I'm fairly sure the plan was for just a weekend science stop. Sat, Sun and Mon are planned on Friday as one - so you can't command driving as you don't have the imagery to work from - it's a hatrick of restricted sols basically.

So - they planned a little trench and some IDD work within that trench to get some good science out of the weekend.

HOWEVER

The IDD faulted out on the first part of the sequence and thus didn't complete the investigation of the trench that was intended. Troubleshooting took place yestersol, with the science being restarted tosol hopefully.

I'm sure the science and engineering teams are as keen as any of us to get to Victoria - but characterising the soil of the annulus is worthwhile - given that it's been several KM and many hundreds of sols since the last investigation of the soil.

I'd imagine a few more days at the trench getting some good APXS, MI and Mossbauer ( Mossbauer measurements tend to take 4x as long as they used to due to radioactive decay of the sample within the instrument) and perhaps a big drive by the end of the week ( empty flash, full battery, foot to the floor ) - will put us perhaps 2 or 3 drive sols from Victoria. The rover is in comparative good health apart from the FR steering actuator and IDD shoulder joint.

As a reality check - consider this. The orig mission spec expected technical problems, sequencing problems and other issues to cause the loss of one sol out of every THREE. We've actually had around 90 at Olympia (although good science was done throughout that period ), 40 at Purgatory (again, good science done at the same time), and perhaps half a dozen other 'stalled' sols due to trouble inbetween. - Call it 100 sols that have been 'lost' because of technical trouble...that's slightly over 1 in 10. Not bad.

But meantime....DAMNIT - GET YOUR ASS TO VICTORIA

:)

Doug