NASA has decided the potential science value gained by sending Opportunity into a martian impact crater likely outweighs the risk of the intrepid explorer not being able to get back out.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2004/142.cfm

The way it sounds, they are going to ease in take a look at one out crop, and then try to back out. If they are going in, why not go all the way and examine as much as possible? I would hate to see Opportunity get stuck and spend the rest of its life in one place. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

All the interesting stuff is around the rim. I dont think there would be much point going all the way in. The floor is covered with basaltic sand I think.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Dont forget todays rover press briefing

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/landing.cfm

Mars Exploration Rover Briefings on NASA TV
Next briefing: June 8, 11 a.m. PDT

Interesting input for the humans vs. robots debate:

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I see that they are planning the drive using a tilted test bed. IANAPG (I Am Not A Planetary Geologist) but it seems to me that there are still going to be so many variables that we can't recreate on a sandlot in Pasadena: electrostatic soil cohesion, lower gravity, bad luck with a slipping rock, etc. I know these folks are smart and so must be making adjustments, but I'd bet there are a few wildcards still out there.

I guess that's one reason they would rather drive on bedrock instead of soil.

Also, has anyone heard about any issues with being in the crater and radio reception, or shadows on the solar panels?

I just don't want Endurance to be a Rover Motel: "Rovers check in but they don't check out!"

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

...if only those fu**ed blueberries were note over the bedrock!

I did some calculations some time ago, to determine if the "object" in the bottom part of Endurance can be ice due to sunlight never reaching it: no way, the only way to have permanent shadow in a 130meters wide crater at martian equator is a crater more than 100 meters deep!

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-- Jumpjack --

Opportunity Checks the Edge of the Crater

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I am glad we are going in slowly! But judging from the attitudes at the June 8 press conference, they don't seem too bothered by the level of risk they are undertaking. If the blueberries cooperate, I have a feeling we shall be visiting the heat sheild after all!

Sorry if the Roach Motel joke was too much. I must have been thinking of these rovers instead. MER; MRE; too many acronyms to keep track of!

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Lyford Rome
"Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts!"
Mathematician Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test

Mars rover Opportunity enters stadium-sized crater

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

From the front hazcams: going down and backing up.

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Will we eventually know what the hell causes these absurd colors in the interior of Endurance?!?
endurance

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-- Jumpjack --

Why do you think those colors are accurate?

The colors in this nearby image of the pancam calibration target are clearly wrong.

This nearby automatically synthesized image of this calibration target and sand dunes combined, clearly shows it was done not only automatically, but nonsensically.

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The "Mars colors" debate is going one since MERs arrived there, and it has no solution but going there by ourselves... but the problem with Endurance interior is quite different: any kind of colorization you can obtain of it, it is ALWAYS absurd! I wonder if it is due to a thin dust layer covering a large ice repository. :-k

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-- Jumpjack --

From the rear hazcams: over the edge!

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Opportunity's Edgy Move on Mars

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I keep thinking of the rover making little sad sounds like R2D2 did when he was upset, as the rover looks down the edge.

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Jumpjack, some of this was already covered in the "Nasa edits Mars images before releasing them?Why?!?" thread. When I began there by saying to you that the work on my page ( www.lyle.org/~markoff , which uses all 6 visible light filters to create color images except where otherwise noted, is the portion of the site for which I am responsible. The main www.lyle.org/mars uses seperate colorization techniques developed somewhat independently) wasn't real color, you said you knew that already. You refered to the colors as 'absurd'. I would have to agree. They aren't real color (I put that on every page of my gallery after the last discussion), and often look absurd if you are trying to think of them in those terms.

To answer your question, yes, we can know what causes the absurd colors in the interior of Endurance. The autoexposure of all frames of color seperatly causes absurd colors when they're not calibrated. I'd point you to the NASA, calibrated version of the floor of Endurance, but you already refered to that image as "simply offending".

There is likely very little variation in color in the actual floor of the crater, as it is all filled with the same dusty material. When a frame is taken entirely of the floor of the crater, with no sky, rocks, or parts of the rover in it, and it is relatively 'poor' in materials that reflect green and blue light, then the shorter wavelength filters (yellow/green/blue/violet) will expose for MUCH longer than the red filters, in an attempt to pick up any variation that is present. This means that a feature which was grey (low, but equal reflectance of all wavelengths) would come out looking blue / purple, since the grey would appear dark in the red, short exposure frames, and bright in the longer exposed blue images. The 'purple' features in the image of the floor of Endurance Crater are likely just darker regions that are overexposed.

Given that my images are "absurd", and often differ from the calibrated images released by NASA, I have often wondered if it did more harm than good to continue publishing them (and causing discussions like this) prior to having the exposure information myself, to calibrate them. I have decided to do so only because what can be apparent from these images is variation. Where there is variation in my images, I guarantee there is real variation in the colors of the scene, though not as dramatic as it appears now. It is, in the case of the bottom of endurance crater, likely that the variation is between the dusty red and grey, not red and purple, but that variation is real. I assure you that every attempt to calibrate these images will be made by me once the PDS release of data occurs, though for the images taken of the bottom of Endurance, that is going to be a long time coming (6 months after the end of the mission is the current date for the release of "extended mission" data) though I feel you will be sorely disapointed in the NASA like appearance of them at that time.

Daniel Crotty