The West Valley Route Options

[Shaka]

I'm telling the Sierra Club about you, Dan'l! Bashing up our wilderness areas like that.

Back OT, Didn't the MER mappers produce a nice topographic map of the Home Plate area a year or two ago. I don't think it included the Von Braun region, but I could be wrong. How about it, Paolo? Have you drivers got definite numbers to guide our approach?

[RoverDriver]

...
Back OT, Didn't the MER mappers produce a nice topographic map of the Home Plate area a year or two ago. I don't think it included the Von Braun region, but I could be wrong. How about it, Paolo? Have you drivers got definite numbers to guide our approach?

We have the NAVCAM panoramas that were captured along the route from the south valley to WH3. We also have the nice DEM from USGS (publicly available) to guide us through. Unfortunately we do not have surface imagery near Goddard and Von Braun. HiRISE is an incredibly useful tool, but Spirit obstacles (small rocks, sand traps etc..) cannot realy be seen from orbit, so we really have to have surface imaging.
The next few drives will be challenging, but there will be more difficult terrain ahead of us.

I was not part of the driving team during this drive but if I can read between the lines (tracks?) I believe they gave priority to maintaining elevation. One thing we have learned: Spirit has quite a bit of difficulty in climbing, so once you lost elevation you will have to pay a high price to get it back.

Regarding spiraling around VB, I don't think that would work. The rover would make progress sure but the side slip would not allow the rover to gain elevation. The slopes around VB are quite steep. But first let's try to get there. Keep your eyes on the road.

Paolo

[Tesheiner]

So, maybe what we are seeing is an attempt to circumnav the sand patch by the left (east) side, almost touching HP's slope?

> I believe they gave priority to maintaining elevation.

The mobility info from previous drives tells the rover is now around 70-80cm higher than before the move.

[Geert]

The mobility info from previous drives tells the rover is now around 70-80cm higher than before the move.

If you look at the very useful projection from Astro0 here it looks to me like if you continue hugging the site of homeplate (which indeed seems the most logical thing to do) you will end up at a quite nasty sudden rocky patch (hidden from view from the present navcams as it slopes down at bit?) which does not look very good. To avoid it you would need to turn downslope a bit, but the sand over there looks even worse..

It seems almost impossible to get much drive-info from HiRISE, no matter how wonderful its resolution but you need to pancam and navcam images to make sense of what you are looking at.

[jamescanvin]

you will end up at a quite nasty sudden rocky patch (hidden from view from the present navcams as it slopes down at bit?) which does not look very good.

It doesn't look that bad to me - and being downhill, it shouldn't be a problem for Spirit to cross IMO.

[fredk]

I agree the rocky ledge up ahead at the end of the sandy patch doesn't look bad. As James said, it will be downhill for us, as you can see in this anaglyph view from sol 1350:

[climber]

The mobility info from previous drives tells the rover is now around 70-80cm higher than before the move.

Do you know if this is the altitude difference between start and end of drive or the positive total taking in account ups and downs during the drive (like the odometry)?

[Tesheiner]

The former.

[RoverDriver]

Do you know if this is the altitude difference between start and end of drive or the positive total taking in account ups and downs during the drive (like the odometry)?

If I understand the question correctly, the rover position and attitude are integrated over time. That is, the rover propagates the commanded motion by using the IMU data to determine istantaneously the rover position and attitude. Whenever we use Visual Odometry, this would affect the position only, not the attitude. The IMU is much more accurate than VO.

Paolo

[Fran Ontanaya]

Von Braun seems to have a quite aerodynamic shape. Maybe the airflow could be modelled to hunt for cleaning events.

[Tesheiner]

I see a color pancam mosaic (named "Home Plate survey") in the plans for the following sols, meaning that we will spend the Easter stopped here. And speaking about cleaning events, I'm wondering if this stop may be related to an attempt to find some breeze flowing here.

[BrianL]

Or they just want the Easter long weekend off. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

[fredk]

Thanks for the info, Tesheiner. So this is another reason to drive close to the side of HP. Let's hope for a spectacular pan...

[Stu]

Little off-topic, sorry, but this is set at Spirit's current location, and I honestly can't think where else to put it...

"Rover Hugger" (fiction)

[CosmicRocker]

I see a color pancam mosaic (named "Home Plate survey") in the plans for the following sols, meaning that we will spend the Easter stopped here. ...

That is like music to my ears. I've been eagerly watching each drive up the West Valley, hoping for a nice view of the stratigraphy on this side of Home Plate. I was beginning to wonder if they would ever let us see it. I suppose the limited power may be part of the reason there were not HP images each step of the way. Regardless of the reason, I am anxiously anticipating a nice pancam panorama from the current position.