Another ~13m drive, -2m in elevation change for #Perseverance, along the easternmost path I mentioned yesterday. Maybe those ripples aren't that difficult to cross after all.
Those shortcuts I thought I found through the regolith ripples look pretty impassable from this angle; but maybe they'll look better as the rover comes closer to them.
Quickly processed, leveled, cropped MCZ_RIGHT mosaic, FL: 63mm
looking WNW (284°) from RMC 52.2750
Sol 1156, LMST: 12:44:54
New location for #Perseverance on Sol 1156, after a rather short ~16m drive downhill, which brought the rover 2m lower, to RMC 52.2750. There is now a ~10m remaining vertical distance to be covered to the bottom of the riverbank and onto the ancient riverbed of Neretva Vallis.
#Perseverance moved just 6 clicks on Sol 1154, apparently repositioning itself at the same location, so, no new map, just a newsbite from Mars
(courtesy of Little Assistant™)
#Perseverance's weather JSON feed has not been updated for the last 3 weeks, since Sol 1133, although it still returns a reply. The #Mars2020 mission's weather page has disappeared after the last changes and it now redirects to a page describing the rover's instruments, without any link to their details
It looks more and more like #NASA have changed their outreach policy, but not much has been reported about it, AFAICT. A victim of the thriving "space economy", I guess?
@sharponlooker@tom30519
The image is a crop from this 96° HFOV NAVCAM mosaic, from the same RMC (there is a reason I'm using RMC and NOT Sols; they tell location and attitude unambiguously):
Processed NAVCAM_RIGHT
looking WNW (300°) from RMC 52.2540
Sol 1148, LMST: 13:00:01
#Perseverance drove 10m on Sol 1150, to RMC 52.2638. As mentioned earlier, this appears to be the most difficult part of the descent to the ancient riverbed of Neretva Vallis, on the way to Bright Angel, a rock formation of geological interest.
The maps were drawn with @QGIS, using data from #NASA's #MMGIS, imagery from #HiRISE and DTMs from #USGS
New location for #Perseverance on Sol 1148, RMC 52.2540
The rover is now approaching the most difficult part of the descent, but apparently it has no problem negotiating the steep slope at a slower pace.
The maps show the estimated new location along with the guessed drive path and a number of predictions for its coming drives. It seems it will reach Bright Angel sometime between Sol 1156 and 1160, assuming no pauses.
And here is a possible path to the next stop, a point where the two alternatives, one through the nearby ripples and the other along the rocky riverbank, will start to be more visible.
Processed, undistorted, leveled, cropped NAVCAM_RIGHT quick mosaic
looking WNW (300°) from RMC 52.2540
Sol 1148, LMST: 13:00:01