Welcome…

… to the “The Road To Endeavour”, a blog dedicated to following the Mars Exploration Rover ‘Opportunity’ as she heads south from Victoria Crater to the much larger, much more epic crater, ‘Endeavour’!

This is actually a blog I wasn’t planning to write. I was planning on starting up a blog dedicated to the Mars Science Laboratory – NASA’s next mission to Mars – but it was announced today that MSL’s launch has been put back from 2009 to 2011, so this is Plan B: a blog that will be a kind of travelogue, following Opportunity’s long, loooong drive south to Endeavour crater.

So, I’ll be posting images of Endeavour Crater here, as seen by Mars Reconaissance Orbiter and other probes, along with images of Meridiani Planum taken by Oppy as she heads south for the crater. It’s not meant to be serious, or particularly scientific, just a place to come for some interesting pictures, really. I hope you like what you find here, and keep checking for new images.

Colourful Chocolate (Hills)

Finally, FINALLY, I’m able to make a decent colour view of the most interesting area of The Chocolate Hills…! Please click on the image below to bring up a full size version…

That’s something, isn’t it? All that flaky, crusty material on the top? Let’s take an even closer look at that…

What IS that stuff? Well, the common belief is that it is “fracture fill”, that’s material that was deposited inside cracks in the rock at some point – when they were underwater, perhaps, in the deep, distant past of this part of Mars – and were then exposed when the rock cracked open, revealing the layers of different minerals within. That would back up what we’re seeing on this image, and other images of these rocks: a layer of bluish-grey material sandwiched between layers of harder, more yellowy rocky material. Fascinating whatever it is!

A couple more 3D views for you all to (hopefully!) enjoy… Again, click on the images to bring up larger sized ones…

Finally, a close in look at the layers on the top of this rock. Not brilliant quality, I know, but still interesting…

3D Chocolate Hills…

Oppy’s latest drive was only a short one, but it put her in a position that allowed her to take some lovely close-up views of the “Chocolate Hills”… which in turn allowed me to make some new 3D images of them! Click on the images below to bring up full size versions…

UPDATE:

When I checked the galleries of pictures taken by a pair of the rover’s hazard avoidance cameras, or “HAZCAMs”, I found some more images that could be made into 3D views… these are definitely amongst the most striking 3D pics I’ve made during the whole MER mission…!

And I saw something else very cool yesterday. LIke most bloggers, I often wonder if there’s anybody “out there” reading and looking at this stuff. Well, I saw this on Twitter, so it looks like there is!

Thanks @nearvanna for looking at my 3D pics!

Concepcion panorama…

My first try at a full (well, almost full!) panorama of Concepcion Crater… click on the image below to bring up a full size version…

Oppy reaches the Chocolate Hills…

No, Oppy hasn’t crept into the Willy Wonka factory and stumbled upon some kind of bizarre cocoa sculpture, some of the rocks at Concepcion Crater have actually been named the “Chocolate Hills”! Why? Well, according to my great friend and fellow Mars explorer, Rui Borges, the sailing ship, Concepcion, after which this crater has been named, was burned on an island in the Philipines, called Bohol Island, and now, thanks to Rui pointing this out to the MER team,  some of the rocks being seen by Oppy are being named after places and features on that island. The island has some hills called the Chocolate Hills, so now does Concepcion crater, too!

I know, I know, you couldn’t make it up, could you!

It seems certain that there’ll be a lot of things here named after places on Bohol Island, so let’s take a look at it. First of all, where is it? It’s here…

And Bohol Island itself looks like this…

It might be helpful to have a map of Bohol handy, so we can see which places and features Concepcion’s rocks and boulders etc are named after in the days ahead…

You can see the “Chocolate Hills” are just below the centre of the island, and ‘m sure you’re wondering what they look like, right? Well, here you are – and I think you’ll be as amazed as I was by the view… they’re beautiful!

They don’t look real, do they? They look like something from AVATAR! But no, they are real, and if you look at this beautiful panorama from the Bohol website I found, you can see why they’re such a huge tourist attraction on Bohol.

Anyway, that’s where Concepcion’s names will be coming from…

Back to today’s images – which have literally just come down, and are a real study of the Hills. Here’s what we can see. First one of the original black and white ‘raw’ images…

Add two more, taken through different coloured filters, put them into some image processing software, mess about with skillfully manipulate and calibrate them, and you get this out of the other end…

Let’s take a look at that in 3D…

…and if we look more closely at the broken edge of the rock on the left we can actually see some of those famous “concretion berries” on the end of their stalks, soon to break off and fall away…

That’s a very interesting rock, don’t you think? I’m sure Oppy will be paying very close attention to it.

Another 3D view, with a wider angle this time…

You can still see the Chocolate Hills down at the bottom left there, but you can also see a lot of boulders, rocks and impact debris piled up too. It’s the fact that these rocks are sitting so exposed, and aren’t covered by dust, that suggests the crater is very young – well, very young in martian terms, still ancient to us!

Another view, this time of the other side of the crater…

Oppy could spend months exploring this crater and still not take a proper look at every rock!

More pictures soon… hope you’re all enjoying the road trip as we walk beside Opportunity…

The Grand Tour of Concepcion begins…

Oppy is now slowly but surely working her way around Concepcion Crater, so her view is changing, slightly, every daty. Today new images came back, and as you can see from that pic at the top there Oppy can now see the north-facing blocks on the rim of the crater very clearly. And if you click on the image below – a crop of the image at screen top – you’ll see that a couple of them have really interesting crust, or ‘rind’, on them…

Looking forward to seeing more images of that!

Meanwhile, another image of that lumpy, spotty rock I showed you in an earlier post (which I have been told is called “Mahanay Island”) has come in, allowing me to make this rather stunning 3D image…

Here’s another 3D view, this time showing Oppy’s tracks around Concepcion Crater…

This is what the MER mission is all about – exploring, seeing new sights every day… Can’t wait to see tomorrow’s views!

Walking in a geology wonderland…

There are some truly fascinating rocks here, just as I thought there would be. Take a look at these beauties…

Look at all the different types of rock on that picture. Layered rocks, smooth rocks, cracked rocks, whole rocks… The wedge-shaped rock at bottom left looks a lot like the famous “dinosaur brain” rock ‘Wopmay’ Oppy found in Endurance Crater. But seriously, the layering on some of those rocks… just beautiful…

Then there’s this poor guy here…

That’s a very interesting rock… it looks like it’s covered with “berries” and protrusions, is cracked too, and has layers. I think Oppy will take a much closer look at that one…

Oh my…

The first images that allow people like me to make approx true colour (ish) pictures of Concepcion Crater have just been posted on t’internet, and the view is… well, see for yourself… click on the picture to bring up the full size version, because trust me, you HAVE to see that…

We can clearly see the dark rocks in the “ray” that has shot away from the crater over on the far side… we can see layering in the lighter rocks around and inside the crater… it’s a stunning view -

But what’s most stunning of all is what we can see on the horizon.

Hills.

Lots of hills.

The hills marking the rims of craters much, much further away than Concepcion – of Endeavour, and the impact craters beyond it… Please, PLEASE, click on the next image and then just scroll slooooooowly along it, drinking in the view…

Isn’t that something? Imagine you’re on Mars, my dear readers, standing next to Opportunity. In front of you is a great, gaping, rubble-edged, boulder strewn hole, made a thousand years ago… and on the far horizon, hills marking the rims of craters a thousand times larger than the one in front of you, and countless thousands of times older…

And people ask me why I love Mars so much…

Welcome to Concepcion Crater!

We’re there!

(click on all the following images for larger versions)

So, here we are – Concepcion Crater! There are a LOT of rocks here – big and small, jagged and smooth-edged, layered and whole. Oppy could spend months here, studying them all – I’m pretty sure she won’t, tho, not now the Hills of Endeavour as looming so large on the horizon…

Let’s take a look at the scene in 3D…

Take a few moments to wander around that scene with your 3D glasses on… it’s a geological wonderland, it really is. There are some parts of it that just look too dangerous for Oppy to drive through or even near, what with all the jagged shards of rock lying around. But a few interesting things jump out right away…

Firstly, the darkest rocks are mostly grouped in a “spray” off to roughly Oppy’s ten o’clock position…

Secondly, off to the other side there’s a fantastic variety of rocks… some weird and wonderful shapes, with intriguing layering and surface details…

Finally, here’s a 3D view of one of the most interesting pieces of rock near to Oppy…

I wonder how long Oppy will be here..?

Closer and closer…

Oppy is now just a few tens of metres away from the rocks marking the edge of Concepcion… (the green circle marks her approximate current position)

And here’s the view…

Let’s add some colour…

… and here’s the view in 3D…

That’s a heck of a view, isn’t it? Can’t wait for Oppy to get in amongst all those rocks and start taking some really detailed colour images!

But something on the bottom of one of the most recent images caught my eye…

Now, that looks pretty dark to me… and the rocks around and inside Concepcion are pretty dark, too… Hmmm… is that a piece of ejecta from Concepcion? The first we’ve really come across? Some interesting details in the 3D version…

The next few days are going to be very, very interesting!

Where exactly *are* we..?

I’ve had a couple of people asking just exactly where we are at the moment (and by ‘we’ obviously I mean Oppy!). Ok, let’s take a look.

This is a map created by unmannedspaceflight.com’s cartographer extraordinaire, Tesheiner, showing Oppy’s recent route. The numbers refer to location reached by Oppy on certain days, or ’sols’, of the mission. You’ll also see the location of Marquette Island marked on the map. I’ve added Oppy’s most recent stopping place.

Straightaway, looking at that map shows you that Oppy has been fairly steaming south since leaving Marquette Island! We’re now literally one decent drive away from Concepcion. Let’s take a closer look at just where we are:

I’ve oriented that map with south at the top this time, just to make it easier to get a feel for Oppy heading towards Concepcion crater. See the red circle at the wider angle view on the right? That’s where Oppy is – or was, last we heard back from her – parked up just on the edge of an area of bare rock, which is great for driving on! Oppy’s drivers probably stopped here, after a short drive, rather than ploughing straight on, because they wanted to take a really detailed image of the area to help them plan their studies of this fascinating-looking crater.

So, what’s the view like at the moment? Well, thanks to Damien Bouric - another member of the unmannedspaceflight.com forum – we can see… You absolutely have to click on this image to bring up a full size version, then you’ll not only see details around and inside Concepcion, but hills on the distant horizon too! (Thanks Damien, for giving me permission to use your beautiful picture here )

I think you can even line up features on Damien’s pic with the view from HiRISE…

So… yes… one more good drive and we’re there! Unless Oppy’s drivers are told to drive around the crater and then drive towards it from another angle, we’ll have to wait and see. Exciting times ahead!

——————–

UPDATE: Ok, so maybe TWO good drives… The latest images to come back from Oppy show that she drove to the other side of the plate of exposed rock but no further. I don’t mind – the new view shows a LOT of detail in and around the crater…

And the view in 3D is really quite startling now…