Finally, Opportunity has the heat shield in its rear-view mirror -- if it had a rear-view mirror -- and is making tracks southward, toward Vostok crater, with stops for smaller craters along the way.

Exploratorium Navcam image

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The Flight Director says Opportunity already headed 80 m to the south yesterday. Today they're hoping to beat the one sol drive distance record at around 160 m.

Vostok, the etched terrain, Victoria Crater and beyond: Finally we're heading out for the longest trip ever done on Mars!

Spirit gets dissed, as usual.

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Yeah, that wasn't nice by the flight director. Especially given Spirit's latest findings which are more puzzling, diverse and telling than those of Opportunity since many months. Actually Oppi has become like a typical second-born idle bragger making stuff up with meteorites and such!

Well, to be fair, the previous flight director's reports give Spirit a fair shake. Still, this one's "Spirit's just doing boring science, but Opportunity is cruisin'!" approach was a bit grating.

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Good thing they landed the rovers on oppposite sides of the planet, or the fights between them would never stop.
"The flight director always liked you better".
"FD, Spirit is on my side of the planet". "Am not!" "Am too!"
You two behave, don't make me come out there!"

8-[

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Someone has a nice map of the planned route.

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What makes 'em decide to investigate THIS crater instead of THAT one? I mean there's they're heading in the general direction of one right now and just when they're within 50 metres they turn and go off towards one that from the sat imagery looks identical...

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Quomodo cogis comas tuas sic videri?
How do you get your hair to do that?

Well, the other one's closer to Vostok.... Meanwhile, I just noticed that behind the crater they're skipping is a little ridge. I wonder if that's of any interest.

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Okay, just to be ornery, because I'm in the mood. Why not turn now and head to the one south of where they are and to the east of their position after 160 metres... that's a straighter route to Vostok.

I guess my question is, who sets the driving agenda?

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Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem
Science has no enemies but the ignorants

That's a good question. Squyres mentioned that they wanted to use craters as landmarks to make sure they knew where they were, but that doesn't explain the strange dogleg they're about to do.

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Not much of a landscape

I tried to find an image looking back at the tracks, to see if Opportunity really went the distance, but I can't find any yet. I assume they're going to keep moving - doesn't look like much to see here.

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Route to Victoria (I think this is someone's idea, not anything official.)

Source.

It would be quite a feat if Oppi makes it to Victoria. That would be over thirteen times the mission success distance.

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How many meters does this look like?

EDIT: I think it went the 160 meters, but that Opportunity is about 60 meters east of the location given on the map above (if it were in the expected location, the heat shield wouldn't be in front of Endurance crater but off to the side), and that the crater in this image is the one to the east of the 160-meter end point.

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What are those 'stops" in the tracks? Is that due to the wheel surface itself, or does the robot make a steering correction every meter? (or something like that)

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That's what the tread looks like. You can see it on the near wheel here.

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I remembered something like a square part in the wheels, but I fogot if that was on the inside or outside. thanks Toseek. Makes nice tracks, and easy to calculate the distance if you know the wheel size

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I was wondering if that's why they made the treads that way.

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From the talk a wheel guy did, I got that it is structural, to manage stresses at the lander base-attachment point.

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What, to make pretty tracks? Get real

Seriously, what 01101001 said, attaching them to the lander base there sounds very well possible.

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