Opportunity Route Map Options

[Tman]

First I had in mind a form of small lines running parallel in which their center would be the track position - but that would only work by one "straight" track, not when Oppy has driven higgledy-piggledy

"A side-by-side comparison might work best. For instance, the Payson area of Erebus:"

Think too that would be fine and works best.

[djf]

What about using a different shade/color for the portions of the joining lines that are overlayed on unambiguous rover tracks from the orbital imagery? Actually this idea could be extended to other shadings/colors to represent other sources/methods by which that portion of the route map was reconstructed:

• unambiguous orbital imagery of the tracks
• rover navcam/pancam observations of the the tracks in the surrounding terrain
• telemetry or other rover-supplied spatial information
• interpolated path based on best estimates of our talented route-meisters
• others?

Just a thought.

Thanks to all those who have worked on these great route maps...

[dvandorn]

In many of these images, I can almost convince myself that I see rover tracks, but only with the hindsight of knowing exactly where they're supposed to be. There are very few places where I can say with any certainty that I can see unambiguous images of tracks.

Interestingly, it's much easier to see the tracks that Oppy has made in the past few weeks around Victoria than it is to see the tracks up near Endurance, even though the surfaces around each are somewhat similar. I'm beginning to wonder how much of the lack of track definition in some of these images has to do with their intrinsic visibility (at the limits of HiRISE's resolution), and how much is due to weathering (and perhaps partial erasure) of the older tracks.

-the other Doug

[djellison]

Well - if you cast your mind back to leaving Endurance...we crossed some 8-odd month old tracks and MI'd both the old and the new and the difference was very obvious.

The new tracks had all the berries squished into the soil - the old tracks, the soil had begun to be blown away and re-revealed the berries again.

Further south where it was all dunes and few berries, I think it's simply a matter of wind erroding away the impression of wheel tracks - and a very obvious indication of that was soon after the egress out of purgatory - one could see a streak left behind by wind blowing past a wheel loaded with white deposites.

Doug

[Guest_Oersted_*]

What astounding luck that the dunes were oriented the way they were...- Imagine having to cross them all, instead of going through the troughs! Opportunity certainly has been the Enchanted One since she first did an Eagle hole-in-one...

[Tesheiner]

First I had in mind a form of small lines running parallel in which their center would be the track position - but that would only work by one "straight" track, not when Oppy has driven higgledy-piggledy
Think too that would be fine and works best.

I did an exercise like that some time ago.

Here is it: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=72028

[leustek]

Anyone know what happening on Mars? No new MER data in days. And no new posts. Very odd!

When the MER missions are finally over I fear that I will be in store for some major withdrawal symptoms.

[tacitus]

MRO went into safe mode a couple of days ago. Communications with the rovers has been reduced to a minimum. Hence no major downloads of new images. Things should be back to normal in a few days.

[tedcochran]

MRO went into safe mode a couple of days ago.

I'm hoping you mean Mars Odyssey, and not something new?

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Anyone know what happening on Mars? No new MER data in days. And no new posts. Very odd!

When the MER missions are finally over I fear that I will be in store for some major withdrawal symptoms.

I hope this isn't a taste of what the forum will be like when the rovers missions finally end

[monitorlizard]

You know, when the MERs landed, I figured they would both be gone by mid-2003 and I would have to wait seven years until the next rover was on Mars. I'm ecstatic that they are still operating on any level and grateful that it won't be anywhwere near seven years between rovers.

[Tesheiner]

A quite small activity on the MER side of the forum this last week, eh? Let's hope Odissey is soon back on-duty so we could have our daily mars fix as usual.

Meanwhile, here is an updated version of the route map. It's back again in B&W for two reasons: file size & image sharpness. This point was already discussed before, but it looks like the different color filters are slightly unregistered around this area. The last plotted position is still the same as of sol 1016, however the rover is currently slightly to the left of that point, according to the last status report.

Sol 1021 (Dec. 7, 2006): The rover took a 2-meter (6.6 feet) drive along Bottomless Bay and the panoramic camera took the second half of the stereo mosaic of Bottomless Bay.

Many, many thanks, James for keeping the map updated since last month.

[Tesheiner]

There are some new data from sol 1021, enough to plot a preliminary position (based only on the rover's mobility data). I'll double-check it once the respective sol's 360º navcam panorama is downlinked.

Curiously, the data available tells that on sol 1021 the rover moved about 53m, which is in contradiction with the 2m indicated on the last status report. The few navcams available (here and here) seems to support the long drive.

[hortonheardawho]

For what it's worth, my triangulations agree exactly with your 1021 location. Parallax distances and angular separations using 8 features are consistant to within a few meters of the position.

[Tesheiner]

Thanks for this verification Horton!