Journey to Mt Sharp - Part 5: Into the Valleys, Sol 706-752, Aug 1-Sep 17, 2014 Options

[neo56]

Nice blue sunset on sol 734:

[Phil Stooke]

A circular half-pan shows us closer to the edge of the outcrop on sol 739.

Phil

[algorithm]

The Sol 739 Navcam Pan as an anaglyph



It looks like kinder terrain may lie ahead (at least in terms of the rock count)

[jmknapp]

But it's not exactly a red carpet at the entrance.

[brellis]

"not exactly a red carpet at the entrance" - tempted me to wonder how clear the threat is from what is visible in the image on the right in jmknapp's Post #229. Rereading Emily's (wonderful, as usual!) recent blog entry on wheel damage:

Rover drivers are avoiding every pointy rock they can steer around. This only helps in the first 10 or 20 meters of a drive, where they can see smaller potentially hazardous rocks.
On hazardous terrain, performing shorter drives allows them to avoid many potentially wheel-damaging rocks.

I ask the experts: is there a safe-ish way through this entrance?

[Gerald]

Driving forward over well-embedded hard and pointed rocks causes most of the damage.
By minimizing this kind of settings, the risk of damage can be managed.
An approach to minimize fatigue caused by the overall roughness could be minimizing the integral of hardness times roughness over the path of the drive.

Since the drive through this rough terrain is rather short, and there aren't too many embedded pointed rocks, it's reasonable to take this path. The terrain in the valley is much smoother, and making long detours would probably sum up to more damage, and waste more time than necessary.

The expected science return of the Pahrump Hills is certainly worth to take some risk.
The current outcrop is nice and interesting, too.

That's at least my way to duplicate the decision, after quite some pondering the last few days, whether there may be a better path. This has been one of the first of just a few alternatives.

[elakdawalla]

I'm not too sure what the process of avoiding hazardous rocks looks like. One of the surprising things I learned, writing that article, is that something that looks like flagstones is far superior to wheel-chewing terrain. They have an 8-kilometer lifetime over the bad terrain, but 30-50 kilometer lifetime over flagstones. As long as bad rocks are far enough apart, they can really mitigate the threat of damage.

[charborob]

Sol 739 mastcam view of Owens Valley:

[anticitizen2]

What a fantastic view!

Before and after the drive


Anaglyph albums from yesterday and today:

Sol 739 before the edge of the valley - Stretched

Sol 740 on the edge of the valley - Stretched

[algorithm]

But it's not exactly a red carpet at the entrance.

It's certainly rough and bumpy but not full of sharp damaging rocks though.
The odd tip hazard!?
A bit of wheel slip here and there!?
The descent seems ok
The question is, who wants to rule the sand pit?

[Floyd]

It is easy to loose track of the map showing where we are trying to go. Here is Joe's map from an earlier thread: Link

[serpens]

They have an 8-kilometer lifetime over the bad terrain....

Mmmm, is that total or estimated remaining?

[Gerald]

Only "total" makes really sense, otherwise it would need to be updated all the time. So subtract a few hundred meters for the remaining distance.
But it has been a conservative estimate, and it will probably become obsolete with the software update in about four months.
Since they are already using a work-around, the number has become a theoretical value for a way of driving which is avoided.

[neo56]

My take on the panorama of Amargosa Valley on sol 739:

[Gerald]

Sol 740 "long distance ChemCam observation of Pahrump Hills", processed versions roughly stitched: