as far as the rover has covered to date ( 12.7km ) ...and all the "ooo 50m/sol, 3 sols a week.." maths really just don't work as we've seen so far. You could speculate that sort of maths to make it anything between about 200 and 1000 sols. Perhaps MRO imagery would help route-finding for such a field-trip, but I imagine much of it would be like the area between Olympia and Purgatory....pretty bloody terrible driving.

Truth be told, if we got to Victoria with no Endurance-like easy way in....I would be very tempted to find the best drive-in place, even if it were 35 degrees or so....and just take it nice and gentley and go in anyway - traverse the slope to make it less agressive and see what happens. Given there is no realistic target beyond Victoria - there isn't much to loose in terms of getting stuck on the way into, or at the bottom of Vic. If we do get stuck down there, the Atmos scientists could have a Mini-TES field day, Wolff could get his Sky hemisphere (LOCO Mike, LOCO ) and heck - thing of the imaging one could do stuck in there.

In conclusion to that long winded nonsense - realistically, we've almost got to go in, even if the best access point isn't proven to be driveable, because we've got nothing left to go and do.

Doug