Martian Vistas

Opportunity has just left the ripple and large bedrock regions for a much flatter area dubbed the 'Parking Lot'.

However between here and Santa Maria crater 2km or so away the terrain is not totally featureless, there are regions of small ripples, small craters, Anatolia like troughs and further regions of exposed bedrock.

The map below shows this terrain at the full HiRISE resolution (25cm per pixel). Opportunities position (on sol 2405) is shown in yellow at the top left, Santa Maria Crater is at the bottom right. The colours represent the ripple sizes using my Fourier mapping technique that I'm posted a lot about on this blog. Green is essentially totally flat, small ripples are shades of blue as are exposed bedrock (lighter tone regions). Reds represent large ripples, however as those days are behind Oppy most of the red areas in this map are the edges of craters and the borders with the lighter toned bedrock.

Full Resolution (7928 x 2216) ( 2MB )
Half Resolution (3964 x 1108) ( 1MB )
Quarter Resolution (1982 x 554) ( 312kB )

Tosol is (almost unbelievably) sol 2400 for Opportunity, so time for an update to my large scale route map.

Oppy has made great progress over the last 100 sols with a greater distance covered in the last 100 sols than in any other! She has covered almost exactly half the distance to Santa Maria Crater since sol 2300.

Also, as can be seen in the colour plot (where the colours indicate the ripple sizes) Oppy is now very close, less than 500m from the very flat 'parking lot' terrain (shown by the green colour). I doubt she'll move much faster once she gets there but it'll be a significant milestone in the long journey to Endeavour.

Click images to enlarge
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Here is the drive direction mosaic for sol 2379. It makes a change not to have the hills of Endeavour on the horizon for a change! (They start just off the right edge)

Full Resolution (3736 x 1220) ( 1MB )
Half Resolution (1868 x 610) ( 361kB )