QUOTE (general @ Aug 31 2006, 07:05 PM)

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/08/29/2646.aspx

Thanks general, it's nice to read Steve comments.
What I found as news is :
Spirit : In six weeks or so, Spirit should be able to start rolling again.
Oppy : Even before Opportunity reaches Victoria's rim, NASA scientists want to check out a couple of smaller craters that could give them a foretaste of what Victoria itself will reveal."If we find that it's just like stuff that we've seen elsewhere, then we can move on," Squyres said. "But if we find that it's different, then we've got to take a little more time."

Thank you general .. and to add to climber

I especially like this quote towards the end which puts perspective to what is beyond Victoria

... once you've seen Victoria, there's not much left to see, Squyres said: "You look around, and the next crater onward that's as big or bigger than Victoria is 25 kilometers (16 miles) away. ... This is it. Around us in every direction is a whole bunch of nothing."

If Opportunity is still in good shape after looking at everything we could conceivable look at in Victoria, one idea would be to go back the way we came. . This would allow a detailed study of soil and dust deposition rates. The farther back up the trail we go, the more time there will have been for deposition on, and erosion of, the tracks. The trip wouldn't need to take very long since we would have a safe path already laid out and wouldn't be stopping for as much new science, just a quick study of the rover tracks every 50 or 100 meters.

I believe this kind of data would be extremely valuable. The trip back could end with an examination of the lander and the condition it is in after what will be nearly two Martian years. Then a side trip to the parachute and backshell for the engineers will surely provide still more valuable data for future craft designs (since we've already had a good look at the heatshield).

Heading back could be interesting, agreed. Maybe think of things that the team would have wanted to get a better look at but didn't the first time around. Or perhaps to look at things that now, after a few months of analysis, seem more interesting than they did from a cursory glance.

Not only would it be neat to see the lander now, but maybe even venturing over to the backshell to see what happened to it. But that's a lot of travelling to do just for what may amount to scraps of data. But, if there's "nothing" else to see here after Victoria.....

I don't think we need to speculate too much about what comes after Victoria.
It's all too easy to get "lulled" by Oppy's ongoing adventure and sucessful mastering of all the glitches so far,
into the illusion that these incredible machines are immortal and invincible ...

Reality is that with increasing age, the probability of a fatal or severely incapacitating failure increases a little bit every day...
Fact is that those machines have proven to be very durable, far more durable than anyone thought at the begin of the mission. But I also think that with all the past sucesses in mind we do tend to over-estimate the durability ...

Steve once compared the Rovers to "aging baby boomers" which was around sol 500 or so (don't recall exactly) ... so now they are more like the 80-years aged ones

So still quite a way to go (also with the prospect of a very long eventide once mobility ceases )
But we can't reasonably expecting another 500 Sols or several additional Kilometers of mobility left ...

.. Then agin: Of course, I too hope to be proven wrong on this all ... and after all it's a lot of fun speculating what could be ...

Not so. Even with no big craters/photo-ops there are outcrops downhill/downsection.



So there...

--Bill

I was given to understand that the Twin Peaks, outcrops of a big degraded crater to the east, were on the order of 15-17 kilometers away. If most of that distance is relatively free of troublesome dunes, that distance seems achievable. May need to trust the rovers to drive beyond line of site from one position to the next, but assuming no major breakdowns I have no trouble seeing this as feasible.

And that's the problem. The terrain between Victoria and the large crater is all etched terrain, with an awful lot of those troublesome dunes. Some of them look rather larger than what we saw between Endurance and here.

Also, the large crater appears to be more heavily dust mantled than other features in this vicinity. Even if Oppy were to last long enough to get there, she may not be able to traverse the terrain around the big crater.

-the other Doug

Not to mention that the distance is twice the distance we've covered in the last 900 sols. With an aging rover, and a significant investigation of Victoria yet to do - there's no real merit to the suggestion that we can average much more than 2x faster than that. So those peaks are a serious 'ask'. There's optimism, and there's sending a rover on a journey to a target that realistically - it's not going to reach.

Once we're done with Victoria - lets see how the Rover is doing, and then consider where we might go.

http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/0...Ellipse_25m.gif

However - to be honest - there's not much else worth aiming for post-Victoria. It is the closest interesting feature. I would want some HiRISE imagery before making that choice though. Perhaps we might identify something else comparatively locally that's interesting in those images.

Doug

The problem is that nobody won't spoil any MER with still good health to stay with crossed arms! So, they are still alive and we must take the advantage of his good health to do anything else until before of any failure has come that is the general rule to close the mission, otherwise, everybody will be shouting to JPL not to do so! Do something else since it is very rare case or to land on Mars, the mother spacecraft of rover must be very succesfull due to the fact that the Martian atmosphere varies density dynamically.

The list of activities after Victoria crater:

1. Return back on the same track to its base Eagle : To test a new version and better navigation software and study about the rate of sand deposition.
2. Go to the next twice spikes. Explain why it is twice
3. Visit the wind streaks on the north of Victoria to see what is consisted of the black color?
4. Go to the East for about 25 km to the next bigger crater than Victoria. The way, there might be any surprises!
5. So, everysol in Mars there are surprises (new skies partner, a very strange land shape or rock on the way), discoveries (the most unforeseen of all).

Rodolfo

Hello all !

Steve is back !
A new update from him :

http://athena.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

Robert

Quick heads-up, SS will be on the second hour of today's Science Friday on NPR - which is starting as I type. Audio will be available for download later today.

[cut to view of ODave's emtpy chair spinning as he dashes to the parking lot]

Thanks for the heads up.

As I was looking at the Web site, I caught this post below in Ira Flatow's blog:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/index.ph...nical!.html

I am so glad someone else spoke up about this and felt the same way I did
when I saw it. It was pretty obvious that the talking news head didn't have a
clue who Sir Patrick Moore was.

That's okay, he was just a stand-in for Katie Couric anyway.

It was a pretty good interview, despite Ira's irritating habit of talking over the guests.

Most interesting for me was the bit about entering Victoria crater. Steve basically said they won't know until they get a good look, but since it's the largest crater they'll get to see with this rover, we can expect them to be fairly agressive. At the end of the interview, Steve said that going in would be a fair bet.

I also enjoyed the comment about the software upgrade - they're getting older and creakier, but they're getting smarter. Just like us!

Hey Gang:

Steve made another appearance on NPR's Science Friday (2nd hour) today. He gave an update on the MERs plus a bit of info on Phoenix and MSL.

Audio will be available for download later today.

The second segment "10 worst jobs in science" is also good for a laugh and/or gross-out. Most of them seemed to gravitate towards dealing with excrement/sewage/dead things.

That would include most biologists and all paleontologists

Thanks, odave. I would have missed that if you didn't point it out. Every little new tidbit of information is gold to me. I enjoyed the Spirit silica discussion, and it sounds as if we might hear something about Opportunity's entry plan in the next "few" days.

The conversation about the later missions' tools/instruments was pretty good.

tty: Even geologists recognize a coprolite when they come across one.

Hi,

I missed the recent June 28 audio conference updating the public on MER progress. Is the audio available as mp3 somewhere? I cannot find it on the usual NASA webpages...
Much appreciated!

cheers,

micvoo

Tman pointed out this link to a recording:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=93871

A good site that I had previously overlooked!

Rob

Any 'rumors' on a follow-on book for the 2005 'Roving Mars'