See the rover’s wheel tracks disappearing off to the East
Assembled from 2 NavCam tiles after the drive on sol 1556. JPL have not yet released the drive data or the map, but it looks like a long drive down slope to the East and further away from the crater rim.
I’ll post the details and map as soon as I see them
Excellent call regarding drive direction! According to the post-drive image metadata that reports the x,y z of the rover from the last zero reset of the RMC site number. That data tells us the distances between the rover’s end-of-drive location and its beginning-of-drive location was 147.24 meters west, and 51.4 meters south. So that looks very close to WSW.
We’ll get a precise Lat / Long etc when the traverse map or Waypoints JSON is released. Sadly that won’t be released until the JPL staff report for work in the next few hours and have checked / approved the data before releasing it :)
I was hoping they’d give those spherules a dose if LIBS, but I’ve not really looked at all the pre-drive images yet. I also hope that the next time they equip a rover to explore other worlds they have a modified collection strategy that besides coring, they include the ability to collect samples from the surface (small pebbles etc) so we’re sure to get things like those spherules :)
Edited to correct a typo and add the z -28.14 meters (change in elevation)