The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
Some great maps of the Mars Exploration Rovers' progress
Apr. 6, 2006 | 11:54 PDT | 18:54 UTC
I was just sent these terrific maps by Phil Stooke, a planetary cartographer best known for his work making maps of oddly-shaped bodies like Phobos. In his spare time he's begun work on an atlas of the rover missions, including these overview maps of the entire missions to date. You really have to click to enlarge to appreciate all of the detail.
In recent sols, Opportunity has been making fantastic progress toward Victoria crater -- not quite the driving records it achieved in its drives before getting stuck in Purgatory, but still impressive. | Opportunity route map to sol 781This map was assembled by planetary cartographer Phil Stooke from detailed comparisons of MOC base images to views generated from rover imagery. It is a work in progress; future work will include improving the quality of the base images and adding future progress of the rover. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS / Phil Stooke |
Poor Spirit has been having more trouble. The dead wheel is inhibiting its progress, and it seemed to get really stuck in a dune over the last couple of weeks; the drivers twisted the rover back and forth a few times and finally just backed up to get out of the whole mess. The mess turns out to have been a very interesting salty dune, but right now Spirit needs a safe winter haven much more than it needs more cool science targets.Spirit route map to sol 800This map was assembled by planetary cartographer Phil Stooke from detailed comparisons of MOC base images to views generated from rover imagery. It is a work in progress; future work will include improving the quality of the base images and adding future progress of the rover. Credit: NASA / JPL / MSSS / Phil Stooke |
Here's a recent press-released image of some of the salty dune that Spirit's wheels have been churning up:Spirit's dragging wheel digs up bright soilAs Spirit headed eastward toward a hoped-for winter haven on McCool hill on sol 788, its wheels stirred up an unusually large quantity of bright-colored, presumably salty soil. For the full-resolution image, visit the Planetary Photojournal. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell |
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