Hmmm. Extending that line takes us to "Allegheny Ridge". I thought we had to choose between that and Eldorado. From Allegheny, McCool Hill and Home Plate are in opposite directions. Does this mean we have more time than we thought before 'winter' or that there is no time for Home Plate?

To reach McCool Hill, Spirit has to take the route between Home Plate and Alleghenny Ridge.

Could be, IF the intention was to go direct to McCool Hill.
But afaik the near-term objective (sol 750?) is to reach and study Home Plate.

Imho, this last drive SE was just a way to avoid going directly over the dunes. A left turn to reach harder ground.

Whoa, who put McCool Hill way down there? No doubt about it. I gotta get me a new map!
Can somebody refer me to a thoroughly labelled orbiter view of Columbia Hills?
Thanx

Thankee, General, Sir! Boy, I am confused! All this time I thought the hill to the East of Husband Hill (across the inner basin) was McCool. So what [B]is[B] the name for that big mother? ( Indicated by the ? below.)
Click to view attachment

No name for that ridge/hill, because it was not visible from the Spirit landing site.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/spotlight/s...umbia_Hills.jpg

spirit locations 680-713
Click to view attachment

Ah, at last! Splendid! Now I know where we are.
And I'm to believe that whole massive bulk filling most of the background is without even an informal name? Shame! If JPL can't be bothered, we should at least come up with something. Let's make a list of suggestions.
e.g. "YOGI" , because it looks like a big sleeping bear, and because, like Berra, it's behind Home Plate. O.K.? no?
or maybe...Squyres Castle?...East Redoubt?...C'mon, help me out here.

No! It's McCool hill! See general's post 5 articles back :-)

How about Rectangle Ridge, for the formation's overhead appearance?

JEEEEZZ! Never mind, guys. Just leave a trail of breadcrumbs, and I'll follow.

Just to make it clearer, the direction towards McCool hill is south in Alan's fine picture.

And to hopefully clear things up even more. The edge of the feature the Shaka put a ? on is the rise going off the left edge of Alans picture.

Route map updated up to sol 713.

Click to view attachment (351k)

I've changed the background image to the new cProto picture of the Hills released on Jan 03. It is more detailed but I personally see some drawbacks on its use here.
First, bigger resolution means bigger file size or heavier compression.
Second, it seems this pic was taken almost at noon because it has much smaller shadows then the previous image. The result is that the "3D effect" which was previously visible has been lost. Anybody can try to identify Miami and Comanche on the new picture; it's HARD, if even possible...

Comments are welcome.

I've tried to compare Alan-is-Lost with Tesh-Map

It doesnt look like much, but it really helped me put the local geography into some sort of context.

Doug

Beautiful new traverse maps:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-spirit/index.html

Double quoting Doug...

Outstanding- that's the clearest tie-in between the orbital and rover views that I've seen. Everything is clear now...

I've sent a polite email to Dr Li ( he of MER Mapping fame, and the head of the dept. that produced those most recent, amazing maps ) and asked if he might be able to release an elevation map or DEM so that I could do some perspective views and animations of the area. If we're lucky, I might be able to do something like the old perspective views I did - http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/doug_images/elev_1.jpg - but much much MUCH better

Doug

Yeah I remember those maps...they were wonderful...
But this map does not show where Spirit is in relation to the Columbia Hills ...just the height of the area....
Maybe they should add another map....old ways are sometimes better...

Somewhat close, it is a bi-dimensional map. I am copying it the updated Jan 5 Spirit route map with altitude reference.


Southwest is of the lowest altitude and the Southeast is of the highest altitude.
I think that Home Plate is still out of range in that map, still further south.

Rodolfo

another drive day
Click to view attachment

Alan, is this image exaggerated version?

Yes, it's a 2x vertical exaggeration. It makes it easier to see the hills in front of homeplate.

Bitchin'! Now we've gotta plan how to climb this sucker. I would propose something like below. Sneak up on the back side to the greatest exposed section, then zip up to the west corner in a head-first slide. "Safe at Home! "
We can decide whether it's worth mapping and whether there's a safe descent to the south after we get there. If it's just the same as the light exposed stuff we've been driving over, I'll be disappointed, but there should be a nice view anyway.Click to view attachment

Alan, could you post the non-processed image (without route marks)?

With or without the verticle exaggeration?

Just without exaggeration.

Click to view attachment

Thanks!

here's what I've got:

The contours on that OSU route map seem to be suggesting block faulting on some of the hills! That's the first time we have seen anything like that on one of the maps, iirc.

Very good!


I noticed that, too, and I'm thinking that it may be an anomaly in the gridding software they use to generate the topo maps.

--Bill

I think some of the orbital shots indicate the same

No - there's a 'ripping' to the stereo interpolation there - that's not real features. - some go straight thru El Dorado, and we KNOW what that's like.

Doug

Spirit drove to the next dune
Click to view attachment
More drives coming up on sol 717 and 718

alan - love your maps. But I think the black numbers on the dark ground could be made better..

I tried making yellow numbers and I think it shows up much better

Only a suggestion to improve your wonderfull maps

Click to view attachment

dot/alan, I love too these maps , we should continue to update them!
[/quote]

Here's a preview of something I'm working on for a book proposal after my current one goes in next year.

I am making a set of maps of the whole Spirit route at a standard scale, showing placenames as well as sols. This map is a 500 m square - the whole route up to Home Plate requires 9 maps like this with a slight overlap. For areas which need more detail, such as West Spur, additional high resolution maps will be created, probably by reprojecting surface panoramas as I did with Eagle and Anatolia recently. (They were also experiments for the same purpose, basically to estimate how many pages will be needed for each rover).

The background is poor, but it will be replaced with an MRO image (or a better version of this MOC jpeg) later

Phil

Click to view attachment

Spirit route map, updated up to sol 717 (714 by Dilo).

Click to view attachment (352k)

New traverse maps:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/tm-spirit/index.html

I cannot see a fault. I would like that someone point it out in a picture.

Rodolfo

P.S.
I have enclosed the Spirit traverse map Sol 715 from Marsrovers JPL Web. I traced two white curviline in where it is supposed to be faults.
Click to view attachment

Man, I should post my route map version more often!

Route map, up to sol 719.

Click to view attachment (572k)

[quote=Tesheiner,Jan 11 2006, 03:14 AM]
Route map, up to sol 719.
- -
Tesh, I'm beginning to worry that we'll not spend much time at Home Plate...

I'm speculating that it will take at least (and that's moving fast) another 7 to 10 days to get to Home Plate - and with little time for doing much probing, another 8 to 10 days to get to a North facing slope. Do you (or anyone) see a route fast enough to get us to Home Plate and to safe wintering ground, in time?

In the link below, I've used a piece of your Route Map to illustrate daily drives - for perhaps 14 days+... and you can see where we may run rather short of time.

380KB image

I'm beginning to wonder if Home Plate will be left for the springtime...

Well - I ~tried~ to remove the attachment, Tesh - it got there without showing up in the preview - and after the system said that it was too big to add. (That's why I posted the link to an altered smaller image.)

It is ~definitely~ time for bed...

Your proposed path seems reasonable; there are other ones on the "Going to Homeplate" thread and we may be really speaking of some additional 10 driving days until reaching Home Plate.

Little time for science? Dunno.
I can only refer to what was already said by S.S (see here): Home Plate by sol 750 and McCool Hill by sol 800. They are the experts, and for the time being Spirit seems to be on schedule.

Can't see us being in that much of a hurry. You have to remember that this is Mars and with the year being twice as long so are the seasons (though the eccrenticity of the orbit complicates it a bit, southern summers being a bit shorter). We're still in the beginning of autumn.

Looking at helvick's power chart the maximum solar input now is about the same as it was at the end of the primary mission -- and that was when Spirit started her long treck to the hills.

Link to helvick's post with the power chart.

Steve also said that the schedule was to be at HP around sol 750 and getting to the slopes on sol 800. So we are well ahead of that. I'm betting Spirit will spend a good month on the Home plate.