Monthly Archives: May 2017

Where Is Curiosity?

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The MSL website helpfully provides maps to show the progress of Curiosity, but lately, circumstances have led to some frustration.

Curiosity has reached the southern limit of the displayed range, and it is heading south, so it is hard to see what is in store. In addition, the large scale inset is placed so that it obscures significant adjacent topography … as shown here …

Never fear! I have the Hiview software and image files, which I downloaded some time ago, and these include the imagery that is the basis for these maps. So here I display a  small scale ( … N.B. a small scale displays a large area … )  image with the approximate boundary of the sol 1707 inset map marked.

You’ll note that the “foothills” of Mt. Sharp are well distant to the south. The features there were evident in the panoramic views from the landing site, as see my  Sol3 panorama  post from Dec 5,2012. ( This was my first Mars Curiosity post. )

Curiosity is more than halfway there from the landing site, but I’m not sure what the schedule is, or the planned path.

“Hills peep o’er hills, and alps on alps arise!”

 

Ozymandias

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The latest vistas from Curiosity put me in mind of Shelley’s sonnet.

“Look on these works, ye mighty, and despair.”

Of course, these are not the ruins of some civilization, but purely inanimate landscape. Yet, everything takes a form through a very leisurely evolution, compared to earth, and there it all sits, like some incredible junkyard.

Here is a simple panorama from the mastcam images of sol 1698.

… click to enlarge!

… Here’s the same scene on sol 1700, except for a forward displacement of Curiosity’s POV.

The very prominent knoll in the left foreground on sol 1700 can easily be located in the left middle ground on sol 1698.

The prominent features from the center to the lower right in the sol 1698 view are no longer in view on sol 1700.

Here’s a sol 1705 Navcam view which can be matched up with the sol 1700 Mastcam view, above.

Curiosity has advanced to a position in the sol 1700 view, just in front of the 3 large “rocks” near the center of that view. This formation appears in the sol 1705 view on the left center. It can be identified by the form of the sand, or dust, drifted against them.