[X] My Assistant

[Stu]

I had another 'chat' with our favourite rover driver over on my blog, which some of you might find interesting as we head towards Santa Maria...

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...h-scott-maxwell

Thanks Scott! :-)

[Stu]

I've also been working on some "artistic impressions" of Endeavour, which I've put on my blog in a different post concering possible future art on Mars. I hope some of you like them.

http://roadtoendeavour.wordpress.com/2010/...tadt-on-barsoom

[BrianL]

I think having Thomas Kinkade on Mars would be a good thing.

[Stu]

I think having Thomas Kinkade on Mars would be a good thing.

I didn't recognise the name so I did a Google image search...

...now I wish I hadn't.

[Floyd]

Stu,
I hope you haven't forgotten the great dawn shot Spirit took looking back at Von Braun. mhoward had a fantastic panorama, and some guy colorized it to make it look like something Ansell Adams would have taken The team has taken quite a few shots at hours where the shadow of rocks and rovers are tens of meters long, and has taken color panoramas of from most every place there has been a HOV

[fredk]

Is there any possibility that we might go into Santa Maria

It's a matter of whether we see new rocks at Santa Maria. If it's just the same old Meridiani bedrock, I think they wouldn't stop for long and almost certainly wouldn't enter Santa Maria.

On the other hand, if they see something new at Santa Maria (hydrated sulfates?), they'd definitely want to spend time studying it. If the new material was only inside Santa Maria and there was very easy access into the crater, then they might enter the crater. But they definitely wouldn't want to put Oppy at any significant risk, with the big prize of Endeavour still ahead.

[climber]

I get the point fredk. I'd also said that if there is something of interest, Santa MAria would be a goog place to stay (and work) during superior conjunction due by end of January.

[Stu]

"I think Santa Maria will be a fascinating waypoint on the way to Endeavour — I just hope it doesn’t slow us down too much. But what are you gonna do, just skip it? If we didn’t have Endeavour beckoning us to the horizon, we’d be all over Santa Maria, so we might as well give it its due. I guess my personal hope is that Santa Maria gives the science team just enough to keep them busy analyzing data while we complete our trek to the big one!"

- Scott Maxwell

[antoniseb]

One reason to stop for a while at Santa Maria is to compare the composition of the salts (bedrock) from further North, to see if there is anything special to observe along those lines when we get to the walls of the big crater.

[Stu]

New panorama...

http://twitpic.com/393kq5/full

... and that has to be parts of the rim of Santa Maria poking over the top there, right..?

[Julius]

looks like it!I agree

[kenny]

If so, could someone point it out with a wee arrow?

[Stu]

[fredk]

That's definitely Santa Maria. The question is, when will the rest of the crater come into view? James talked about that recently. Looking at Stu's stereo view closely, it looks like most of the rim is blocked by a near horizon (lighter below, darker above). But to me it looks like that "near" horizon is still pretty far away. So it may take a while before we see the full rim.

On the other hand, the topography is so subtle at Meridiani that it's hard to know for sure. I'll bet that if I was there, I could jump up and see the whole rim!

Here's an average of the L2 and R2 frames from 2427 to reduce jpeg noise. We can see some of the rim to the right of the left "bump":

[Phil Stooke]

Nice one, Fred. Here's one of my trademarked vertical stretch jobs. A couple of little craters along the way are showing up, as well as similar-looking bright spots in the distance.

Phil