[X] My Assistant

[odave]

Last year, MER team decided to let Oppy go into Endurance because the value of the potential science gain outweighed the risks to the rover at that time. I remember Steve Squyres saying something like...if Oppy can't get back out, it would be like getting locked in a candy store.

I wonder if the same would be true when we get to Erebus and Victoria. If these craters show something significantly different than we've already seen, and there's a feasible entry/exit route, would they still risk sending Oppy in?

If it were me, given the 18 month extended mission and the rover showing its age more and more, any target in Erebus or Victora would need to be very juicy. Then again, there's no guarantee that Oppy will live for the entire extension.

Hmmm...depending on what we find when we get there, it could be a hard decision for the team to make!

[Phil Stooke]

Nice work, dilo! The sub-pixel offsets are produced by moving the camera slightly away from the target and back to it again. The pointing is good but not perfect so it never comes back exactly to where it was, not to within, say, a tenth of a pixel which might be truly unnoticeable.

I had an earlier image which showed the view ahead to Erebus with that same type of vertical exaggeration - though there still is not much to see until we get over a small local rise in the ground. But I think the view will soon get a lot more interesting.

Incidentally, Steve Squyres was quoted a few weeks ago as saying that Opportunity is already in the etched terrain. But I think it makes more sense to think of this area with the larger drifts as a transitional terrain. The real etched material is going to look different again, more like one Vostok crater after another on a fairly dramatic scale. Or so I think. I'll eat a Mars Bar if I'm wrong. (and also if I'm right).

Phil

[dvandorn]

Incidentally, Steve Squyres was quoted a few weeks ago as saying that Opportunity is already in the etched terrain.  But I think it makes more sense to think of this area with the larger drifts as a transitional terrain.  The real etched material is going to look different again, more like one Vostok crater after another on a fairly dramatic scale.  Or so I think.  I'll eat a Mars Bar if I'm wrong.  (and also if I'm right).

Phil

I think you're exactly right, Phil. Though the exposed, eroded evaporite in the actual etched terrain is, I think, not crater-rim excavations but ridges in the ejecta blanket created by the ancient crater cluster of which Erebus and Terra Nova are a part...

-the other Doug