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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Phoenix _ Sol 3 and onwards - imaging
Posted by: djellison May 28 2008, 06:27 PM
Keeping with the practice of sol-by-sol discussions, here it is.
Posted by: Sunspot May 28 2008, 06:34 PM
LOL The press have such short attention spans. The mission has hardly started and most of them have gone. lol
Posted by: kwan3217 May 28 2008, 06:35 PM
Well, its getting to the point where they are saying "Well, here's a picture of the same part of Mars..." I don't expect them to do daily press briefings for much longer. We'll be better served by reading their web sites and blogs.
Posted by: djellison May 28 2008, 06:36 PM
Not Sol 3 related - but it's a graphic image pulled out by Adobe Soundbooth of the Melacom recording from MEX 
If I had to guess, the bright part that finished at the bottom of the 'trough' would be the plasma 'blackout' period and the kink on the 'up' slope the 'chute deployment or the switch from 8k to 32k. The wider, brighter area covering most of the signal period, perhaps noise from HRSC or Spicam.
Doug
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Posted by: volcanopele May 28 2008, 06:48 PM
It is probably the "You mean, we have to report from Tucson?" syndrome.
Posted by: elakdawalla May 28 2008, 07:24 PM
Actually, a lot of the press from JPL were headed out to Tucson. They may just have run out of questions. Most of them are now heading on to Florida to cover Shuttle launch, I think.
--Emily
Posted by: imipak May 28 2008, 07:45 PM
heh,.. when I played the file, my audio player's default visualisation module kicked in and produced this (it didn't fit onto one screen's width so I've crudely pasted chunks from two screenshots together to get the whole thing.) As scientific as a newpaper horoscope, of course
but I notice the same harmonics (if that's what they are) show up in both visualisations though.
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EDIT: Hmmm, Doug's shot shows a curve after the "bounce", whilst mine shows a straight line. Logarithmic vs. linear vertical scale perhaps? Any mathematicians in the house?
Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 28 2008, 07:57 PM
It looks as though you and Doug have discovered a new subatomic particle.
Posted by: kungpostyle May 28 2008, 08:19 PM
A Phoenon?
Posted by: imipak May 28 2008, 08:48 PM
Doug discovered it first... I suppose that makes it Doug's Boson!!
*rimshot*
FX: *tumbleweed*, silence broken only by the sound of the wind whistling across the desolate Vastitas plain, the weather tell-tale slaps forlornly against the met mast...
Posted by: JRehling May 28 2008, 09:08 PM
A few media outlets (worst of all, DrudgeReport) overhyped the mission with headlines like "Life on Mars?" which would naturally give the readership a hangover when they find out: that absolutely no evidence of any kind has yet been collected by the mission; that the instruments on the mission are not even capable of detecting life when they do start operating.
For those people who read headlines alone, the discovery of life on Mars is already ancient history, even though it never happened. But it will continue to "happen" every few years.
Posted by: Juramike May 28 2008, 09:21 PM
I'm just curious, and horribly addicted: Which site get the images posted first? University of Arizona or NASA?
Must.....see....more.....pix.....
Posted by: um3k May 28 2008, 09:37 PM
University of Arizona seems to post the images as they are received on Earth, nearly real time. Definitely first.
Posted by: volcanopele May 28 2008, 09:37 PM
Emily, the workspace mosaic you said you couldn't on your blog, is it this one: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=529&cID=8
Posted by: elakdawalla May 28 2008, 10:04 PM
Thanks. I was looking at the NASA site for images and it wasn't there. How did you find it? I don't see it in any of the various galleries on the Phoenix site either...
--Emily
Posted by: volcanopele May 28 2008, 10:27 PM
I just used the Phoenix website's gallery page. The image is thumbnailed there, but it doesn't show the entire mosaic in the thumbnail, so it is difficult to spot.
Posted by: mars loon May 29 2008, 12:49 AM
At today's press conference, both the lack of questions and the lack of reporters was hughly dissapointing.
To bad we can't call in. I could think of several as I'm sure others could as well
A missed opportunity for all.
ken
Posted by: stellarlight May 29 2008, 12:51 AM
Hi!
Have you seen this news?
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMAWQ1YUFF_index_0.html
I don´t understand how the sound of Phoenix can be so strange, they seem to be "computer sounds"...
Is that a "real sound" that we would listen if we were flying next to Phoenix?
Cheers!
Posted by: elakdawalla May 29 2008, 01:20 AM
If you want to post a few here, go ahead and I'll ask a couple tomorrow (I didn't know the call-in number today but I do now). However, I probably won't get away with asking more than 2 or 3 questions, so I'll have to pick and choose if a lot are posted.
--Emily
Posted by: Gladstoner May 29 2008, 01:36 AM
Question 1: "Do you have a workaround for the malfunctioning arm?"
Follow-up: "Do you expect the failure rate to be similar to that of the Mars rovers?"
.....
Question 2: "Is this the coldest place on Mars?"
Follow-up: "Is it the flattest?"
.....
(Removes mainstream-media hat....)
Posted by: nprev May 29 2008, 02:26 AM
Okay, thanks! Here's a few; pick any you want or leave them as you will, Emily:
1. What is the reason for the "National Park" exclusion areas? Does this mean that they will remain completely undisturbed, and if so, why? (I only got to catch maybe the last 5 min of the presser, so the reference was a bit confusing).
2. How will the arm's biobarrier be prevented from potentially interfering with the arm's function over the course of the mission?
3. Is there a long-term site imagery plan in place aside from detailed mapping of the immediate area? There are some intriguing features on the horizon that might be worth further examination within the limits of SSI.
4. Are there any preliminary guesses about the weathered "sandstone" look & composition of some of the nearby rocks?
5. Based on previous MER EDL experience and now the Phoenix backshell & heatshield impacts imaged by MRO, in addition to the thruster erosion around Phoenix itself, it seems that the windborne dust coating of the planet is almost uniformly lighter optically than the underlying soil. Why?
Guess that's enough!
Posted by: Steve G May 29 2008, 02:35 AM
Any idea if they intend - or are able - to use the Robotic Arm Camera to turn towards the spacecraft and do a self portrait mosaic? The lens can focus 11mm to infinity so focus isn't an issue. It would be great to see the spacecraft sitting on the surface. A good tourist shot if you will. Also, how about the unused MARDI camera? (Taking a shot at point blank to see what's under the spacecraft.)
Posted by: nprev May 29 2008, 02:45 AM
I think MARDI is still very much an open issue, but maybe things might change, It was disabled due to potential EDL GNC interference, but possibly after they get comfortable running the spacecraft on the surface the risks of turning it on might be less severe...my opinion & hope, anyhow.
Posted by: Aussie May 29 2008, 03:07 AM
I like nprev's question on any preliminary guesses about the weathered "sandstone" look & composition of some of the nearby rocks. If indeed they are sandstone what is the best guess on their provenance.
Posted by: Zeehond May 29 2008, 03:28 AM
New pictures are coming in now. The arm has moved.
Posted by: hal_9000 May 29 2008, 03:47 AM
Anyone plan record the press conference?
Posted by: mcaplinger May 29 2008, 03:54 AM
The bug was with reading IMU data and MARDI data simultaneously. Now that the IMUs are turned off and unused, there's no risk in operating MARDI. The spacecraft guidance system isn't very challenged just sitting on the ground.
But I think it's unlikely this will happen until all other mission objectives are met, if then. It could take a nice image of the stuff underneath the rover, and I'm not sure the RAC can see that area (MARDI is on the other side of the met mast.)
Disclaimer: this post is based on public information. Any opinions are my own.
Posted by: Zeehond May 29 2008, 03:55 AM
To my knowledge, the next press conference is at 2 PM EDT? Previous press conferences can be found at http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/.
Posted by: Zeehond May 29 2008, 04:06 AM
But I think it's unlikely this will happen until all other mission objectives are met, if then. It could take a nice image of the stuff underneath the rover, and I'm not sure the RAC can see that area (MARDI is on the other side of the met mast.)
Disclaimer: this post is based on public information. Any opinions are my own.
The MARDI system has a microphone too. It would be a great PR tool to record some Martian sounds with the sound of a moving arm in the back/foreground.
Posted by: Reed May 29 2008, 04:18 AM
This was mentioned in one of the press conferences (yesterdays I think) and the answer was that it was possible but they would concentrate on primary mission objectives first.
Posted by: Zeehond May 29 2008, 04:21 AM
And I agree with them, a lot of complicated things to do first!
BTW, the black and white panorama is done, I think.
http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_804.jpg
Posted by: bgarlick May 29 2008, 04:29 AM
and the non-fisheye panaorama...
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_776.jpg
Posted by: Josh Cryer May 29 2008, 04:39 AM
Quite enjoying the rawness of these new images! Makes me feel like I'm in command with everyone else trying to figure everything out.
Anyway, pull out your 3D glasses and enjoy this stereo image I chopped together. Brought back many memories. http://i30.tinypic.com/102pb35.jpg
Posted by: Zeehond May 29 2008, 04:44 AM
Anyway, pull out your 3D glasses and enjoy this stereo image I chopped together. Brought back many memories. http://i30.tinypic.com/102pb35.jpg
Any idea where I can find 3D glasses with the correct colours? I have red and blue glasses and blue and yellow/brown, but not red and green.
Posted by: tim53 May 29 2008, 04:49 AM
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_776.jpg
Sadly, as I suspected, Heimdal is obscured by a rise in the plains east of the lander. Unless the crater's hazed out by the distance, as Goldstone is in some VL-2 pans.
But the pedestal crater to the WNW is visible!
Me, I'm a horizon kind of guy.
-Tim.
Posted by: stevelu May 29 2008, 04:54 AM
I've been wondering about that.
Are they going to vaporize all the H2O they collect to analyze it for organic compounds?
If I ran the zoo, I would definitely take a bit of ice, at least once, gently warm it to 5 degrees C or so, and turn the microscope loose on the liquid results. Long shot? Sure, but worth trying. Does anyone know these sorts of details about the science plan? and about what exactly the microsope is intended to examine? Mineral/crystal/etc. structures and (conceivably) oven-safe fossils only??
Posted by: Pando May 29 2008, 04:55 AM
but I notice the same harmonics (if that's what they are) show up in both visualisations though.EDIT: Hmmm, Doug's shot shows a curve after the "bounce", whilst mine shows a straight line. Logarithmic vs. linear vertical scale perhaps? Any mathematicians in the house?
Ok, this is cool. I took the liberty of flipping the second half upside down to give a sense of continuity to the signal after it receded from the Mars Express. It's interesting to see the change in signal when Phoenix hit the atmosphere.
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Posted by: centsworth_II May 29 2008, 05:24 AM
No. It's just the Doppler shift in radio waves between Phoenix and Mars Express. It would have been clearer if they had said "sounds of Phoenix's radio transmission" rather than "sounds of Phoenix".
Posted by: volcanopele May 29 2008, 05:33 AM
I got mine from work...
Not sure whether mine are red/blue or red/green, but these work just fine for that anaglyph:
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/IMG_0231.jpg
Posted by: Reed May 29 2008, 06:01 AM
These birds eye views really bring out the polygons:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_816.jpg
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_815.jpg
Posted by: Joffan May 29 2008, 06:19 AM
But the pedestal crater to the WNW is visible!
Me, I'm a horizon kind of guy.
-Tim.
Isn't that Heimdal at 130 degrees?
Posted by: CosmicRocker May 29 2008, 06:50 AM
The polygons are gorgeous, and are probably the largest observable geological structures in this area.
Posted by: helvick May 29 2008, 07:25 AM
Some more questions for Emily (or anyone who can answer them here).
Exactly how icy does this area get during the winter? Does the area actually see a physical accumulation of CO2 ice on the surface and if so how deep does it get?
How much Daily (Solly?) power were the solar panels expected to generate on Sol 0 and what is the expected amount of power they will generate at the end of the primary mission?
What are the most temperature sensitive vital components of the lander? Once the onset of autumn and winter begin to bite and temperatures drop which systems are believed to be the ones that will force the mission to end?
Are the resting locations of the heatshield and backshell\parachute debris closer to the lander than expected?
Posted by: jamescanvin May 29 2008, 07:36 AM
Nice new pics.
For those of you waiting for me to repost filename corrected and zipped versions. My renaming program choked this morning trying to get it done for you before work, I'll try and sort the problem this evening (UK time)
EDIT: Now updated - see my sig
Posted by: Phil Stooke May 29 2008, 07:53 AM
"Me, I'm a horizon kind of guy."
Yes, Tim, horizons are where it's at!
An exaggerated relief view of this horizon would be interesting - I'm travelling, or I'd do it.
Phil
Posted by: Josh Cryer May 29 2008, 09:22 AM
Hey Zeehond, I could have made it wrong, but they had stereo images plus a green filter too, so I added it. Quasi-color stereo image, like in those old Viking books I used to read when I was a kid. I was the only kid in our small town library to ever check them out. Maybe I'm just able to see into these sorts of images but it works just fine with me with blue/red lenses.
Posted by: Juramike May 29 2008, 12:09 PM
Coordinated view of my pseudocolor HiRISE image and the most recent Phoenix lander surface panorama (http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_804.jpg):
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Bluer in the false color image is darker colored in the original image (polygon bordersr and exposed rocks).
-Mike
[EDIT: "Sleepy Hollow" is the darker blue zone very close to the lander at 1 o'clock in the pseudocolorized image.]
Posted by: hal_9000 May 29 2008, 12:13 PM
Moving...
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Posted by: rlorenz May 29 2008, 12:53 PM
If I ran the zoo, I would definitely take a bit of ice, at least once, gently warm it to 5 degrees C or so, and turn the microscope loose on the liquid results. Long shot? Sure, but worth trying. Does anyone know these sorts of details about the science plan? and about what exactly the microsope is intended to examine? Mineral/crystal/etc. structures and (conceivably) oven-safe fossils only??
Good thing you dont run the zoo.
If you warmed the ice to 5 deg C it would boil away quickly. Even exposed ice may sublime away in minutes-hours.
The ovens in TEGA are about 3mm in dia (see http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/TEGA.pdf )
so you can't get a microscope (which is an entirely different instrument elsewhere on the lander) into them
(the point is after all to seal the oven (and once you seal each one, you cant unseal it)
so you can look for water vapor, organics etc that are evolved. NB
big difference between TEGA on MPL and TEGA-II on PHX is that while the TA ovens are the same, the EGA
is very different - an absorption spectrometer for CO2 and H2O on TEGA-1, but a mass spec for TEGA-II that
might also detect organics.
But I dont think soil sampling is planned for a few sols yet.
Posted by: MahFL May 29 2008, 01:03 PM
Still another day of arm unstow yet.
Posted by: Pertinax May 29 2008, 01:36 PM
Even more questions for Emily (or anyone who can answer them here).
Is there a systematic observation plan for atmospheric halos scheduled as part of normal surface operations?
Will other mission raw data (MET, TEGA, TECP, etc) be available in rapid manner as the SSI data is?
(A statement rather than a question) Thank you for your dedication and willingness to open the further exploration of Mars to all who are interested!
-- Pertinax
Posted by: Sunspot May 29 2008, 01:49 PM
-- Pertinax
I think they had this planned for MPL? I remember a article in Sky & Telescope magazine, i'll see if I can find it.
I've found the magazine.. December issue 1999.
Posted by: Pedro_Sondas May 29 2008, 02:28 PM
The scoop:
and the RAC:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=814&cID=8
Posted by: Pertinax May 29 2008, 02:29 PM
Thank you Sunspot. I though I remembered that as well. Did the plan carry over to Phoenix though? I thought that it had but over the past month have not been able to find any mention one way or the other.
-- Pertinax
Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 02:30 PM
It would be sort of cool to see the RAC with the 'lights' on imaged by the RA,B,C SSI filters
Doug
Posted by: ustrax May 29 2008, 02:35 PM
I am happy...
On the 8th year of the 21st century I have made my first gif... 
Posted by: Stu May 29 2008, 02:40 PM
Oh dear god, we've created a monster! A MONSTER I tell you! Run! Runnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!
Posted by: Sunspot May 29 2008, 03:02 PM
-- Pertinax
I don't have a scanner, so I had to photograph the article with my digital camera.
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Posted by: Sunspot May 29 2008, 03:04 PM
....and the rest of the article.
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Posted by: hendric May 29 2008, 03:13 PM
Q: Can Phoenix wake in the spring without its batteries? Are they the most likely part to be damaged over winter? Could the wakeup "phone home" procedure end up saturating the telecoms orbiters (heh) if Phoenix tried to do it repeatedly?
Q: Do we have any photos at or near the Phoenix latitude taken in the early spring and mid summer for comparing changes?
Q: What amount of expansion/contraction is expected of the polygons? Will we be able to see noticeable changes?
Q: How late in the winter will MRO be able to view Phoenix? Will it take photos past EOM to watch the surface evolution? (and hopefully get some "engineering photos" of Phoenix's shadow across the surface!)
Q: What kind of effect is predicted on the ground ice accumulation due to the albedo change caused by Phoenix's landing?
Q: Is there a decoder for the windsock speed online somewhere?
Q: Phoenix got below the Mars Scout budget cap by using existing equipment. What is the phoenix's team feelings about building a new lander from scratch within the Scout budget?
Here's a great idea for a flash kid's game: Dig with the scoop and drop it into the instruments! My son could play for hours doing that. Hmmm, crazy thought for the "XM"...Write JPL in the sand.
Thanks Emily!
PS Some questions from friends:
Q: How long before Phoenix team members get "Order of the Phoenix" badges?
Q: Do they expect the digging to shift the lander at all?
Plus the usual "when is the mic going to come on?"
Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 03:40 PM
Ehhem...it didn't. The initial 'scout' budget was $325m. That went up by about $100m before launch. You have to include the $100m spent on the old '01 lander as well. Total cost about $520m.
Doug
Posted by: Stu May 29 2008, 03:50 PM
Here's a question for you Emily (or any Phoenix people lurking in the undergrowth...)
At the risk of sounding slightly ungrateful when the team have done such a magnificent job getting the pictures published online so quickly, are there any plans to sort the raw images page into daily blocks, like the MER ones are? I just ask because it's a bit ungainly at the moment, with everything on the one page; I fear that after a week or so of pictures it will become just too big to use without having to go and make a meal or do some shopping while the page is loading... 
I too would love to see some "sky shots", it's a real itch I want to scratch, you know? I remember seeing that Sky & Telescope article at the time it was published and thinking how cool it would be to see something like that for real, and now we have cameras and hardware to do such a beautiful scene justice I think it would be a real shame not to at least try. I'm sure they're going to tho.
(BTW: just found http://qik.com/johnculberson interesting report from JPL on landing night... camera-work's a bit "Cloverfield" but I thought it gives a nice impression of being there...)
Posted by: jamescanvin May 29 2008, 04:34 PM
As some of you may have noticed (thanks Algorimancer) the Phoenix raw image update on my site was corrupted earlier. For some reason things got garbled when I tried to FTP from work. It should all be fixed now.
James
Posted by: stevelu May 29 2008, 05:38 PM
If you warmed the ice to 5 deg C it would boil away quickly. Even exposed ice may sublime away in minutes-hours.
The ovens in TEGA are about 3mm in dia (see http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rlorenz/TEGA.pdf )
so you can't get a microscope (which is an entirely different instrument elsewhere on the lander) into them
Thanks for your reply.
"So, it's impossible. How long will it take?"
- Leslie Neilson's (yes, that Leslie Neilson) proto-Kirk character in Forbidden Planet
But, if I ran the zoo I would listen to my engineers. So my question would be -- back of the envelope estimate, how much cost & complexity would it add to a lander such as this to provide for a small, sealed 'sllde' (i.e. chamber) in(to) which ice could be melted, to then be imaged at say 200x?
Ideally several different magnifications of course, but let's start simple, especially as in this thought experiment it sounds like we need a lens assembly put in place for this single purpose.
I'm hoping that at least by the time we get to Europa such a capability will be included.
True enough. My excuse for bringing this up now is that I'm trying to manage my expectations, and to put the science that we can expect into context -- at least for myself.
Also, my martian friends, who were anxious that they might be exposed (and y'know "there goes the neighborhood") by Phoenix, are breathing much easier now.
Posted by: Steve G May 29 2008, 06:32 PM
Just completed watching the latest news conferance, they mentioned the lander "sleeping" yet with continuous sunlight, why would it sleep? (Or is it for the benefit of the team to sleep!)
Posted by: Stu May 29 2008, 06:34 PM
Starting to name rocks and features around the lander. The theme: fairy tales and folklore, so we have (another? Doesn't Gusev have one already?) "Sleepy Hollow", "Headless" (as in "horseman" I'm guessing" and "Ichabod", plus "Humpty Dumpty", "Wall" and "Alice"...
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/phoenix/collection_16/location-sol3-v8_001.png
Peter Smith said they expect to be naming 100 to 200 features, so there's a lot of potential to have your kid's (or your own!) favourite fairy tale character ID's on Mars soon...
Posted by: volcanopele May 29 2008, 06:38 PM
A few thoughts from the press conference:
1) Emily got in more than 2 questions *tsk tsk* Seriously, at least you got some of the others to say something.
2) NASA TV does look better on a High def TV.
3) The rock circulation idea is pretty interesting. Some of the views of the nearby trough walls gives the appearance that the soil is a conglomerate, with a coarse-grained sand matrix with hand-to-football sized rocks. Basically, the texture below the surface resembles the appearance on the surface, a mix of sand and smallish rocks. I wonder how this will affect digging. The rocks here are pretty diverse with two basic rock "types": angular rocks with relatively smooth, flat top surfaces and lumpy, vesicular rocks. I would presume the second type represent basaltic rocks, but the brighter albedo is a bit odd.
4) Can't wait to see that pan in color.
Posted by: Steve G May 29 2008, 06:43 PM
Too bad they didn't take the weight of the MARDI (Not really needed with MRO) and replace it with a third camera on the mast with a terrific telephoto lens to see up close more distance objects of interest.
Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 06:48 PM
All hours of sunshine are not the same. At local midnight, the sun is only 3 degrees above the horizon - the solar array output wont be zero, but it wont be very much at all. At local noon, it's 45 degrees above the horizon - lots of power.
Doug
Posted by: Juramike May 29 2008, 06:51 PM
I'm hoping that the trough near vector 300 gets the name "Blue Canyon".
This seems to be one of those ubiquitous names you find on just about every hiking map. It would be nice to have one on Mars as well to increase confusion.
[Other ubiquitous names include: Deer Lake, Mount Snow, Bald Mountain, Deep Creek, Green River, Green Valley (oops! already got that one!), Rocky Ridge, Blue Lake.]
Posted by: volcanopele May 29 2008, 07:01 PM
From today's press release mosaic, a crop showing the hardware in the distance. Used HiRISE image to confirm identification of heat shield and bounce mark, assuming bright spot is backshell.
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Posted by: punkboi May 29 2008, 07:03 PM
Go Phoenix! Waiting on the full-color panorama to be released... 
Posted by: Steve G May 29 2008, 07:04 PM
Good shot (inverted up) to show scoop and deck.
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Posted by: jamescanvin May 29 2008, 08:11 PM
Well you've all already seen a version of this at yesterdays press conference. But this is my first Phoenix mosaic so I thought I'd show it off anyway.
http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/2008/05/29/phoenix-sol-2-r-abc-8-pointings
Click image
James
Posted by: ahecht May 29 2008, 08:16 PM
Don't forget that shadows on Mars are very dark, as is low-angle light. Without a think hazy atmosphere to scatter light, the amount of light that gets to the solar panels when the sun is near the horizon is practially zero.
Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 08:18 PM
Phoenix - in TallovisioN - WAY more horizon relief than I was expecting.
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Posted by: JRehling May 29 2008, 08:30 PM
This isn't really the easiest way to turn the board's posts into a reference of useful commentary on the mission. Next week when someone's wondering what was said or done re: a particular image, who's going to remember which sol it was?
Posted by: djellison May 29 2008, 08:34 PM
Open to suggestions on how to manage it especially better. There are 100,000,000 ways you could organise it. Splitting the enormous traffic spike of the first few sols into sep. threads was one. Note that this thread is 'Sol 3 and onwards'.
Discussions are essentially chaotic - attempts to cultivate them in an organised fashion at anything other than a very very low level will always be a waste of time imho.
Posted by: climber May 29 2008, 08:35 PM
Well, I'm a kind of horizon man too. Whoaaouuu
Posted by: Juramike May 29 2008, 08:42 PM
That is very, very cool.
Posted by: elakdawalla May 29 2008, 09:04 PM
For those of you who only use inches as units for measuring the diagonal diameter of television screens, Mark provided me with a version of the rock-dimensions graphic with units in centimeters:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001479/
--Emily
Posted by: ugordan May 29 2008, 09:07 PM
Ahhhh... The metric system. I heard about that one!
Posted by: climber May 29 2008, 09:10 PM
--Emily
Thanks Emily but, you know the worse is to figure out °F in °C! No chance the weather reports will be in °C I guess...
Regarding the backshield and parachute, is there any chance that the parachute move a bit and come to view in the future?
Posted by: Graham May 29 2008, 09:39 PM
C/5 = (F-32)/9
and I've carried that in my head for over 40 years !
Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 29 2008, 09:41 PM
And for those of you who don't use metric that often, I hastily threw this together. (Please don't flame me if I'm off by 10% or so).
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Posted by: PFK May 29 2008, 09:48 PM
That's instructive, but left me with a horrible concept - mission funding via product placement in images!
Posted by: ElkGroveDan May 29 2008, 09:56 PM
I was just going for familiarity.
Posted by: Juramike May 29 2008, 09:58 PM
Is there a site that has past Phoenix mission briefings?
Posted by: ddeerrff May 29 2008, 09:59 PM
Regarding the backshield and parachute, is there any chance that the parachute move a bit and come to view in the future?
Since the temperature cycles a bit above and below -40, °F or °C doesn't matter
Posted by: ugordan May 29 2008, 10:06 PM
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3721&Itemid=1
Posted by: PFK May 29 2008, 10:10 PM
oh I know, and that makes eminent sense; just a strange thought, though, that it brought on - obtaining funding through the sponsoring of features
Posted by: Nix May 29 2008, 10:18 PM
I like that one a lot
-second you on expecting way less.Nico
Posted by: CAP-Team May 29 2008, 10:48 PM
Here's a Dutch commercial for an insurance company 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXNMAiJeD0c
Posted by: algorimancer May 29 2008, 11:05 PM
Very nice. Made me feel like I was "there" for the first time :
Posted by: bgarlick May 29 2008, 11:29 PM
Is there a way to know when each day's pictures will be made available?
Is there a site with scheduling information for when the expected 'afternoon' downlink will take place? (This way
we can set an alarm to check instead of doing bandwidth wasting polling of the phoenix image gallery website).
Will the downlinks occur approx 39 minutes later each day because the sol is longer than a day?
Posted by: Fred May 30 2008, 12:21 AM
Maybe I hadn't been following the mission closely enough, but I thought there was going to be an instrument on Phoenix that would take pictures of the ground below during the descent. Did this instrument not make it onto Phoenix? I guess we don't really need it due to the MRO images. Is such an instrument still planed for MSL?
Posted by: nilstycho May 30 2008, 12:29 AM
Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) was on Phoenix, but it was unfortunately decided not to turn it on during landing. There was a slight risk of interference with the landing operation itself. You can read more http://www.msss.com/msl/mardi/news/12Nov07/index.html. Another MARDI will fly on MSL (although for a brief time it was announced that it would be cut for lack of funds).
Posted by: Reed May 30 2008, 12:55 AM
You'd expect this to be roughly true since they'd try to return the data at the end of each sol, but keep in mind that also depends on when the orbiter doing the relay (currently Odyssey, but also including MRO once they figure out the radio issue) has a good pass. Odysseys orbital period is about two hours, and not every pass is favorable. Then the orbiter has to return the data via DSN which has it's on scheduling issues.
So my outsiders guess is it will be ~40 minutes later every day on average, but +/- a couple of hours on any given day. A publicly accessible schedule would be awesome
Posted by: bgarlick May 30 2008, 03:13 AM
New images arriving.
Is this solid ice exposed by the retro rockets under the lander?
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=836&cID=25
Posted by: um3k May 30 2008, 03:13 AM
http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=8
New images! Including optical microscope.
Posted by: bgarlick May 30 2008, 03:22 AM
Also (as was requested here) they are now sorting images by sol
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/imageCategories_lander.php
Posted by: dvandorn May 30 2008, 04:24 AM
and I've carried that in my head for over 40 years !
I always calculate it out from the equation that one degree C equals 1.8 degrees F.
-the other Doug
Posted by: Steve G May 30 2008, 04:42 AM
We Canadians are bilingual not just in French and English (My wife is French so I speak it as well) but also when it comes to metric and inches and farenheight. Even though we've been metric for 30 years, drive in kilometers, buy a litre of milk and speak in kilos, ask our height and weight, we'll give you feet - inches, and pounds on a scale - every time.
Posted by: Steve G May 30 2008, 04:47 AM
To answer my own question about self portraits wityh the Robotic Arm Camera, I reazized that unfortuntealy the camer is fixed above the wrist, so it really doesn't have a way of turning back from a distance to view the lander. The only way is to fold itself to the point it is just above the deck.
Posted by: Stu May 30 2008, 06:10 AM
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/imageCategories_lander.php
Fantastic, really great job. Many congratulations and thanks to the Phoenix team, who are clearly up and running already, very organised, very quick and putting out some really good products too. These http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/posters.php are excellent and well worth printing out. Take a look at the postcards too, you'll want those on your wall...
Posted by: Tman May 30 2008, 12:43 PM
This image from the Optical Microscope (sol 4) shows a waterdrop-like feature. Could that be any frozen liquid?
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=921&cID=25
Another odd (spring-like) object in the sand http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_838.jpg
(Oops didn't see the new Microscope thread)
Posted by: MahFL May 30 2008, 12:51 PM
Intriguing droplet like object.
Posted by: ustrax May 30 2008, 01:14 PM
Isn't the droplet silicone?
I was fooled by something similar a few years ago with the rovers...
And the fantastic martian greeting dance http://www.gifninja.com/Workspace/6d8a2f1f-77ba-4e32-9e6e-2dc2e83f62da/output.gif?! 
EDITED: Stu...you were right...a monster was created...
Posted by: SpaceListener May 30 2008, 03:19 PM
Up to now, we are acquainted about the Phoenix position and its orientation. Their solar panels are more or less aligned on the west-east line. The Robotic Arm is at the corner of one of legs which is on the north position along with other legs. The third leg is positioned on the south side.
Now, I still don't know really about what surface can the RA reach?
Posted by: bgarlick May 30 2008, 03:39 PM
Is this solid ice exposed by the retro rockets under the lander?
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=836&cID=25
Does anyone else think that we are looking at bedrock ice here exposed by the decent rockets? What else could the large, smooth outcrop be under the lander? (near the top of the image).
It can't be a big rock since no such rock is seen in the pre-landing MRO image and the odds of landing on the only large rock anywhere around are astronomically small.
Isn't this significant? Doesn't this imply digging for ice will be a piece of cake? It looks like there are not a lot of rocks frozen into the ice. It looks smooth and even a bit eroded (see small 'channel').
P.S. I am starting to wonder if many of the smooth cobbles around the lander are actually hunks of dusty ice and not 'rocks' after all. In the press briefing they did make note of how the 'rocks' were lighter in color than the soil and were flat shaped...
Posted by: Skyrunner May 30 2008, 03:52 PM
Lucky for us pykrete only can be made with porous and fibrous material. That stuff is really tough.
Posted by: Sunspot May 30 2008, 04:27 PM
Now that the arm is deployed, did anyone catch the science plan for today, Sol 5 ?
Posted by: kungpostyle May 30 2008, 04:34 PM
Could someone point me to a thread or link that compares Pheonix's main camera with MER's Pancam?
Thanks in advance!
Kung
Posted by: Phil Stooke May 30 2008, 04:54 PM
"Does anyone else think that we are looking at bedrock ice here exposed by the decent rockets? What else could the large, smooth outcrop be under the lander?"
A better explanation would be duricrust, a common observation at the older landing sites. Fine-grained regolith (soil) cemented by salts left from the evaporation of water.
Phil
Posted by: Phil Stooke May 30 2008, 05:00 PM
"WAY more horizon relief than I was expecting."
I thought so to. I talked to Peter Smith at LPSC 2007 about that - just after Green Valley was announced as the site, and said that it looked like we might actually see some relief - the previous sites were even flatter. He warned that the valley was in fact very wide and shallow, so don't expect too much. But I'm very happy to see what we are seeing. I hope taht there will be time during the mission for high quality horizon imaging with a variety of illumination angles, because one view doesn't tell the whole story. Ideally, every point should be viewed up-sun, down-sun and lit from the side. Look at Viking 2 images of the eastern horizon to see what i mean. Totally different with different lighting.
Phil
Posted by: djellison May 30 2008, 05:13 PM
The press conf at 6pm UT will cover it.
Doug
Posted by: alan May 30 2008, 05:14 PM
Thanks in advance!
Kung
http://www.met.tamu.edu/mars/
click on SSI vital statistics
not sure what this means:
Diopter (filters R6 and R7) best focus at 1.2 m, in focus from 1 to 1.4 m
Posted by: Airbag May 30 2008, 05:28 PM
Diopter (filters R6 and R7) best focus at 1.2 m, in focus from 1 to 1.4 m
Cool! Those "filters" are then really lenses for closer-up work, perhaps optimised for taking images of the crucial TEGA and MEVA soil apertures.
Airbag
Posted by: elakdawalla May 30 2008, 06:23 PM
Either the NASA TV stream is bad today or (much more likely) my in-laws' Internet service is crap, so I had a terrible experience trying to view today's press briefing, and I missed much of the discussion of the planned activities for this sol. Can anyone post a summary here? All I caught was, they are planning on doing some color imaging with RAC of those platy things underneath the lander, to try to figure out if it's duricrust or ice.
--Emily
Posted by: hal_9000 May 30 2008, 06:28 PM
today's briefing..
no intelligent questions..
Posted by: Skyrunner May 30 2008, 06:29 PM
Bad here too....hopefully it'll be on space-multimedia tomorrow.
Posted by: PhilCo126 May 30 2008, 06:36 PM
Could anyone point out a higher resolution version of http://www.collectspace.com/review/phoenix_landing16.jpg
Posted by: um3k May 30 2008, 06:48 PM
PhilCo126: There's a link near the bottom of this page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/press/location-sol3-v8_001.html
Posted by: Marcel May 30 2008, 06:51 PM
--Emily
Pressconf. may 30:
- Ion source in TEGA seems to be broken (short circuit), fortunately there's 2 filaments, from which one's out of order. They'll do diagnostic work tomorrow to nail down the anomaly. It was stated that the anomaly has no relation with moisture that was found during cruise, which was baked out with a heater that was designed to do just that.
- They were pretty confident that they can use the instrument completely (without losing capabilities)
- They'll take additional images of the "platy things" at sol 6
- The platy things are out of reach w.r.t. the digging arm
- They'll assess which from two areas (didn' tell which ones) of the work space will be chosen to do a touch only, to see some rough soil properties.
- An assessment of spacecraft stability will be done w.r.t. moving the arm (are they afraid it'll topple over ?)
- After that they'll do a digg and dump, dumping very close to the digg to prevent contamination of the soil in between
- After that they'll assess where to go deeper (trenching): they were pretty confident the platy like structures will be within the arms reach under the regolith
- Planning of activities is highly defined by the sol to sol data that comes in, longer time planning (and strategy) has to devellop from knowledge from this tactical phase.
- A profile of the atmosphere in time (and how dust load is distributed over height) was shown by the canadian meteo guy. Dust load increased last sol
- ...?
Marcel.
-
Posted by: Doc May 30 2008, 06:59 PM
Hey everybody! I have finally got the chance to see the images from Phoenix and i am stunned 
And confused! 
Posted by: elakdawalla May 30 2008, 06:59 PM
Thanks very much Marcel. I can add that one of the two digging areas under consideration is Humpty Dumpty, but there is evidently some argument within the team about whether that one or another area is better. One of the two sites is going to be imaged in detail today. Once they decide, in Ray's words, the plan will be "touch, dig, and dump."
--Emily
Posted by: stewjack May 30 2008, 07:10 PM
--Emily
This isn't really a summary but a few important points.
-------------
LIDAR:
They did about a half-hour of LIDAR and noticed an unmistakable build up of atmospheric dust during the run. A graphic showing the results was presented.
Next Briefing:
NO earlier than next Tuesday.
-------
Hopefully someone else will add to and/or correct me.
Jack
Posted by: ngunn May 30 2008, 08:37 PM
Well I've been away for a few hours so only just seen this - EXCELLENT!
Posted by: climber May 30 2008, 09:05 PM
What has been presented to the conference is nice too. Have az look at the todays released pictures.
Posted by: TheChemist May 31 2008, 01:06 AM
According to http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix, there is something that might be a pin between the leg and the possible ice/rock in the http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/images.php?fileID=11004 published earlier.
Posted by: SpaceListener May 31 2008, 01:55 AM
I haven't found any information about the reach of Robotic Arm from the spacecraft?. Only the RA can work on the north side?
Posted by: MahFL May 31 2008, 03:28 AM
RA is just over 8 feet long. If the deck is about 3 feet above the surface I guess the reach will be about 4 feet.
Posted by: monty python May 31 2008, 05:57 AM
Upon looking at sol 5 pictures of "sliding rock", I think it should be renamed "rolling rock". Or am I drinking too much Pennsylvania beer?
Posted by: bcory May 31 2008, 06:33 AM
.It looks like the phoenix website was hacked.
EDIT: Now its back to normal, it said that it was hacked by vital.
Still says it here....twice
http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/news.php
Posted by: James Sorenson May 31 2008, 06:37 AM
I know, GRRRRRRR 
.
Posted by: alan May 31 2008, 06:53 AM
Mars Phoenix on Twitter:
have been a huge help to keeping rovers' panels clean. I hope to meet a few! 09:59 PM May 26, 2008 from web
Posted by: climber May 31 2008, 07:20 AM
Even Phoenix is playing with Doug's nerves
I start to think the WE may be right
BTW, I didn't understand the same as Marcel. I think they said that the arm cannot get to the ice like feature.
Posted by: djellison May 31 2008, 11:13 AM
I think this is more work-volume imagery
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Posted by: ugordan May 31 2008, 12:52 PM
Some color stuff:
http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n15/ugordan/color.jpg
http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n15/ugordan/mosaic.jpg
Posted by: imipak May 31 2008, 12:57 PM
With the benefit of the first look under the vehicle clearly showing that several cms of surface cover have been blown clear by the thrusters, I think the recently emplaced dust is visible where it fell across the work volume - a sort of pseudo ejecta blanket. Here's a crude doodle over Doug's stitch. It looks like the bottom four-fifths of the image, the grayer material, was blasted there. (It's harder to make out on the left-hand image, the colours change at the seam line - a lighting effect presumably.)
I also doodled arrows where the rolling rock appears to have, er, rolled.
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Those three knobbly blue-green/white-ish "pebbles" just above the roller's path look different from the rocks others, don't they?
Posted by: Reckless May 31 2008, 02:36 PM
So much in Doug's mosaic.
I've added a sample of bouncing stones (green), missing stones (blown away(red)), pushed in stones (blue)and it looks to me like some of the surface of the rock at the bottom of the picture may have been blown off (cyan lines)
Roy
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Posted by: nprev May 31 2008, 02:42 PM
Yeah, they do. Speaking as an utter ignoramus concerning color composition/gamma/etc., are surface tones exaggerated here? (I know that the "true color" of Mars surface pics are about ten light-years beyond problematic.) Anything greenish-whitish in this area might well be an ice candidate.
Posted by: kungpostyle May 31 2008, 06:12 PM
I've been having a lot of trouble getting onto the University of Arizona Phoenix website (http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/). Are Phoenix related sites really under denial of service attacks? Who would do that? What would be the point?
Posted by: bcory May 31 2008, 06:19 PM
The site got hacked last night.
It's probably down for repairs.
Screenshot of hack
Links where hackers name is led to a russian site in his name
Posted by: um3k May 31 2008, 06:19 PM
The website was hacked last night, but I think the current outage is a voluntary one while they fix the problem.
Posted by: kungpostyle May 31 2008, 06:35 PM
Well,I hope this guy is proud of himself. I guess we have one advantage over him.
Every morning when we look in the mirror we don't see "Vital" looking back at us.
Posted by: Cargo Cult May 31 2008, 06:42 PM
It doesn't even look like much of a hack - he's managed to add (or modify) a news item, but that's it. No new files uploaded or anything - sounds like he's only managed to access the database. Not exactly 'owning' the server...
'Vital', you're rubbish!
And annoying. Especially as there could be loads of new, interesting raw images appearing around now. Sigh...
Posted by: 4th rock from the sun May 31 2008, 06:55 PM
Here's my take on the color images.
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Posted by: climber May 31 2008, 06:58 PM
Back on the stone issue. The more little stones seams clearly blown away.
Now, what about the big stone large enough,the underneath would touch the ice so it would have slided on the ice. That could be consistent with the long trajectory with respect to its size.
Posted by: elakdawalla May 31 2008, 07:28 PM
Pardon all the typos in the below, it's my notes from part of the press briefing, Uwe Keller talking about the image. Will post more later today but wanted you guys to see this before Europe goes to bed
Peter: We're doing 60 Mb per pass, 2 Odyssey passes per day, twice as much as we were offered. Starting to compress images less and take more filters. Even with non-use of MRO, we're still data rich.
King of Hearts is way to the left, just ot the left of national park line, for next 2 or 3 days we'll be doing digging operations.
We brought down web page to fix problem, but didn't lose anything.
Uwe: try to look for changes. We already repeated observation, but we don't expect to see differences on short interval. The sublimation rate may be a few microns per day. This depends on model you take, whether you add some ice or you lose some ice. It depends on wind velocity
Observation for today, high priority we introduce some additional observations of first leg, where we saw patch we now think is ice. This patch we can get close enough so that we can use color LEDs and can produce an RGB image which means we can produce a color image. We can tell albedo of a particular patch and give us much more confidence in decision whether this is really ice or not.
--Emily
Posted by: jabe May 31 2008, 07:34 PM
'Vital', you're rubbish!
And annoying. Especially as there could be loads of new, interesting raw images appearing around now. Sigh...
FWIW I should have gotten a screen capture of it..when attack was finally over the home page was replaced with a web page with a black background and a small turkish flag at the top of the page.
a quote saying something like "Nasa got pwned" and a few other words... and a hotmail address...
Posted by: Stu Jun 1 2008, 10:35 AM
Quick look...
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Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 1 2008, 03:25 PM
I don't know if I have missed the central section of this mosaic, I'm still trying to get my head around the Phoenix data. If anyone can find it let me know.
Also as I mentioned in the SSI reference thread, there is a inconsistent offset between the pointing of the filters in some images so the full resolution image is a little hard on the eye in places. Fixing this in my processing software will take some work.
http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/2008/06/01/phoenix-sol-6-r1bc-8-pointings
James
Posted by: Steve G Jun 1 2008, 08:01 PM
I don't think anything was missed, there are a lot of gaps.
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You can really see how much of this area has been disturbed by the thrusters. Some of the rocks have been rolled and can clearly see the marks they left.
Posted by: curious Jun 1 2008, 10:36 PM
Is it possible these (in my red circle) cracked apart from what had been one (ice)rock? The body countours leading to the clean 'fracture' surfaces appear to match well. Could the combination of the rocket's temperature and thrust have both moved the rock, and then also cracked it apart? That group certainly looks curious. It's as if they moved, then popped, then landed, then got some more debris washed up against the bottom edges while the new surfaces somehow remained pristine.
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Posted by: Cargo Cult Jun 1 2008, 11:02 PM
Sudden, unlikely idea - the lander isn't sinking, is it?
(I imagine that powdery soil covering the icy layer is sufficiently solid when packed together, so sadly I doubt Phoenix really is going to take a subterranean voyage of perhaps several centimetres...)
Posted by: Deimos Jun 2 2008, 12:11 AM
Hmm. I wonder if the team would appreciate a sort of "best off the web" presentation every once in a while.
Try sol 3, ActID 1163, as well as sol 5 (1170) for the left workspace. The sol 3 set was a different objective and filter set, so I'd expect to see it repeated, but a repeat is obviously not the highest priority.
Posted by: Reed Jun 2 2008, 12:25 AM
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=5185&view=findpost&p=116559, but replying here since it's not RAC images.
Confirmed: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/06_01_pr.php
Provisionally named "Yeti". Guess we aren't the only ones who think it looks like a footprint.
before: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1009.jpg
after: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1114.jpg
Not enough filters yet to get a color "after" image, but there is both left and right.
Posted by: Greg Watson Jun 2 2008, 03:47 AM
It sure seems to be composed of something less dense and lighter than the other rocks as the decent thrusters exhaust sure moved it around a lot more than any other rock I have seen. Maybe composed of something lighter like ice? The right edge of the bigger "Rock" (far upper left in the photo you referenced) sure does look like it has recently been broken (see close up below) as seen by the soil removal patches along the top sharp right side edge which have revealed the lighter interior colour.
Recent broken edge?:
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Posted by: Reed Jun 2 2008, 04:42 AM
Quick animation of the "yeti" arm touch site. Alignment isn't perfect and the lighting is very different, but you can see some pebbles get pushed around (especially up and to the left of the print), and a large stone is completely submerged.
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll223/reed_mars/yetianim.gif
Posted by: curious Jun 2 2008, 05:07 AM
welcome, other newcomer, i agree
Posted by: alan Jun 2 2008, 05:43 AM
The outlined area appears to have been compacted. Is this just settling or did the arm make contact?
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Posted by: Sunspot Jun 2 2008, 10:56 AM
I'd love to know what the science team make of the smooth rounded "pebbles" in many of the images of the landing site.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1516.jpg
Posted by: Ant103 Jun 2 2008, 11:03 AM
Hey Sunspot, here is a color version (enlarged toward solar pannel)
http://www.astrosurf.com/merimages/Phoenix/panoramas_couleur/PanneauSolaire-ChampCailloux-Sol7-pano.jpg
Posted by: climber Jun 2 2008, 11:14 AM
I also noticed that a pebble (at approx 5 hours) has been pushed down or has been scratched. By any mean, it's no longer visible at the end. You can check it out also in reed's before/after post. My take : I do not feel it has been pushed down but get spread instead. Would have been much a clod that a pebble thou.
Posted by: Bill Harris Jun 2 2008, 11:20 AM
Alan, I'd guess that this area might be a border between polygons.
--Bill
Posted by: TheChemist Jun 2 2008, 12:28 PM
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1516.jpg
Ditto about the pumice-stone-like rocks on the same image (top left)....
Or any of the knowledgable members here ?
Posted by: MahFL Jun 2 2008, 01:51 PM
To my eyes the pumice looks like indeed volcanic pumice. The other pebbles are all smooth, I suspect that is due to being moved around by the co2 frost over millions of years.
Posted by: Xerxes Jun 2 2008, 03:12 PM
Hi all, I've made a little animation showing the scoop that was made at the bigfoot site. It's strange how the bigfoot feature is not really visible post-scooping. There seems to be a lot of shifting of material in the regions surrounding where the arm is actually making contact. Does that tell us anything about the composition? It seems to me like it acts more sandy (squishes) than dusty (compacts). Is that intuition correct on Mars?
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Posted by: algorimancer Jun 2 2008, 03:28 PM
Nice. I get the impression that the scoop does a surface contact test proximal to then distal of the region to be scooped prior to performing the scoop. Seems like a nice solution for validating the surface geometry and arm placement prior to committing to the (otherwise blind) scoop operation.
Posted by: MahFL Jun 2 2008, 04:01 PM
It seems a surprise teleconference for reporters is being held today, I was under the impression the next briefing was Tuesday....
Mars Phoenix Lander Media Telecon Scheduled for June 2
May 30, 2008
NASA and the University of Arizona, Tucson, will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) on Monday, June 2, to report on the latest news from NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 2 2008, 04:07 PM
The next televised briefing is not before tomorrow, but I just checked the NASA TV schedule and it looks like they're actually not doing another one until Wednesday -- timed, I am sure, to discuss the first delivery of samples. If everything goes well, yestersol was dig and dump; tosol is sample acquisition; tomorrow is sample delivery; so they should be able to confirm that on Wednesday.
In the meantime they're doing phone briefings for reporters. Not a surprise; they announced today's last week. Over the weekend UA conducted two, which were basically conference calls, pretty informal. Today's is being done by JPL, more formal. I have the call in number (the person who gave it to me clearly had to go away to consult someone to make sure I was a Real Reporter -- glad I passed the test ) so I'll be posting about it later.
--Emily
Posted by: climber Jun 2 2008, 04:07 PM
I've understood it was planed not surprise. I hope Emily will report right away as she did on Saturday
Posted by: Stu Jun 2 2008, 04:08 PM
Sigh... typical... it's my astronomy society monthly meeting tonight! Great timing! Oh well, I'll look forward to catching up when I get back.
Just wondering... is anyone else struck by how exciting the Phoenix mission feels? I'm not sure if it's because the team are doing such a FANTASTIC job of getting pictures online - almost in realtime as they download - that's making me feel such a part of it, or if it's knowing that Phoenix is not an open-ended mission, that it is literally on a deadline, that's making it so energising. I just have a feeling of "every day counts", you know? I mean, Spirit and Oppy are marvels, but somehow we've come to think of them as immortal, as proven by the fact that we even seriously discuss Oppy travelling to Ithaca. Phoenix is different, it's going to be killed by ice and cold and darkness, we know that and know there's no getting around that.
Exciting times... exciting times indeed... Can't wait for the press conference reports!
Posted by: climber Jun 2 2008, 04:23 PM
I agree but Stu, you've got to confess that you too think that she'll may be wake up after winter
Very exciting times for sure and I was myself caught by surprise regarding how much this mission is dynamic.
Posted by: volcanopele Jun 2 2008, 04:24 PM
) so I'll be posting about it later.Sounds like someone watched the press briefing on the recent supernova...
Posted by: ilbasso Jun 2 2008, 04:27 PM
I do like that there's a lot "new" about this mission - exotic location, ICE!, ability to actually pick up bits of Mars and do stuff with them, 24-hour daylight, seeing the image of the lander as it was coming in, being able to look under the lander, the wind gauge, etc. It does feel more than "just another mission."
Posted by: PaulM Jun 2 2008, 05:20 PM
I read an interesting few paragraphs in a post entitled "Phoenix: Good News/Bad News" in the Martian Chronicles yesterday (or possibly in a link from that post).
What the paragraphs said was that mistakes had been made in commands sent to Phoenix. The mistake made was to instruct Phoenix to re-photograph an area that had been photographed on a previous day and to not photograph an area that it had been intended to photograph on that day. This could be the reason for there being a missing section in the centre of this mosaic.
The reason given for this mistake was (to me) very interesting. What it said was that when MER is asked to take photographs the commands sent are relatively simple. However, the commands sent to Phoenix are in the form of executable code. The author said that although someone checked these commands the increased complexity made errors slightly more likely.
These paragraphs have now been deleted from the blog. I guess that this was because they were dwelling on mistakes that had been made. However, it has not reduced my admiration for JPL engineers who seem to almost always write software that works first time.
I wish that there was more information on the web about JPL software. I would love to find out more about the Spirit SOL 17 software bug.
Posted by: Oersted Jun 2 2008, 05:21 PM
Stu, I must shamefully admit to having feelings that might be similar to yours. Suddenly, the rovers seem like old hat. Granted, not a lot is happening with them right now, but I never thought anything else would seriously diminish my interest in their daily schedules. Well, Phoenix has! And digging turns out to be just as exciting as driving, that's a surprise to me.
Sorry MERA and MERB!
Posted by: mcaplinger Jun 2 2008, 05:41 PM
http://www.klabs.org/richcontent/MemoryContent/flash/mer_spirit_mishap.htm
Posted by: PaulM Jun 2 2008, 05:50 PM
Thanks. This answers questions that were not answered by "Roving Mars" or by a "MER" press conference that discussed the bug.
Does anyone know whether the early "MER" press conferences can still be downloaded from the internet? The only press conference I have ever been able to download was the one given just after Opportunity reached Victoria crater.
Posted by: climber Jun 2 2008, 05:52 PM
I guess it's still on on Mark Lemmon blog: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/blogsPost.php?bID=202
Posted by: ilbasso Jun 2 2008, 05:56 PM
One last comment on excitement vs nostalgia. Spirit and Opportunity are feeling a bit like the older Indiana Jones of the most recent movie. As he said in the first movie, "It ain't the years - it's the miles." They've had quite a career of exploration and they still have a few tricks up their sleeve, but they're familiar and we know their "moves." Phoenix is Mutt - just starting out, unpredictable, and has a lot of adventures in store!
Posted by: PaulM Jun 2 2008, 06:05 PM
You are right. My mistake. I just could not find mark Lemmon's blog when I looked for it today.
Posted by: climber Jun 2 2008, 09:18 PM
Today's meeting is there (MP3) : http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/audioclips/phx-20080602/PHXmediaTelecon-6-2-08.MP3
Posted by: ugordan Jun 2 2008, 09:46 PM
A couple of rough color mosaics:
http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n15/ugordan/opposition.jpg http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n15/ugordan/mosaic_sol7.jpg
Posted by: Marslauncher Jun 2 2008, 09:54 PM
Anyone care to guess as to the type of swiss cheese rock pictured in the second picture?
DIBS ON SWISS!
From looking at other pictures, It could be basaltic with all of those vesicles. Can Phoenix do remote spectroscopy of rocks?
Posted by: Reed Jun 2 2008, 09:58 PM
Here's mine http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/ll223/reed_mars/?action=view¤t=yetianim2.gif
It looks to me like the top part of yeti gets covered in material dug out but not picked up by the scoop. It is interesting how far away from both the touch and scoop you can see things disturbed.
Posted by: volcanopele Jun 2 2008, 10:34 PM
That sounds about right. More than likely basalt.
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 2 2008, 10:49 PM
Thanks to Mark I've filled in the missing bit in yestersols pan with the sol 3 data, and extended each side with the sol 7 stuff.
This isn't that great, but it's late. The shadows are quite different between many of the frames making things difficult for my software. And I still haven't had a chance to implement a fix for the misalignment between some of the filters.
http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/2008/06/02/phoenix-sol-3-to-7-r1bc-17-pointings
Note this includes the disturbed regolith from the first scoop.
James
Posted by: Stu Jun 2 2008, 10:50 PM
Just to be perfectly clear...
... I absolutely do not feel like the rovers are "old hat"; I was just saying that there's a different - I hate the word but I'll use it - 'vibe' to this mission, a thrilling and enthralling sense of urgency if you will. It's like watching events through a window, but the events you're seeing are speeded up, taking place in a bizarrely accelerated timeframe. Strange, maybe it's a familiarity-breeds-contempt kind of thing, but every morning when I get up and get ready to go to work I can click on the Phoenix raw images and know I'll be seeing something brand new and possibly exciting, too. When I go to the MERs' raw images I know I'm going to be greeted with images of familiar scenes, with subtle differences. That doesn't mean one is better than t'other, but there's certainly an on-a-rollercoaster feel to Phoenix... Posted by: climber Jun 2 2008, 10:52 PM
EDITED : WAY much better report by Emily there : http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001490/
(I guess, next time I'll just listen and read Emily's )
Here is what I've got from the teleconference of today.
Do not take this for granted since my understanding of English is what it is !
Back-up filament in TEGA works as the original one (now shorted) and as expected
TEGA is nearly fully open (see Doug post)
Soil is crumbly with a light tone bed in the trench
They will take 3 samples near each others to "feed" the 3 instruments with alike soil : TEGA, Microscope, didn't get the 3rd one
Ray said that there's a nice trail of white material at the deapest part of the dig
First sample will be delivered to TEGA on sol 9-10 if TEGA confirm it works ok
The foot print shape is a coincidence : the press was on a slope so one side pressed more than the other
What's happening today? Stereo of Holy Cow, further retract of TEGA, remote sensing atmosphere
They want to take pics at different time of the day. They'd like the arm shadow on Holy Cow for better ???. They will take a pic at around local midnight
They will be able to reconstruct the forces that have been needed in the arm to dig; they didn't look at the telemetry yet.
TEGA analysis is a 4-5 days process depending how long they pose between the different heatings
No more arm tests will be done : they are ready to go.
What they see from the ground is what they were expecting from orbital analysis. Nevertheless, they think they are in the ejecta of Heimdal so the place could be an unique environment
Regarding temperatures, they see a rapid change during afternoon (?) partly due to the lander itself. Peter said that if you were standing on Mars your feet would be cooler than your head by 20°.
Another media teleconference is scheduled tomorrow
Posted by: lyford Jun 2 2008, 10:54 PM
Does anyone else still get goosebumps from seeing NEW SHINY SOLAR PANELS against a Martian background?
It's been a while since the twins have been showroom fresh
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 3 2008, 05:58 AM
New images are coming down. Here's an even nicer shot than before of scoop, soil, and DVD in one picture.
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2266&cID=38
This looks like a long-exposure shot of Holy Cow, to get a better look at the non-bright terrain under the lander....
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2275&cID=38
and here's a short exposure view
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2289&cID=38
And climber: please don't stop posting your version of events. I'm constantly being distracted and missing important details -- other sets of ears are very valuable!
--Emily
Posted by: nprev Jun 3 2008, 06:02 AM
Emily, any idea what http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2276&cID=38 and similar images are? Been thinking it's a shot of Phobos in transit, but not sure if it's even visible from Phoenix's latitude; IIRC, both Phobos & Deimos are in near-equatorial orbits.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 3 2008, 06:13 AM
They're atmospheric observations, either pointed at the Sun or for figuring out dust in the atmosphere, but I don't know specifics about what they're for or what exactly they're supposed to be looking at when they're not Sun-pointed. Clearly the auto-stretch algorithm is doing bad things to these images. You can tell from the pointing information on the annoying flash popup caption that they're not pointed at moons -- as you say the moons are equatorial and very low altitude so to point at them Phoenix would essentially have to point at the horizon (elevation ~0), and these have much higher elevations, in the 30s and 40s.
--Emily
Posted by: nprev Jun 3 2008, 06:16 AM
Got it; thanks!
Yeah, I'm not wild about that pop-up caption feature either; would rather have stable text al a the Cassini site.
Posted by: volcanopele Jun 3 2008, 06:38 AM
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_2267.jpg
*tsk tsk* Phoenix sure is messy. Now it is dropping dirt on the DVD.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 3 2008, 06:54 AM
Oh, well spotted, VP! Hope we get that in color soon.
I think the whole deck is going to be very dirty by the end of this mission!
--Emily
Posted by: Stu Jun 3 2008, 07:26 AM
So, not only are our names on Mars, but now Mars is on our names...
Posted by: climber Jun 3 2008, 07:53 AM
Don't forget
Posted by: ugordan Jun 3 2008, 08:29 AM
Is it me or are the images from sol 8 (possibly other sols as well) on http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=38 duplicated?
Posted by: Josh Cryer Jun 3 2008, 08:58 AM
One might see the dirt on the DVD as a good thing. Protecting it from UV rays would potentially prolong its life. It may actually work if they still have DVD players around in 2020.
Anyway, does anyone happen to have the link to the page where the guy renames the images from the Phoenix website to their product IDs, and zips them up? I'm going to make my own script but I want to catch up. edit: got it, thanks for the PM!
ugorden, and yes, ever since Sol 7 (when the website got hacked) they have been duplicated for some reason (you can do an md5 on similar looking images in sequential order and they're identical). I'm sure they'll work out the reasons for that in due time.
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 3 2008, 10:28 AM
There has been quite a bit of duplication from the word go as far as I've been able to make out.
Didn't get the chance to get, process and upload the sol 8 images this morning so I don't know if the duplication is any worse tosol.
Posted by: Stu Jun 3 2008, 01:56 PM
My thoughts on this sudden http://journals.aol.com/stuartatk/Cumbrian-Sky/entries/2008/06/03/phoenix-the-roxie-hart-of-mars.../3711, if anyone has a few minutes to kill...
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Posted by: Gonzz Jun 3 2008, 02:12 PM
Hehe That is a great image Stu
Posted by: Josh Cryer Jun 3 2008, 02:21 PM
Haha, Stu, viewing the thumbnail I thought those were spider monsters from Resistance: Rise of Man (it's a videogame). I know, I'm a geek. But that was cute.
Posted by: Mongo Jun 3 2008, 02:25 PM
Echoing Josh's post, at first glance the thumbnail looked to me like Phoenix was on stage as lead performer in a heavy metal rock band. Bizzarre, I know.
Phöenïx -- the first Martian double-umlaut band.
Posted by: fredk Jun 3 2008, 05:11 PM
On sol 5 we had several SSI images apparently showing clouds, eg:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1241.jpg
In this image I can imagine that I see a halo:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_1318.jpg
Here I've sketched a segment of a circle to "guide the eye":
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Can anyone figure out the sun's alt/az at the time that frame was taken? Obviously it should correspond to roughly the centre of the circle I've sketched if this really is a halo.
If I read this right, the image is full frame downsampled, so is almost 14 degrees across, and so the circle I've sketched has a radius of very roughly half of that. Any ideas what angular diameters to expect for Martian halos?
Posted by: kungpostyle Jun 3 2008, 05:16 PM
Could someone point me to a good version of the 360 degree pan, (i.e. with the horizon matched up and the darker frames matched a little better than the first jpl version) I have a large format printer ( 60 inch by 100 feet!) at work and would like to print one.
Thanks in advance.
Posted by: djellison Jun 3 2008, 05:35 PM
I'd wait - a 16x higher resolution, and colour version, will be following over the next few weeks.
Doug
Posted by: mwolff Jun 3 2008, 06:02 PM
The image called out looks like a "tau" image in that it looks directly at the sun to quantify the amount of "stuff" in the atmosphere.
if you know how bright the sun should be, what one measures can tell you the amount of material in the atmosphere that is
removing photons from the path between the camera and the sun. "tau" is just the Greek letter that is often used to refer to
"optical depth". The "tailing" structure can be caused by pixel saturation effects during CCD readout.
When sky images are not pointed at the sun, they can be looking at the angular distribution of the light scattered by the dust (or
ice) in the atmospheres...or even just for structure which would likely be clouds (but not always).
--Emily
Posted by: kungpostyle Jun 3 2008, 07:09 PM
Unfortunatley I'm leaving this job in 2.5 weeks, I'll hold up a few days and see if something comes along. Thanks
Posted by: fredk Jun 3 2008, 07:54 PM
I definitely spoke too soon on that one. Local time of that "halo" frame was 11:23, so the sun must be just east of south. Alt(az) of the frame was 75(293) degrees, ie very high in the WNW. In other words, that shot ain't anywhere near the sun.
Isn't it fun watching the clouds drift by on Mars, and seeing all sorts of things in them that aren't really there?
Posted by: imipak Jun 3 2008, 08:14 PM
Posting this somewhat gingerly, and skirting around that which we're not going back to. With that in mind...
During the Sol 7 briefing, Ray Arvidson was asked if he thought the white material visible in the scoop was ice. He mentioned Kieserite as an alternative possibility, noted that TEGA will show one way or the other, and then said:
...the other point I'd make is, remember, we're only 30km away from this 10 km wide crater that we informally called Heimdal, so we're sitting on the ejecta deposits of a rather large, fairly fresh crater, and that impact process probably involved fluids, because it looks like the ejecta emplacement proper was a ground-hugging flow. So [whether] we may be in a unique environment that led to a fair amount of cementation - or [we have] ice close to the surface - remains to be seen."
(bits in square brackets interpolated by me.) Here's hoping for interesting TEGA results... probably a safe bet
Posted by: RonJones Jun 3 2008, 08:28 PM
Anyone know if there will be a mp3 file posted for today's phone-in press briefing, as was done for the briefing yesterday? It looks like tomorrow's (Wednesday) press briefing will have video coverage on the NASA TV Media Web feed, but not the NASA TV public channel.
Ron Jones
Posted by: mars loon Jun 3 2008, 09:20 PM
Yes it should be on the JPL site later today.
Lots of excellent info
I was able to participate today (June 3) and ask a few questions towards the end.
It ran for a full hour
ken
Posted by: centsworth_II Jun 3 2008, 10:01 PM
"...we're sitting on the ejecta deposits of a rather large, fairly fresh crater, and that impact process probably involved fluids, because it looks like the ejecta emplacement proper was a ground-hugging flow...."
Suppose they see "festoons" in the walls of the trench....
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 3 2008, 10:51 PM
The same pan as yesterday but now with a routine to realign the filters in each image.
http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/2008/06/02/phoenix-sol-3-to-7-r1bc-17-pointings-1
Posted by: RonJones Jun 4 2008, 12:50 AM
June 3rd news briefing (mp3 audio-only) is now up on the JPL web site. Link: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/podcast-phx20080603.php
It was longer than for the past couple of days.
Posted by: PDP8E Jun 4 2008, 12:55 AM
is it me?
I am just used to the way the MER program handles images (file names, by sol, by camera, by filter, and a great mirror at the SF Exploratorium)
I am just stuck in my old ways or do the way these images seem to be sorted/presented look a little scatttered?
I see duplicates and such and I just dont grok the system yet?
there... I feel better
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 4 2008, 01:38 AM
No, you're not the only one. I've provided James' download site to a couple of the other press following the mission, because they're having problems finding images and figuring out which sols they came from. I don't think any of us wants to be critical of the mission, as they are rapidly releasing the images, which is the most important thing. But I am sure we all would wish for an interface that was a little easier to understand, like the one on the MER site for the rover images.
I'm working on building some browse pages for James' renamed images. Does anybody here have the ability to write a command-line program that can pull the metadata out of the JPEG image headers for a folder full of images into a text file? Once I have metadata in text format I can nearly automate the building of browse pages. I can get a lot from filenames, but not pointing or Mars time info.
--Emily
Posted by: mhoward Jun 4 2008, 03:14 AM
It's not command line, but I'll add that feature to MMB tonight. Been meaning to do it for a few days now.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 4 2008, 03:43 AM
Mike, I'd much rather have a command line program than having it fully integrated into the greatest piece of software ever built for playing with raw mission data.
Just kidding, of course.
--Emily
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 4 2008, 04:36 AM
People keep asking me to ask about power, and I keep forgetting. But Phoenix just Twittered the following:
but more science --Emily
Posted by: mhoward Jun 4 2008, 06:36 AM
Now that I'm mapping the lg_.jpg images to their product id's, I see that the phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu site seems to be posting many duplicate images. Actually every image is being posted twice at the moment. And some images are posted many times. http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2265&cID=19 is a case study... image RS003EFF896489451_11651MRM1 is posted at least 48 times. These are not similar images... they are the same image.
So no, it's not just you...
Adding: And yes, there are a lot of images that just look similar, that comes with the territory. But there are many actual duplicates as well.
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 4 2008, 07:35 AM
I already output a text file with the Product ID, Elevation, Azimuth when I do the renaming (to help me work out how the mosaics fit together). I can easily add in more of the metadata and post this file on my site if needed.
But maybe MMB is about to put me out of business.
I agree about the duplications nearly all are there twice many 4-5 times and that sol 3 one Mike noted seems to get posted every sol!
Posted by: rhr Jun 4 2008, 05:27 PM
I write perl scripts like this for $job, so I had a go at it. Here's a script that outputs a tab-separated file (on stdout) with all the comment fields I could find.
http://airen.bcm.umontreal.ca/phx-jpg
Some sample output:
http://airen.bcm.umontreal.ca/phx-jpg-output.txt
Use it like:
cd phoenix/jpgs/
phx-jpg >metadata.txt
If that looks useful, I can make any changes you need.
Posted by: fredk Jun 4 2008, 05:40 PM
It's been a while since the twins have been showroom fresh
I sure do. And the same goes for the pristine, dust-free optics on our new girl:
http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images/gallery/lg_3059.jpg
Posted by: teck Jun 4 2008, 10:37 PM
http://airen.bcm.umontreal.ca/phx-jpg
Some sample output:
http://airen.bcm.umontreal.ca/phx-jpg-output.txt
Use it like:
cd phoenix/jpgs/
phx-jpg >metadata.txt
If that looks useful, I can make any changes you need.
How does it work?
I have the following error.
Can't locate Image/MetaData/JPEG.pm in @INC ....................
Posted by: slinted Jun 4 2008, 10:43 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080604.html
Posted by: helvick Jun 4 2008, 10:54 PM
If you're getting that much of an error then:
ppm install Image-MetaData-JPEG
should install the missing library provided you have a recent enough version of Perl.
Posted by: bcory Jun 5 2008, 12:54 AM
The Phoenix lander's first dig into the Martian soil for scientific study was delayed Wednesday because of a communications glitch on a spacecraft that relays commands from Earth to the red planet.
The orbiting Odyssey satellite went into safe mode and failed to send instructions to Phoenix to claw into the permafrost to search for evidence of the building blocks of life, said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
It's the second time a relay problem has delayed the lander's schedule. The first glitch occurred two days after it landed, when another satellite, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, turned off its radio.
Engineers worked to fix the problem with Odyssey, which will remain offline until Saturday, Edwards said. A preliminary investigation revealed the safe mode was probably triggered by high-energy particles from space interrupting the satellite's computer memory.
"The lander is fine," Edwards said.
Phoenix set down in Mars' northern latitudes to study whether the polar environment is capable of supporting primitive life. It communicates with Earth through Odyssey and the Reconnaissance Orbiter, which make daily passes over the lander to send commands and beam back images.
With Odyssey temporarily out of service, engineers told the Reconnaissance Orbiter to be the middleman between the lander and Earth.
Phoenix had planned to dig the first of three shallow pits north of where it landed and dump the dirt into a tiny oven, where it will be baked and studied this week. The earliest the lander can start the excavation will be Thursday, when new commands will be sent up.
Posted by: rhr Jun 5 2008, 02:26 AM
Like helvick said for Windows, or 'cpan Image::MetaData::JPEG' on unixy systems. I didn't realize that didn't come with perl. Here's a version that doesn't need any perl modules, but it can't tell the image resolution:
http://airen.bcm.umontreal.ca/phx-jpg-nomod
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 5 2008, 06:41 AM
Well, now that Mike has upgraded MMB to download and rename the Phoenix raw files, and also to spit out a metadata table just for me, I have been able to create one of my usual browse pages for the Phoenix data. Let me know what you think of the layout and organization -- it's very bare bones right now. I can drop the metadata output from MMB into an Excel spreadsheet that automatically creates all the table code for me.
http://planetary.org/data/phoenix_raw.html
Sadly, because I'm going on vacation for a week starting Sunday, you all won't be able to rely on this being updated all next week. But I'll make sure it's updated right before I leave.
I'm aware that there's a couple broken images for a few solar observations; I didn't bother looking in to that because I didn't figure anybody cared about the solars.
I see there's at least one place where SSI and RAC were shuttering simultaneously (or alternately), so the organization-by-activity thing didn't quite work, but it mostly succeeds, I think.
--Emily
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 5 2008, 07:34 AM
Now that we have file renaming by MMB and the browse page from Emily, I'll probably discontinue my raw image page unless there is significant demand for it. It's served it's purpose.
Posted by: Tman Jun 5 2008, 08:50 AM
Emily (and Mike),
Marvelous work! Very useful as usual.
The layout is ok for me. Regarding the organization, I would prefer a separate window for each sol and a sol list like this http://www.greuti.ch/phoenix/ (the textstyle data are missing here)
Posted by: peter59 Jun 5 2008, 08:57 AM
Your site is very useful. I prefer downloading from your page.
Posted by: Sunspot Jun 5 2008, 09:16 AM
Wasn't Phoenix supposed to start on the high res colour pan? I see lots of downsampled pics.
Posted by: slinted Jun 5 2008, 10:19 AM
It looks like the same type of sequence that ran on Sol 2 when there were no commands.
Posted by: Airbag Jun 5 2008, 11:41 AM
Emily and Mike, a great new resource!
I too would prefer "one page per sol" format as it takes a long time to load all the thumbnails for all the sols at once and that will get worse as time goes by; the alternative is to have a big browser cache which gets larger and larger...
I'd be OK with using the filter abbreviations instead of the full names (e.g. R instead of RED etc.); easier to scan in my mind but that may just be me being so used to the MER format although where are those L4/5/6 images?
Also, I think the page might be easier on the eyes with a black background and white text; especially the darker images would look better that way and avoids the visual "glare" of that bright white background.
Nevertheless, almost perfect and way better than any of the alternatives out there - I find that Flash version one particularly annoying.
Airbag
Posted by: Tman Jun 5 2008, 12:32 PM
Hmm, with a total black background there would be too little contrast to the pictures. Dark pics would nearly disappear. Any little darker background may be more welcome - however, because I have reduced my screen brightness anyway, white is ok to me.
Posted by: hendric Jun 5 2008, 02:01 PM
Mike,
How hard would it be to add a plugin to MMB for creating automatic telltale animations? Give it a start and end date, and it searches for all images matching the telltale azimuth/altitude. (ideally rejecting images below a certain size as possibly corrupt)
Posted by: mhoward Jun 5 2008, 02:13 PM
Given the metadata, I think somebody could do that with a script. Seems like a good idea.
And lucky for us, there are now several different potential sources for the metadata.
Posted by: fredk Jun 5 2008, 02:57 PM
That's a fabulous site, Emily, thanks. I'd only second (or third or whatever) the one page per sol idea. Also, if time permitted, perhaps the option of sorting the images by camera, then by time for each camera, would be nice. And if you really had a bunch of spare time on your hands, applying colour coding in some way to indicate the filters/LEDs would be a treat...
Posted by: ugordan Jun 5 2008, 03:38 PM
A color mosaic using red and 4x4 binned green and blue data, possibly from the runout sequence after ODY safe mode:
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/14/1431389/color_mosaic.jpg
Left mosaic edge is precisely to the north.
Posted by: teck Jun 5 2008, 04:25 PM
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If it look like Ice, and feels like Ice , it is probably Ice!
Posted by: Airbag Jun 5 2008, 04:59 PM
Really nice color rendition! Looks just like the calibrated MER color images.
Airbag
Posted by: ugordan Jun 5 2008, 05:04 PM
Thanks. I only just noticed that the stupid Fileden file hosting service reduced the size down to just 256kB when I specifically uploaded it there to keep the higher quality file. Groan. 
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 5 2008, 05:11 PM
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Background colors are easy to change because that's just a style sheet thing. I was thinking that in order to solve the problem of simultaneous activities, I would sort by camera within each sol. I can easily add color coding to table cells to indicate filter colors, again using styles. (Realize, though, that this will make the page rather garish; SSI has no clear filter, so most of the SSI images are red.) The hardest suggestion for me to implement is the sol-by-sol pages, because that quickly multiplies the number of files I need to update, reducing the level of automation, increasing the possibility of error, and decreasing the likelihood of regular updates. The challenge is the same as with MER -- Phoenix doesn't return all of its images every day, so every day's downlink contains images from multiple sols, and that means I'll need to update multiple files. What I had been planning on doing was maybe grouping them 5 sols at a time to keep the number of index pages manageable. But I can give the sol by sol pages a go and see if it's workable.
--Emily
Posted by: jaredGalen Jun 5 2008, 05:39 PM
Would it be possible for someone to perhaps give the Phoenix metadata to me?
I updated the metadata with MMB but I couldn't see it anywhere.
Perhaps, a link to a download or perhaps a zip file posted here?
A zip file should be tiny compared to the full file.
If it's small enough I can pm my email address too.
Posted by: fredk Jun 5 2008, 05:39 PM
Another idea (if one page per sol turns out to be not feasable) is to sort with the latest sol at the top of the page rather than the bottom, so people with slow connections could just hit "stop" on their browser once the latest sol's thumbnails have loaded.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 5 2008, 05:47 PM
Jared, when MMB is done with the full update, it writes the metadata to a file "metadata.csv" in the [mmbdir]/Phoenix directory.
Just for grins, here's the Excel file I used to create the page I posted last night, not yet updated with Sol 10 images.
--Emily
Posted by: mhoward Jun 5 2008, 05:51 PM
Jared, you need to use the "Fast Update Phoenix Images" menu option. not the "Update Metadata" option. MMB extracts the metadata from the downloaded images after they've downloaded.
Posted by: fredk Jun 5 2008, 06:02 PM
Another thought occurs to me. Could you just update the single main page (html file) as is, but add a separate sol index page, with links to each sol. You could have a new script run after each update to the main page, which scans through the main page looking for the sol delimiters. The script then generates a separate page (html file) for each sol that it finds, using the contents of the main page between the appropriate sol delimiters.
This sounds simple in principle, but perhaps there are coding difficulties here? (My coding expertise is limited to fortran, unfortunately.) (Yes, you read right, fortran.)
Posted by: Airbag Jun 5 2008, 07:30 PM
Emily,
Another minor formatting comment - it would be nicer to let the images "float" I think as now for each sol/sequence/camera type you sometimes have to scroll sideways on the browser (at least in IE) to see them all. That means you have to use sideways as well as up down scrolling, a very painful combination.
Airbag
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 5 2008, 07:31 PM
OK, here's a new and improved version based on all your comments. Still need to wrap more explanatory text around it, but it might be a little more useable:
http://planetary.org/data/phoenix/raw/
Let me know what you think.
Fred, if I could script in any language this would be easier. It's a little frustrating because I know what I'm doing isn't complicated. I even learned (and used!) visual basic within Microsoft Access during my previous life as an environmental consultant, so it seems I should be able to write a simple script to do this kind of stuff. But every time I teach myself the rudiments of a programming language (something I've done, like, four times), I lose it all after falling out of practice and have to start from scratch again. Now I definitely don't have time to even try. Manipulating text, numbers, dates, and times within Excel is currently the limit of my programming ability, because it's the only skill I've used continuously.
--Emily
Posted by: Stu Jun 5 2008, 07:44 PM
Superb Emily, wonderful resource. Thank you!
Posted by: fredk Jun 5 2008, 07:48 PM
Thanks again for all your work on this, Emily. One comment about the latest iteration: I see what you meant by "garish". Perhaps just the top line of text ("SSI RIGHT BLUE" or whatever) could have the appropriate colour background, or even just the foreground of the top line in that colour, with the background default. That should be enough to quickly locate rgb triples or whatever.
Posted by: ElkGroveDan Jun 5 2008, 08:14 PM
This is really useful Emily. I like this a lot. Thanks for all your effort.
Posted by: Airbag Jun 5 2008, 08:23 PM
Good compromise. And I like the one-line Sol summaries too.
Airbag
Well, one minor style sheet comment - add a small (say 5px) margin to the pages so the text doesn't sit against the left margin. And also a "last modified" timestamp to all the pages so we know when something changed.
Posted by: climber Jun 5 2008, 08:45 PM
Very handy Emily, thanks.
I'm just thinking that I feel I'm looking at a familiar place now but I also realize that none of these images existed only 11 days ago
Posted by: MizarKey Jun 5 2008, 08:52 PM
Emily, you did a great job.
I thank the Phoenix team for getting data/images out as fast as they are. It's too bad the MER pages couldn't have been shared so they wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel to store the images. I know that sounds like I'm complaining, I'm really not. I'm just a fan of standardization.
Posted by: mars loon Jun 5 2008, 09:09 PM
http://planetary.org/data/phoenix/raw/
Let me know what you think.
This is very nice, helpful and informative Emily !
the short summaries are an excellent thought and guide
one comment: For RAC, the Max Planck Institute should be added to the credits
for example : http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=2665&cID=42
ken
Posted by: Tman Jun 5 2008, 09:23 PM
It is the size of the table cells (thumbnail and text below) that gives the amount of background color. Text coloring, like RED written in red, could be the solution. Otherwise it also works well without colors I think.
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 5 2008, 09:29 PM
Runout sequences aren't all bad!
Here is the Sol 10 colour sequence with the sol 2 one. The relative positions should be correct.
http://www.nivnac.co.uk/mer/index.php/2008/06/05/phoenix-sol-2-aamp-10-r-abc-12-pointings
James
Posted by: climber Jun 5 2008, 09:57 PM
In the "RAC - Lander and Under-side observations" topic I wrote : The thrusters could also have removed the "white layer" (if this is not ice) and get to the ice then. In this theory, the white layer would have spread all over the place.
Ugordan replied : Why don't we see it, then?
Looking at james picture here above, I feel that the soil is whiter close to the lander than further.
If I'm right, we'll have :
Soil
====
White layer
====
Ice
====
We'll know very soon but I wonder if you've got the same feeling of a white powder spread around the lander or if you think is just image processing trick.
Posted by: ugordan Jun 5 2008, 10:08 PM
What you're seeing in James' image is the opposition effect on Martian soil, the point opposite to the sun exhibits an conspicuous brightening seen on many airless worlds as well. It's more or less a signature effect of regolith.
HiRISE images of the lander on the other hand show the soil around the lander is in fact darker, not brighter, similar to what you'd expect for removal of superficial surface dust layer.
Posted by: climber Jun 5 2008, 10:30 PM
Ah! I forgot to think of the broader view. Thanks!
Big brother's looking
Posted by: Oersted Jun 5 2008, 10:38 PM
What the teams behind the various space craft need to remember, in general terms, is that all those raw image pages are not seen by "the average internet surfer dude", but mostly by "space nerds" who prefer easily accessible info and pics rather than cool java programming and stylish but non-informative picture pages.
By all means, have "cool" pages somewhere in your site, but limit it to the pages that will attract casual visitors, and then offer the serious databases somewhere behind the fluff.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 6 2008, 04:10 AM
For a long time I've put off learning how to use the "float" class -- I think in tables and want everything to stay put -- but it does make sense to use it here, so I went off and did my homework and learned how to make use of it and now the thumbnails float so no more right-left scrolling. You're welcome.
http://planetary.org/data/phoenix/raw/index.html
Rather than put a date on the individual pages that I will probably forget to update, I think I'll just put last-modified commentary on the index page.
By the way, I tried to ask nicely today in the press conference why they take so few images in the runout sols. It seems to me that if they're doing no arm activities they ought to gave time to take a boatload of SSI images. The response was that the science team is looking into expanding these plans, as "we find ourselves using these days." I think that while they expected to lose days (their plan allows for mission success to be accomplished in 60 sols of activity, so it allows for up to 1 in 3 sols to be lost, the same figure that was used for planning rover success goals), I think that in their planning minds those sols would be lost due to anomalies on Phoenix rather than anomalies on orbiters. So now they're scrambling to make better use of Phoenix when sols of activity are lost due to comm problems that have nothing to do with their own spacecraft.
--Emily
Posted by: Deimos Jun 6 2008, 04:30 AM
The runouts are built by the same set of people who do tactical plans, did writing and validation of our commands before landing, and are continuing to validate things like our sample delivery commands. So, the runouts end up low on the totem pole. The first was a simple one just to have something. The second was considerably more ambitious, but with a small PM downlink. If we get all the data down, it will easily trump the first. I say "if" because we put runout data in the bottom bin for saving. Data we command on purpose is both downlinked and saved in flash first. Both of those are a factor: MER has maybe 20 sols worth of downlink that can be stroed in flash; with Phoenix, flash is 114 Mb and downlinks have sometimes been well over that (counting all passes in a sol). Much of our potentially repeatable imaging is fire and forget, and when things go wrong with comm, it can just go into the "forget" bin. Before you ask: Scout. Many of us fought the flash battle, it was easy to see coming. While it was painfully difficult to get the extra millions to make EDL safe (money well spent), it was not possible to get the extra half million or so to use modern flash capabilities. And, before you ask, yes it would have cost that much, or more.
Anyway, the science team is now building more ambitious runout plans, but it may be a week or two before we use them. The new runout is the sol 10 runout with a new pan section. But, the pan is updated to a more ambitious mission success pan (stereo at full res, less downsampling for color). As soon as we have more downlink (sols 10 and 11 are low data volume) we'll get the pan going. Sol 10 was supposed to start it with some (I think) dramatic images, but we'll just have to get back to that later.
Mark
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 6 2008, 07:53 AM
Note that quite a bit more colour came down to add to that pan tosol, it's now a reasonable sols worth.
I'm not sure if I'm get time to process it today, busy this evening (and for the whole weekend), might have a go at lunchtime...
James
Posted by: jamescanvin Jun 6 2008, 04:19 PM
Very rough and ready but gives you the idea - a better one next week when i have the time
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Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 6 2008, 05:03 PM
Oh, my, that's cool. It brings home the "like a fishing pole" comment Ashitey Trebi-Ollenu made about the Phoenix RA.
--Emily
Posted by: ugordan Jun 6 2008, 05:47 PM
A sort of a salvage job on the automatically generated mosaics. Not accurate, merely for aesthetic purposes. Obviously not the complete runout image sequence was included in the mosaics.
http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/14/1431389/runout2_mosaic.jpg
The pointing errors are pretty nasty, hopefully there'll be some sort of a fix for that.
Posted by: elakdawalla Jun 6 2008, 06:43 PM
http://planetary.org/data/phoenix/raw/index.html is now updated to sol 11.
Thanks to those of you who've sent PMs with scripting help and notes about some broken code. With my vacation looming I probably won't be able to get to any modifications or stuff until after I get back -- at which point my efforts may have been rendered obsolete by someone who can do better...
--Emily
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