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?
@65dBnoise
It is a little frustrating that SuperCam isn't taking a break from doing close up shots of wrinkly rocks, to photograph Ingenuity from another angle.
I would think that the helicopter team would want as many photos of that final landing as possible, to help determine what, exactly, went wrong.
@tom30519
I may have turned into a pessimist, but judging by telltales and gut feelings, this might be a result of budgetary cuts. If NASA apply the governing US policy for space privatization, a.k.a. $→"space economy", it only follows that science missions will see dramatic changes. We may be seeing that already.
But to balance it, we may see more of:
"Here is superhero Musk crash-landing a Starship on Mars!
What a great success for space economy!
Humanity, rejoice!"
🙄
@65dBnoise
Could that be an abandoned chain mail helmet beside it? Perhaps two warring factions realized the futility of battle, discarded their stuff and went off to the nearest pub together... 🍺 🍺
#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