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.

More Marquette…

Some new views of Marquette Island…

Look out for some close-up images of the surface of this rock, taken with Oppy’s microscope imager, within a few days I’d say…

Oppy on tour around “Marquette”…

Oppy is now driving slowly around “Marquette Island”, imaging it as she goes, carrying out a detailed photographic survey of the great slab of rock. Here are the latest views – remember to click on each image to bring up a larger version…

More images soon… but the spotlight will swing away from Oppy tomorrow, when NASA tells the waiting world the latest news about its attempts to free Spirit from its dust trap…! Hope it’s good news! Can’t wait!

“Marquette” in colour…

WOW!!! Click on that picture to bring up a larger version… (by the way, I’m not claiming that’s ‘natural’ or ‘real’ colour… it kind of is, but I’ve messed about with enhanced and tweaked it to make it look more, well, attractive to the eye )

Here’s a close-up of the rock itself…

Fascinating detail visible on that rock, especially at the top. Either bits have fallen off it since it landed here, or something hit it after it landed (what a heck of a shot that was, if it’s true!) knocking pieces off. There certainly looks like what appears to be smaller pieces of it scattered around, don’t you think?

I bet the MER team can’t wait to get closer for some detailed scientific study…!

Finally, I know the title of this post says “…in colour”, but here’s a crispened-up black and white pic of “Marquette” that I’ve made…

Meet “Marquette”…

Well, here we are… our first detailed look at “Marquette Island”…

Hmmm… that looks nothing like a meteorite to me – it looks more like a paving slab that’s fallen onto the ground after coming off a passing truck! No, seriously, that looks very much like a big chunk of ejecta – rocky material that was blasted out of the ground by an impact that occurred some distance away, flew through the air away from the impact site and then landed here. Where did it come from? How long has it been here? What’s it made of? How old is it? These are all questions that will be being fired around the team behind Oppy even as you read these words, I’m sure!

Let’s have a look at it in 3D…

There’s a LOT of debris around it, isn’t there? Some of it looks like it belongs to the “Island”, some of it looks like local rock. Let’s take a closer 3D look at Marquette Island itself…

I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a fascinating chunk of rock! I’m pretty sure that over the next few days we’ll see Oppy edging closer to and then around it to give it a thorough examination. We can already see the robot arm, with its suite of instruments, preparing to get to work…

So, here we are folks… “Marquette Island”. I think we’ll be here a while…

Approaching “Marquette Island”…

Slowly but surely, Oppy is trundling towards “Marquette Island”, a big block of dark.. something… standing on the dusty Meridiani Plain like a sculpture… Here’s my first approximately true colour colourisation… (click on it to make it larger, as usual)…

And if you have a your pair of 3D glasses handy, take a look at this…

Let’s take a closer look…

mmm… that really isn’t screaming “meteorite!” to me now we’re closer. It definitely looks more like a piece of martian rock blasted over here from an impact that occurred elsewhere, somewhere over the horizon – a piece of “ejecta”, in other words. It’s still a fascinating object tho, and even more so when you look at it in more detail in a 3D view…

Over the next few days Oppy will no doubt be creeping even closer, so we’ll be able to enjoty even more detailed looks at this intriguing whateveritis…!  Keep checking back here for more pics and news.

“Marquette Island” ahoy!

That, my friends, is “Marquette Island”, the latest block spotted by Oppy as she heads south on her long, long trek to Endeavour Crater! What it is, we don’t know… yet… we’re not close enough yet. It looks a lot less like a meteorite to me now than it did – I’m now thinking it’s a great chunk of rock from a crater’s formation over the horizon (or even that crater ON the horizon?) but I guess we’ll have to wait and see. The next batch of pictures should help us get to the bottom of things. In the meantime, here are a few 3D images of the area for you to (hopefully!) enjoy… as usual, click on each image to bring up a larger version…

Naming Oppy’s meteorites

Why are all the meteorites spotted by Oppy called something Island? I’ve the answer over on my CUMBRIAN SKY blog…

http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/whats-in-a-name-2

Where ARE we..?

If you’re wondering whereabouts we actually ARE on “The Road To Endeavour”, let me show you…

Ok, so here’s Oppy’s “trek” so far – from her landing site at Eagle Crater, all those years ago, to where she is now, approx 5km away from Victoria Crater. If you click on the image below you’ll see a bigger version.

 

Soooooo, two obvious questions spring to mind. 1 – where is Endeavour Crater? and 2 – how far away is it? This next pic will show you – but be prepared for a shock… again, click on it to bring up a larger version -

Yikes! Endeavour is about 12km away to the west!

When will Oppy reach Endeavour? Who knows. As the song says, It’s been a long road… getting from there to here…

(thanks to my fellow UMSFer for giving me permission to use images ctreated with his great Google Mars files)

Oppy’s magnificent martian meteorites…

Just for fun – it’s not calibrated, or to scale, or anything fancy like that, ok? So no comments twining “That one’s too big!” or “That one’s too dark!” or “That shadow looks wrong!” – here’s a pic showing the largest and most important meteorites Oppy has discovered during her travels so far. There are some smaller ones I haven’t added – maybe another time

Don’t forget to click on the image for a larger version. Hope you like it!

Memories of Mackinac…

Mackinac is far behind Oppy now, but I felt moved to celebrate / commemorate their brief get-together with one of my astro-poems… please click on the image below to bring up a full size version you can read more easily, or print off, if you want to.