Southward from San Antonio to the Next Waypoint Options

[Stu]

Thanks for all the help guys, but naaah, nothing's working. I bet it's a stoopid AOL thing. Just received this from the very helpful Webmaster Ron...

It should be "partially" up now. You may just be experiencing DNS
issues because I'm using a temporary IP address until I can move the
machine back down to the colo. Befor I do this, I want to replace the
RAM in the machine as it seemed to have a RAM error today that may
have caused a crash. (If it's not one thing, it's another...)

If you can clear your DNS cache, that may help. If you are running Mac
OS X (10.5 or above...) you can issue the following command in the
Terminal Application:

dscacheutil -flushcache

You are on your own in Windows or Linux.

Ron

Will try again later, have to go to work now anyway.

[Bill Harris]

At this time, Exploratorium is down again. I suspect local network and/or server issues, which have gone on for a couple of weeks now.

--Bill

[fredk]

For those who haven't been able to see exploratorium, it's been back but with no new images, so you're not missing anything. The latest are from sol 2252, before the latest drive, and those 2252 images were available before the site went down.

[Bill Harris]

Word from the Exploratorium:

Folks,
The computer that we use for hosting the raw Mars Rover data had a serious meltdown recently. We will be rebuilding it and will hopefully have your beloved raw data flowing in a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience. Who knew that hard drives don't last forever (or that the Rovers would be such troopers!)
- Ron 2010-05-27

http://www.exploratorium.edu/mars/raw_data.html

--Bill

[Hungry4info]

Sounds eerily similar to post #290.

[ngunn]

I just tried now and it worked, but like fredk said no new images.

[Stu]

Sounds eerily similar to post #290.

Easy to miss things sometimes in a busy thread Bill, done it myself several times.

[Bill Harris]

eerily similar

Deja-vuvu

I came across that as I was searching for a "raw data mirror site" that we could use whilst Exploratorium was ailing. There is nothing except for the "official" JPL site:

http://origin.mars5.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/a...pportunity.html

--Bill

[Guest_Bobby_*]

Once we get to Endeavour Crater. Has anyone heard what they want to do? Will we do hill climbing or will we start going down into the Crater as far as we can???

[Phil Stooke]

The hills are the target, an old crater rim projecting up through the Meridiani plains. Descending into the crater takes you back into plains material.

Phil

[Bill Harris]

We'll see what it looks like when we get there. In theory, ascending from atop the Columbia Hills would have simply gotten Spirit back down to the Gusev Plain, but actually placed her into the most interesting locale.

Geomorphologically, the inter-crater plains should be different than the intra-crater plains.

--Bill

[Phil Stooke]

I know what you mean, but to me it looks like the same plains unit is draped over the whole crater, inside and out, with exposures of different material only in the rim hills. One different thing in the interior is large dark barchan-like dunes, but they are a very much less interesting target than the ancient rocks on the crater rim.

Phil

[ngunn]

There is the possibility that the crater once contained a lake, in which case there should be some sedimentary rocks distinct from the meridiani stuff. Remains of these might be found at the foot of the hills rather than their summits, providing a worthy science target in the event that by this time serious climbing is ruled out. One question I asked in an earlier discussion didn't get answered, at least not here. I guess this is a good opportunity to try again. What is the elevation of the lowest point on Endeavour's perimeter and how does it compare with the elevation of the beachlike platform we see around the lower parts of the rim hills?

[Bill Harris]

It's hard to say what ought to be done because we don't know what she'll be able to do. Oppy will be pretty old and creaky by the time she reaches the Endeavour Hills. As many of us are.

At a minimum she ought to be able to walk the outcrop and look at the outcrop and pieces of float that have come drifting down. In an ideal world she ought to make a travserse up the hill and down the other side and give us a good idea of the lithology and structure of that section. Look at the inter-crater sediments. And then explore.


Ngunn, I'm not sure what that elevation is. I don't think it's as much a "beach-like platform" as much as it is an erosionally-resistant bed. Whatever it turns out to be, it will most assuredly be interesting...

--Bill

[fredk]

Squyres has a few things to say about the plans for Endeavour in the new PS update:

...the team firmed up the decision on where the rover will make "landfall" at the big crater. "We're going to go to the nearest spot on the rim," announced Squyres. "We kind of had that established already."... "We have no idea how long this rover is going to last," said Squyres. "So we're not going to take the long route. We're going to go to the first jut of stuff we can find. Then, having done that, we can talk about going other places too."

Judging from the images in that report, our Stu's known about this already...

Also from the new report, confirmation of the turn to the east:

This month, Opportunity finally made the turn from south/southeast to the east, Squyres said

And good news about the pancam lenses:

The gust also lifted a little more dust from the panoramic camera lenses, confirmed [Bell]. "The lenses have been clearing little on and off for quite some time actually, but this time it was noticeable and that's a good thing," he said... "We've had this problem in the right side in both fields of view, where you can see this darkening"... said Bell. "We've been seeing a slow clearing and a change in the dust in the front lens so that's improved over time. While we haven't taken all the test data we need to determine what percent improvement this event made, I do think when we do we will see improvement that will help us with mosaicking and won't have as many seams."

There's certainly been a big improvement over time - compare recent pancams with those from Victoria.