Victoria ahead..., Time spent at Emma Dean Options

[Stu]

Well, if it IS "Cleft" we're glimpsing over VC's edge now, what might it look like when we can see it properly?

It looks to me (he says, pretending he knows what he's talking about! ) that the "notch" in this feature is an area of material that has, for some reason, either slumped down or been eaten away in part by some erosive process. The slumping option makes more sense to me, because I think there are hints of blocks of material below it, farther down into the crater where they've fallen or slid. I'm still wondering if the post-VC formation (if it was post-VC? I asked for input on that Q ages ago but no-one had any thoughts on the matter..) of nearby Sofi crater might have shaped this southern area of VC...?

If it is an erosive feature, then what has eroded it? Wind action? Just thinking aloud...

Whatever's going on here, I look forward to more detailed pics. I think we'll see some big blocks beneath "Cleft" and a lot of areological action around it.

[Pando]

Hey man can you count the times you've put me on the right tracks on those pre-historic days?...

Hey ustrax, yeah, that was really fun in the early days, we had a blast creating all those maps and getting our bearings straight with Spirit and the abyss, before the mapping pros showed up...

[ustrax]

before the mapping pros showed up...

I like to see myself as a proud Cro-Magnon ancestor of those...

[Bill Harris]

Stu, google "slope failure" and "mass wasting" for background info.

This "Cleft" feature might well be a slope failure or a slump or an incipient lansdslide. Usually these tend to be semi-circular or arcuate in shape, but this part of Mars seems to favor the polyagonal boundaries. It does mirror the shapes of the "scallops" around Victoria. Likely what is happening is that material is being wind-eroded from below the bluff, which removes the support from the overlying strata which fails and collapses. You can see a landslide at the toe of this slump.

Gravity is a cruel mistress.

--Bill

[Stu]

Been playing about with the best image we have of VC so far ( PIA08447 ) and some interesting features pop out at me and I wonder if anyone else agrees what they might be?

Down there on the south side of the crater floor there appears to be an area of boulders and material spilled from "up above", intruding on the dune field... Elsewhere there are other spills of material, with what look like some pretty big boulders, blocks or section of rim material too.

All of which lead me to believe that even if VC isn't the "pit" some are expecting, there will be a lot of interesting detail within to keep us all happy for the next few months!

P.S. Thanks Bill, saw your post when mine went "up". I'll google those terms you mentioned. I know you guys know all this stuff already but I'm discovering it for the first time, so please excuse my ignorance/enthusiasm.

[djellison]

Sol 931 was indeed a drive fault - there is some DSN hogging going on so they'll be short of a few uplinks over the next few sols.

Expect IDD work over the w'end, and Victoria by the w'end after

Doug

[mhoward]

Any details on the nature of the drive fault? I have a bet riding on it (Not really. I'm just curious - especially since it looks like I'm going to lose my bet on the far rim/far far rim debate. It would be nice to be right about something.)

[Bill Harris]

There are a lot of interesting features in the bowl of Victoria. The PIA08477 adaption of the MOC image pales in comparision to the "raw" image which we should be able to get our grubby hands on next month.

Going back a year or two, this reminds me of the excitement of seeing the interior of Endurance. There were a lot of interesting slumps, slips and slides there. Look back in the NASA/JPL image archive (or Slinted's site) for Oppy images starting around Sol 100 and going up to the 300's. That will be a good practice run for looking at Vickie's goodies...

--Bill

[Pando]

Expect IDD work over the w'end, and Victoria by the w'end after

I think they're gonna just sit around until the DSN issues are sorted out before doing the IDD work on that rock, which will be next Tue/Wed. Then hop over to the rim by Fri/Sat. (imho)

[dot.dk]

What is the DSN issue?

[stevelu]

Not sure if this is what you're asking, but for any who don't know, DSN would be Deep Space Network, a shared and global network of big ol' dishes.

Others will have to address the specifics of this particular glitch or traffic jam.

[ustrax]

Stu, google "slope failure" and "mass wasting" for background info.

Hey! I googled images for 'cleft', trying to understand what it means, and that did not amused me...

[Tesheiner]

While we are waiting for the final steps towards Victoria I did the following exercise trying to identify two far rim features (A and seen on sol 931 pancams with their counterparts on a MOC image. Yes, this has been already done by Pando (for , but I've got different results.

Comparing this identification with Pando's, there is a difference of just 2 degrees in the absolute heading of the feature I identified as B and the one identified by him (slightly to the NE). The problem is that if I rotate the polar projection and the heading lines by those 2 degrees counter-clockwise, the near rim features I used as reference don't match (specially the one to the right of and the pancam pointing information (taken from the PCDT web) would be off by those 2 degrees too.

We should know the "ground truth" in few days, hopefully after only one driving sol, but meanwhile I would like to know your comments.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[ElkGroveDan]

Hey! I googled images for 'cleft', trying to understand what it means, and that did not amused me...

cleft1  /
–noun 1. a space or opening made by cleavage; a split.
2. a division formed by cleaving.
3. a hollow area or indentation: a chin with a cleft.
4. Veterinary Pathology. a crack on the bend of the pastern of a horse.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Origin: 1300–50; ME clift, OE (ge)clyft split, cracked; c. OHG, ON kluft; akin to cleave2]

—Synonyms 1. fissure, crevice, crack, rift, cranny, chasm, crevasse.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

[RNeuhaus]

What is the DSN issue?

The Deep Space Network (DSN) communicates with nearly all spacecraft flying throughout our solar system. About 28 spacecraft are cruising in space, observing Jupiter, the sun, asteroids, and comets, and even more spacecraft are traveling to Saturn and the outer reaches of our solar system. The DSN antennas are extremely busy trying to track all of these space missions at once. The Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft must therefore share time on the DSN antennas. A sophisticated scheduling system with a team of hundreds of negotiators around the world ensures that each mission´s priorities are met.

The rovers´ downlink sessions (when the rovers send information back to Earth) will generally be limited to a couple of hours at a stretch, with perhaps two downlink sessions per Martian day (sol) per rover. MSPA allows only one spacecraft at a time to have the uplink, and it is expected that the rovers will command early in each sol (Martian day) for roughly an hour each to provide the instructions for that sol's activities.

You can find much more information at http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/features/index.html

Rodolfo