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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Venus Express _ Venus Express: One Year in Orbit

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 3 2007, 07:37 PM

Forwarding an email that was sent out today by Dmitri Titov, Venus Express PI. Cross reference with http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3597.

QUOTE
Dear Colleagues,

the General Assembly of the European Geophysical Union (EGU) will be held on April 15-20, 2007 in Vienna, Austria. The Symposium PS 2.1 "Venus Express: one year in orbit", included in the science Programme, will be focused on presentation and discussion of the results obtained during the first year of the orbital mission. Please find the description of the Symposium at the end of the e-mail and visit the EGU Web site: http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2007/ for more details about the Assembly.

We would like to encourage you to take part in the Symposium and to submit contributed abstracts. Please note that the deadline for abstracts submission is January 15, 2007.

Best regards

Dima Titov and Hakan Svedhem,
The Conveners
_________________________________________________
On April 11, 2006 Venus Express-the first European satellite at Venus- was inserted in orbit around the planet and began collecting data. The results of the first year of observations will be presented at the Symposium. The Programme will consist of solicited talks focused on the Venus Express observations and contributed presentations of the preliminary data analysis. The contributions related to the physics of Venus atmosphere, its plasma environment and the surface and based on the analysis of the data from Venus Express and earlier missions, theoretical studies and numerical modelling are highly welcome. Perspectives of the future Venus exploration will be discussed.

Convener : D. Titov (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany) Co-convener : H. Svedhem (ESA/ESTEC, The Netherlands)

Posted by: JRehling Jan 4 2007, 06:17 PM

[...]

Posted by: Littlebit Jan 4 2007, 07:13 PM

QUOTE (JRehling @ Jan 4 2007, 11:17 AM) *
To continue grinding a particular axe, I'd like to see a bar graph of how many images were released to the public in the first year following the attainment of science orbit for the following missions:

MGS, MO, MRO, MEx, VEx, Cassini.

Then send that bar graph to someone in ESA who gives a damn, if there is any such person.

The volume of data being returned by MRO casts a dark shadow on Venus Express: Mission scientists cannot possibly process all the data in a reasonable time frame, in contrast, for MRO, it is inevitable that third parties will make first discoveries.

By the time Venus Express data is finally released, who will give a damn, period? What will be missed, what opportunities, such as the plumes of Enceladus will be overlooked? VE is a failed mission.

Posted by: Phil Stooke Jan 4 2007, 07:40 PM

"VE is a failed mission."

On the contrary, it's just a nuisance to us space fans.

I'm personally not interested in atmospheric dynamics or composition, but I know it's important, and waiting won't hurt it. The surface temperature mapping will be interesting for filling a few blanks in topo maps at low resolution, and might hit the jackpot with dtection of volcanism. It doesn't matter if we wait a year or more for the data, it matters that it's being collected.

I hope the people who are involved with Venus Express (and ESA in general) will release more images more quickly in future, but to call Venus Express a failed mission is unworthy of UMSF.

Phil

Posted by: djellison Jan 4 2007, 08:09 PM

A PR failure - but not a failed mission by any stretch of the imagination and I'm dissapointed to see people HERE who can't see beyond poor PR.

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 4 2007, 08:16 PM

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jan 4 2007, 09:40 AM) *
I'm personally not interested in atmospheric dynamics or composition, but I know it's important, and waiting won't hurt it.

True, and, of course, we've been drowning under the torrent of releases from MRO MARCI and MRO MCS.

Posted by: helvick Jan 4 2007, 08:31 PM

True it is only a PR failure and apart from the PFS deployment problem it is very much a success for which I am very glad.

However I do not think that some persistent nagging about the paucity of their publich outreach is out of place and it is surely very much appropriate to point out here that ESA continues to miss significant marketing opportunities by failing to engage the public in its missions.

Posted by: djellison Jan 4 2007, 08:47 PM

Oh - we all know that ESA is just utterly utterly crap out outreach. Just look at the efforts of people like Alan Stern, Steve Squyres, Marc Rayman, the HiBlog guys. Taking the time to fill us in - giving the tax payer a true sense of what these missions are about, what they're doing, why they're doing it etc etc. Now show me a single European PI or Co-I or infact just about anyone doing an ounce of that.

Yes - the Cassini team, outside of Ciclops and perhaps Radar is lacking, MSSS are dragging their feet with MARCI and CTX - does MCS even work, - but those are blots on an otherwise very good and indeed improving record. ESA's record is just a big blot from top to bottom.

Difficulty is that because ESA is the managerial equiv. of distributed computing - there being no answerable central outreach or educational body involved, no obligation (and absolutely NO money) for each instrument team to do any of this...and worse still there isn't actually anywhere to go to complain about it. There isn't a PAO to moan at, or even a Politician to go to. I have emailed every single email address relating to HRSC that I can find regarding the release of DEM's ( I know as a fact that they are generated in near real time on the ground after data reception ) or even just map projected versions of all HRSC channels, which again, I know are sat on servers within the HRSC team's infrastructure. Not a single damn reply from anyone (and these are email addresses I know to be valid). When was the last time you heard anything from SPICAM or MARSIS or, indeed, anything on Venus Express apart from what, a small handfull of images. Where's the 'image of the week' or 'PI Perspective' - Where's Smart 1's images - it's just mind blowing that this stuff is not getting shown to the public. I have to stress to people when showing them HRSC pictures in the UK that they were taken by a European spacecraft...."really - I thought only the Americans did that". That...is unforgiveable.


Doug

Posted by: Littlebit Jan 4 2007, 08:55 PM

QUOTE (djellison @ Jan 4 2007, 01:09 PM) *
A PR failure - but not a failed mission by any stretch of the imagination and I'm dissapointed to see people HERE who can't see beyond poor PR.
Doug

If an apple fell in the forest, and no one is there to observe the event, there would be no law of gravity.

Failure to publicly release data in a timely manner is more than a myoptic PR failure. By the time the ESA's Huygens data was/is finally put into the data base, almost no one is taking the time to pull it out and dissect it - there is too much going on, too much data from other sources that is easier to find and study.

Both Stardust and Ligo have enlisted the general public to help process data, and the process has clearly accelerated both the quanty and quality scientific work on both sets of data, as well as the interest in the product. (Lay programmers rewrote Einstein-at-home programs, cutting the processing time in half. This lead to an early discovery of correctable interferences that improve the quality of the data.) This is the age of the internet, and no one cares about yesterday's news.

Posted by: djellison Jan 4 2007, 08:59 PM

Yes - but there IS someone to observe the event - the scientists on the instrument teams ARE seing this stuff going on - they're just not telling anyone about it.

The apple falls, it's measured by scientists, written in their notebooks -but they don't think to publicise the fact.

Doug

Posted by: JTN Jan 4 2007, 10:30 PM

Since this old chestnut has come up again: I thought the following snippet from a http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/sig-event-details.cfm?newsID=693 last year was interesting in this connection (my emphasis):

QUOTE
Outreach presented an overview of Cassini-Huygens Education and Public Outreach (EPO) to scientists and outreach specialists from throughout Europe at "Europlanet" in Berlin, Germany last week. While the major focus of the conference was scientific, an entire session day was devoted to outreach and the vital role scientists play in boosting the public's awareness and support for space science. Over 50 people attended the session, which included talks from the European journalism community, university researchers, and EPO specialists from the European Space Agency.

(which suggests that there are some wink.gif )
I wonder how that exchange went?

(This discussion should probably go in the http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1777 thread...)

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 4 2007, 10:33 PM

I think that in the US the space community long ago woke up to the idea that with no bucks, there will be no Buck Rogers - whether manned or unmanned - and that to get the bucks the taxpayers have to see some return (questions of pork etc notwithstanding). In the European context, things are still very cosy, and there's less need to strive for survival - when it's Buggin's turn for funding, out it rolls (oh, and if you're a heretic with a Beagle-ish project you'll never be welcome, and whatever slight funding you're pleased to have will always be just sufficient to cause a convenient failure!).

Don't start me on ELDO. That'd be a rant, and us UMSFers don't do rants, oh no!


Bob Shaw

Posted by: JRehling Jan 5 2007, 12:07 AM

[...]

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 5 2007, 12:20 AM

QUOTE (JRehling @ Jan 4 2007, 07:07 PM) *
I remember the great missions of the 1970s plus the Voyager encounters in the 1980s (especially at Saturn) putting some impressive articles in my small-town hometown newspaper with dazzling images accompanying. The cost of those to NASA must have been tiny. ESA can't muster the equivalent.

The problem isn't that ESA can't muster the equivalent -- it's that they somehow don't seem to see a need to do so.

I think there is more to it than a lack of money -- the incremental increase in funding which would make outreach possible is a tiny percentage of what ESA spends on its other projects. I think that ESA actually believes that they have only one audience -- the scientists and engineers employed by the projects -- and that there is absolutely no reason to serve any other audience. They almost seem arrogantly aggressive about it.

If I were a member of the EU, I would try and get political action going. Contact my MP or whatever and insist that, if ESA can't serve the needs of the people of the EU and is unable to see themselves as anything but a service to a handful of scientists, then perhaps ESA needs to just go away. Eventually, spending large sums on things for which the people aren't given any pay-off will become a political liability, and if ESA can't manage the process, then someone else needs to step in and do it. Or else Europe will end up withdrawing from space activities... and we all know that's a bad idea.

-the other Doug

Posted by: djellison Jan 5 2007, 12:26 AM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 5 2007, 12:20 AM) *
Contact my MP or whatever


I tried that...it killed him

Seriously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/3754905.stm

I contacted him at the beginning of May '04 - he wrote back to me asking for more details, sounded genuinely interested...and promptly died before I could get back to him.

Since then we've had two more MP's - one of whom wasn't around long enough to matter, the second just fobbed me off with copy-and-paste UK space policy nonsense. Basically a dead end. I'm thinking of approaching the science minister.

Doug

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 5 2007, 12:32 AM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 5 2007, 12:20 AM) *
The problem isn't that ESA can't muster the equivalent -- it's that they somehow don't seem to see a need to do so.

If I were a member of the EU, I would try and get political action going.

-the other Doug


oDoug:

I agree that it's a lack of desire, will, perception, what have you - and that something ought to be done.

It's not quite so simple. As I understand it, ESA is a (primarily) European organisation but isn't part of the EU as such. It's a 'Quango' and operates at the behest of the Science Ministers in various countries, but isn't really overseen by the EU system. So, national agendas rule even more than in EU agencies - and all the Ministers try to protect their own patches.

Oh: 'Quango' = Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Agency


Bob Shaw

Posted by: remcook Jan 5 2007, 04:42 PM

A question: who does all the outreach for the MERs etc? Who actually made the software for image viewing, wrote the articles etc and how do they get payed? Of course some PIs like Squyres, Bell and Stern do a lot of work themselves, something I haven't seen much in the EU (Pillenger maybe).
Maybe in Europe it somehow isn't essential to do good PR in order to get funded.

BTW: isn't there a thread about this already? maybe we could have only the VEX discussion here...

Posted by: JonClarke Jan 5 2007, 09:51 PM

I have said this before and I am going to say this again.

The constant ESA bashing that is a persistant part of this board makes me really, really angry. It is utterly unneccessary, completely pointless, and based on an arrogant assumption that what NASA does everybody else should do. Just about every discussion about an ESA mission on this board has its obligatory childish whine about about their PR than than becomes several pages of whinging. It is sickening. Even a simple announcement of a forthcomoing meeting for announce results beomes a platform for this rubbish.

ESA is a completely different organisation with a different charter, different buget, and different goals. Accept it. live with it. They are in the business of doing science, not running PR or education. if you want to get results as they come in, get on the science teams. Otherwise wait until the results are published like the rest of us and shut the hell up.

I spent nearly a year off from contributing to this board because of the crap attitude to ESA, and if this keeps on I will again. It reduces the tone of the board to a common political chat room.

Jon

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 5 2007, 10:07 PM

QUOTE (JonClarke @ Jan 5 2007, 09:51 PM) *
I spent nearly a year off from contributing to this board because of the crap attitude to ESA, and if this keeps on I will again. It reduces the tone of the board to a common political chat room.

Jon


Jon:

I hear what you say, and can only defend such rants - for that is what they are - by observing that they are irregular, and heartfelt. Those of us who would be ESA's most fervent cheerleaders are reduced to knee-jerk criticism only because of our frustration. I realise that it can come across as a poor attitude, and I'm sorry it's put you off. But I remain even sorrier that there's so little to see from ESA!


Bob Shaw

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 5 2007, 10:25 PM

QUOTE (JonClarke @ Jan 5 2007, 11:51 AM) *
The constant ESA bashing that is a persistant part of this board makes me really, really angry.

Jon, you make a fair point about ESA not being NASA, its having a different mission, different standards of accountability, etc., but I think comparisons are inevitable. Getting angry about them is, forgive me for saying so, a little ridiculous. On the other hand, I guess my being an American has given me a thicker skin and inured me to criticism from Across The Pond cool.gif

So, to define the parameters, and to avoid driving you away for another one-year sabbatical, I guess I'll go ahead and ask: What level, if any, criticism of ESA (or its member countries' national space agencies) is acceptable to you? None? 5%? 28.78%?

Posted by: djellison Jan 6 2007, 12:07 AM

QUOTE (JonClarke @ Jan 5 2007, 09:51 PM) *
They are in the business of doing science, not running PR or education. if you want to get results as they come in, get on the science teams. Otherwise wait until the results are published like the rest of us and shut the hell up.


That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. As a payer of taxes within Europe, my opinion is somewhat different and I believe ESA is short changing the people that pay for it. Clearly I am not alone in having that opinion either. We are each entitled to our opinions.

However you are not entitled to tell others to 'shut the hell up' because their opinion differs to your own.

Doug

Posted by: JRehling Jan 7 2007, 07:32 PM

QUOTE (JonClarke @ Jan 5 2007, 01:51 PM) *
ESA is a completely different organisation with a different charter, different buget, and different goals. Accept it. live with it. They are in the business of doing science, not running PR or education. if you want to get results as they come in, get on the science teams. Otherwise wait until the results are published like the rest of us and shut the hell up.


The above sentiments mirror how Canada, for example, felt about British rule in the 1770s whereas most of the other posters mirror how the eventual United States felt about British rule. The 13 colonies got their way eventually. You can change things you don't like.

It's an interesting conjecture that ESA's lack of concern for the non-nabob reflects an atttitude going back centuries regarding the titled classes. Whether it's rooted in that or not, the effect is the same, and it stinks as much now as it did in the 1770s.

This board is a pretty strong voice of the "second tier" of the solar system exploration community, with several members of the first tier. I think it's an appropriate place to express that one particular empreror has no clothes. If it managed to create enough pressure to change ESA, that would be great. If that possibility is unrealistic, it doesn't make me feel that we should meekly decline to express discontent.

It's possible to take one sour viewpoint and post it to death, crowding out serious discourse. We've seen that done. I think the discussion of how outreach can be done is not just bitter fuming by cranks.

To address my own original question, in part, here's a count of nicely processed released images. The number of raw images is another matter.

In one year, Venus Express's team has released 20 images to their website.
Mars Express has released a respectable total of about 275 in about two years.
MGS released 1843 in ten years.
Mars Odyssey has released 1194 in five years.
MRO has released 91 in less than a year.

The rates per year are about (arithmetic off the top of my head):

VEx: 20
MEx: 140

MGS: 184
MO: 240
MRO: 120

Nobody has to like the fact that it's being reported, but let's not keep it from being reported.

Posted by: nprev Jan 8 2007, 03:29 AM

Doug & admins, please move this post as appropriate...thanks!


Hmm....convergent issues! cool.gif I just did a post re the Pluto mess, but the server isn't letting me post the link in compact form; here it is: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=3724&pid=79657&st=0&#entry79657. Poor PR seems to be an overarching problem for space science.

Solution: ESA, NASA, and a whole lot of other SF activities need to undergo a significant cultural change & elevate their marketing departments to the same level that major corporations do (decision-maker/board level). These organizations simply do not realize at the gut level that marketing is essential to their survival.

Okay, that was an attempt to frame the problem in very broad strokes. Anybody have some practical implementation/solution approaches?

Posted by: ollopa Jan 9 2007, 02:25 PM

This discussion is more noise than information. Can I suggest Nils Muller's astonishing extraction algorithm as a way of getting at what lies beneath? Anyone who wonders why VEX has taken so long to release product should read the Mueller paper (summary below). This young man and his colleagues have slaved for month after month to extract surface emissivity data out of the scrambled VIRTIS data. Their first "picture" (yes, one) was displayed at AGU last month. Mueller was the proudest planetary researcher I have ever met, bar none. Does he care he's not a daily POD?

ESA's non-core budget was evicerated several years ago to repay (IIRC) seven BILLION euro to industry. If that debt of honour was not repayed there would have been no ESA. P.R. was a major victim. Vote now: PODs or missions?

Individual MEX PI's such as Bibring and Neukem use their own precious time and budgets to turn up at virtually every planetary science meeting around the globe. I have found them willing to share information at a level that matches or exceeds the undoubted openness of their U.S. colleagues.

I am not associated with ESA, but I believe their public outreach staff do a very credible job in often straitened circumstances. My in-box tells me that ESA's press office has issued seven press releases in the first week of 2007 - four on Friday alone. I am aware that ESA is currently exploring novel alternative ways of structuring its public outreach with the help of member governments, but there's a limit to what you can do in-house if the-powers-that-be insist on putting research ahead of PODs.



P42A-07

Algorithm for Extraction of Surface Emissivity in the Context of VIRTIS on Venus Express

* Mueller, N (nils.mueller@dlr.de) , DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Rutherfordstr. 2, Berlin, 12489 Germany
Jorn, H (joern.helbert@dlr.de) , DLR Institute for Planetary Research, Rutherfordstr. 2, Berlin, 12489 Germany
Hashimoto, G (george@kobe-u.ac.jp) , Graduate School of Science and Technology, Kobe University, Nada-ku, Kobe, 657-8501 Japan
Marinangeli, L (luciam@irsps.unich.it) , IRSPS, Universita d Annunzio, Viale Pindaro, 42, Pescara, 65127 Italy
Piccioni, G (piccioni@rm.iasf.cnr.it) , INAF - IASF Roma, Via del Fosso del Cavaliere 100, Roma, 00133
Drossart, P (Pierre.Drossart@obspm.fr) , LESIA - Observatoire de Paris, 61 avenue de l observatoire, Paris, 75014 France

Venus nightside multispectral images aquired by VIRTIS contain information of surface emissivity at wavelengths close to 1 micron. This information is relayed by thermal emissions of the surface escaping to space through the NIR spectral 'windows' in the atmosphere. On its way through the atmosphere the thermal radiation is modified by scattering and absorption by clouds. Variations in the optical thickness of the clouds modulate the spatial distribution of upwelling radiation. Multiple reflections between surface and clouds generally wash out image contrast from surface emissivity. We present an algorithm to extract surface emissivities by separating atmospheric influences from the images inside the spectral windows at 1.02, 1.10 and 1.18 micron. The necessary processing steps detailed are: 1) Removal of scattered sunlight 2) Binning of appropriate images inside the window spectral ranges 3) Correction of limb darkening 4) Removal of contrast due to attenuation by clouds 5) Removal of contrast due to surface temperature 6) Correction for multiple cloud-surface-reflections For a first quick guess on general trends of emissivity with respect to geological circumstances this algorithm is applied with several simplifications and ad-hoc assumptions. This simple model assumes the atmosphere of Venus to be one horizontally homogenous layer with spatial variation of transmittance allowing for direct inversion of the data. For an improved estimation of surface emissivity tabulated results from previous forward modeling of radiative transfer are used for steps 2) to 6). With this approach the accuracy of a detailed modeling of the atmosphere of Venus is combined with the speed and traceability of the step-by-step inversion of radiance data using the simplified model.

Posted by: ustrax Jan 9 2007, 02:52 PM

QUOTE (ollopa @ Jan 9 2007, 02:25 PM) *
This discussion is more noise than information.


I subscribe every single word. (Man! This is only your 8th post, where are you hidding?! wink.gif )

Posted by: djellison Jan 9 2007, 03:34 PM

QUOTE (ollopa @ Jan 9 2007, 02:25 PM) *
This young man and his colleagues have slaved for month after month to extract surface emissivity data out of the scrambled VIRTIS data. Their first "picture" (yes, one) was displayed at AGU last month.


Not true.

Oct. 4, 2006 | 09:54 PDT | 16:54 UTC
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000714
Nils Muller then presenting a brief look at some science being conducted by the VIRTIS instrument onboard VEX to try to pull data out from the surface. About 95% of the data in the 990-1050 nm range comes from the surface and this reduces to no surface data in the 1250-1320 nm. BUT -- the 990-1050 range still has an input from the clouds. So, using clever maths, Muller basically stacks a few images from the 990-1050 range, and subtracts the influence of the clouds in the longer wavelengths to hopefully get a temperature map of the surface. Due to blurring by the atmosphere, the resolution of this data is only around 100 kilometres per pixel, however he was able to present some images that showed a variety of surface temperatures from around 720 to 740 Kelvin from data taken out of a mosaic of images collected on the 112 orbit. This data actually quite closely matches the altitude maps of Venus collected by the Magellan mission. So, if it matches the Magellan altitude data so well, what's the point in going to all that trouble? The simple answer -- Volcanic activity. Your average Venusian volcanic lava flow is expected to be perhaps 1000-1500 Kelvin and cover many hundreds of square kilometres, so it should be visible in these 100 kilometre resolution thermal maps. Hopefully, if there is any active volcanic activity going on down under the clouds, then this technique should be able to find it as a change of a more than 5 deg Kelvin in his thermal maps.

I wrote the words, I saw the pictures.

Turning up at a planetary science meeting and a cohesive broad education and outreach program are not the same thing. I don't blame the scientists per se - but the public awareness of planetary exploration by ESA is a disgrace. Fact. No one can pretend it's at an acceptable level.

From the enthusiasts perspective - a few key issues that I still consider unacceptable.

HRSC's lack of map projection for all channels and refusal to release DEM's to the PSA/PDS given that some of this has been sat on hard drives at ESA for 3 years and it is generated in near real time.

Smart 1 data......six month chunks six moths in arrears I was told at IAC. To date - nothing.

Huygens data - DISR and SSP still not published onto the PSA or PDS - despite promises of '12 months' then August, then October on the PSA and PDS.

ESA's outreach and data publishing efforts are sub-par. As a tax payer in Europe I expect and deserve more.

Doug

Posted by: 4th rock from the sun Jan 9 2007, 03:36 PM

Let me dream a little, but part of the solution to these PR problems might be with interested and knowledgeable people, that have the resources and time necessary to process raw data, for example. It's imagination, yes, because that would be almost impossible to put to practice, but if you look at Amateur Astronomy as an example, you see that some people do make a very good public outreach for science in general. I've done some public observation sessions and it's a very rewarding experience. The same can be done in writing for a mission website... even unofficial.

Posted by: ollopa Jan 9 2007, 04:23 PM

[quote name='djellison' date='Jan 9 2007, 03:34 PM' post='79831']
Not true.


Sorry, Doug, but I don't understand what's not true? They *did* work for months and they *did* show just one picture at AGU. Maybe they showed the same pic or an earlier iteration at IAF, fine. My point is the effort it took to get to one POD.

As for raw data releases, that's beyond the remit of ESA's public outreach.

Posted by: djellison Jan 9 2007, 05:05 PM

Outside the remit of outreach - but still a job it should be doing and isn't.

My point was that whatever picture they showed at AGU - it was not their 'first' - as they showed several in Valencia a couple of months before.

I don't doubt the emense difficulty in doing that sort of thing and the effort and time required. This stuff is hard. Other missions are also doing hard things..AND doing a good job with outreach. It's a culture issue - it's just something ESA doesn't feel the need to do but to remain accountable to the taxpayer and indeed perhaps gain support for a bigger chunk of that tax to come their way....something it should do. There are data product that the wider science community would like, the enthusiasts would do good work with, and that exist, ready to go, sat on ESA servers.....but they just don't share them. As a program that is funded by the public, I believe that is very wrong.

The means to share data and give people a sense of being involved in this adventures are more accesable, easier to deploy and indeed cheaper than ever before.....I can see no honest excuse as to why they should be avoided.

It's unarguably the hottest debated subject here - and in some respects reminds me of the manned-v-unmanned-v-politics ones of old... unresolveable as two camps of opinion seem so polarised and sure of their opinion there can be neither concession nor middle ground.

Doug

Posted by: JRehling Jan 9 2007, 05:38 PM

[...]

Posted by: ustrax Jan 9 2007, 05:49 PM

QUOTE (JRehling @ Jan 9 2007, 05:38 PM) *
But this is entirely beside the point of what we're complaining about. No one is saying that we should whip the scientists to do hard work faster. There is other data more easily presented ("low hanging fruit") which is shown by the images they have released already. It's the stinginess with regard to the raw data or that which requires modest processing that is the heart of the complaint. Venus has fascinating cloud structures which show off a lot of detail in IR and UV and don't require massive amounts of work to process to create an impressive release.


I'll remind some words I got from Monica Talevi (ESA's Science Information Manager) 6 months ago:

"....In fact, much differently from NASA, ESA - by its constitution - doesn't fund the payload (scientific instruments) of its spacecraft, which are on the contrary funded by European Scientific institutes or National Space Agencies. The payload scientists have priority right to use the scientific data for a few months
from their reception; only after this time ESA can claim back its full property of the data.

Clearly, precise agreements are in place bewteen ESA and the payload scientists as far as the use of PR images are concerned, but any delivery of public outreach material must pass through a process that takes some time, because the parties involved are several."

Posted by: djellison Jan 9 2007, 07:21 PM

QUOTE (ustrax @ Jan 9 2007, 05:49 PM) *
The payload scientists have priority right to use the scientific data for a few months


A few months = two years for Huygens SSP?
Smart 1's EXTENDED mission began in the middle of 2005.

Sorry - they're not even sticking to their own word.

If the agreements between ESA and the instruments dictate that the current turnaround of data release and regularity of outreach efforts is acceptable - then the agreements are flawed and future agreements should be different and specify more verbose details on what should be done, by when. The argument that ESA is underperforming because it is a complex, distributed organisation is nothing more than a poor excuse.

Doug

Posted by: slinted Jan 14 2007, 07:59 AM

I know there's no way of knowing how this would turn out without doing it, but it might be a decent mental exercise anyway...imagine this as a polling question for the general public:

There are active spacecraft in orbit about which of these planets:

A) Venus
B) Mars
C) Saturn
D) Jupiter

I think (but hope I'm wrong) that there would be as many people incorrectly answering Jupiter as there would be people knowingly answering Venus.

Posted by: J.J. Jan 14 2007, 07:58 PM

I agree with others who say that the differences between ESA and NASA come down to two different academic cultures. Americans like to know where their money is going, and like to be dazzled--and indeed, many of our space projects over the last 30 years have leaned toward those end, along with the requisite data mining and number-crunching. I'm sure that if, say, HST had been launched with no capacity for images--e.g., with only spectrographs and photometers--that it would have been round-filed over the Pacific a long time ago. I can't say too much about ESA without more experience, but from what I've seen so far, the clearest explanation I can muster for the differences is the aforementioned cultural one.

Needless to say, this is one *major* reason why I want to see our Kepler, SIM, and TPF go up, even though ESA has versions of its own on the books. I know that ESA won't keep the lid on a major exoplanet discovery--but I also know that they'll be less forthcoming about all such data whether it relates to exoplanets or not.

To be fair, I thoroughly applaud the accomplishments of ESA over the past two decades--Giotto, Huygens, MEx etc. are magnificent achievements that I feel everyone can be proud of--but I also feel, as apparently do many others on this board, that more publicity stunts on ESA's part would definitely be a good thing.

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 14 2007, 09:05 PM

QUOTE (J.J. @ Jan 14 2007, 07:58 PM) *
To be fair, I thoroughly applaud the accomplishments of ESA over the past two decades--Giotto, Huygens, MEx etc. are magnificent achievements that I feel everyone can be proud of--but I also feel, as apparently do many others on this board, that more publicity stunts on ESA's part would definitely be a good thing.


Well, with Giotto and MEx there have been issues with slow and awkward releases, but Venus Express really takes the cake. I mean, I hope it is accomplishing great things, but at this point it is more an idea rooted in faith than in known results. What I do wonder about, and what bothers me greatly, is that certain instrument teams, such as the VMC team, have sites that look like they were designed to display a lot of results, but haven't been used. It makes me wonder if some sort of an embargo is coming from "on high."

I think another issue for ESA is that, unlike NASA, it deals with a lot of national space agencies and labs that often recieve part or all of their funding from their respective countries, not ESA.

Posted by: edstrick Jan 15 2007, 11:29 AM

"have sites that look like they were designed to display a lot of results,"

You see that on a lot of US sites. The MRO Sharad site hadn't been updated for ages, at least till the AGU Meeting results were posted. It may have been updated by now. . . but I wonder "why bother".

Posted by: remcook Jan 15 2007, 03:01 PM

QUOTE
Well, with Giotto and MEx there have been issues with slow and awkward releases, but Venus Express really takes the cake. I mean, I hope it is accomplishing great things, but at this point it is more an idea rooted in faith than in known results. What I do wonder about, and what bothers me greatly, is that certain instrument teams, such as the VMC team, have sites that look like they were designed to display a lot of results, but haven't been used. It makes me wonder if some sort of an embargo is coming from "on high."

I think another issue for ESA is that, unlike NASA, it deals with a lot of national space agencies and labs that often recieve part or all of their funding from their respective countries, not ESA.


To be honest, it may also be that the results are just coming in slower. Look at the 'first results' papers: they haven't been published yet. If you compare that to Cassini, who had them published within a year, with many articles coming after that. So it may be that the data is more difficiult to analyse and hence doesn't give many new discoveries. Also, Venus is relatively well known and doesn't have any moons, so the rate of new discoveries that will reach the press will always be lower. Not saying they couldn't have done more on outreach though...

And yes, I don't think many scientists are payed by ESA. For american papers you often see in the acknowledgements: NASA grant so-and-so. For Europeans it's mostly a national research council. Still payed by taxpayers of course.

Posted by: dvandorn Jan 15 2007, 04:07 PM

I'm unsure whether this observation should go here, or in the policy forum, or what -- but here goes.

In America, science and research operate in a "publish or perish" mode. Every scientific investigation (except for those undertaken by the defense and intelligence agencies) is *designed* into a process that results in articles and papers which document the investigation and its results. It's nearly impossible to get funding for anything here in the U.S. that doesn't lead to published results -- if you spend grant money and don't publish results, you don't get any more grant money.

Now, while there is similar pressure to publish in Europe, I imagine, there is (from what I have observed) somewhat less pressure to do so. As long as you don't need more money, a European scientist can take as long as he/she wishes to play with his/her data and publish results. There is less pressure to get your results analyzed and published than in the U.S., since in the U.S. that next grant is always riding on whether or not you got the results of your last grant's investigation published.

I don't know why there seems to be less publishing-pressure in Europe than in the U.S. -- perhaps it's a manifestation of the same phenomenon that saw the French CEO of a primarily American consulting firm come to its Chicago offices and complain about American productivity, announcing cuts in holidays and vacation allottments, while his European employees all received six *weeks* of vacation time annually (as a start-up benefit) as opposed to the five *days* of vacation per year that he was now imposing on his American employees of less than five years' employment. In other words, perhaps it is simply a slower, less pressing culture in Europe (but with an expectation that someone else will work their butts off for them) that reduces the publishing pressure in Europe.

Then again, you have the old Soviet system. In the Soviet planetary exploration program, while it resulted in a number of papers and some reduction of the data received, it seems that their investigators could publish if they wanted, but that there was no expectation of scientific results. The simple act of sending the probe to another planet and receiving *any* data (usually pictures) satisfied the political goals that generated the funding, and so actually reducing the data and analyzing it seemed to have been a poorly-attended-to afterthought. I mean, just how many of the tens of thousands of Lunakhod images still exist? How much of the fields-and-particles data returned by *any* Soviet planetary probe is available for further analysis? Like I said, there seemed to be no real interest in doing anything with the science returns from Soviet probes, except in some cases by a few individuals who were really interested in the results. There was no connection between funding and even *looking* at the science return, it seemed.

So, that seems to be the spectrum. And while the pressure to analyze the data and publish your findings seems to get a little more accomplished here in the U.S. than gets done (or at least released to us peons) in Europe, I will point out that, even though the data return may be lacking, the purely political motivators for the Soviet explorations got nearly as much done as the somewhat more scientifically motivated American explorations. We just didn't see as much in the way of results from it.

-the other Doug

Posted by: tedstryk Jan 15 2007, 04:31 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jan 15 2007, 04:07 PM) *
Then again, you have the old Soviet system. In the Soviet planetary exploration program, while it resulted in a number of papers and some reduction of the data received, it seems that their investigators could publish if they wanted, but that there was no expectation of scientific results. The simple act of sending the probe to another planet and receiving *any* data (usually pictures) satisfied the political goals that generated the funding, and so actually reducing the data and analyzing it seemed to have been a poorly-attended-to afterthought. I mean, just how many of the tens of thousands of Lunakhod images still exist? How much of the fields-and-particles data returned by *any* Soviet planetary probe is available for further analysis? Like I said, there seemed to be no real interest in doing anything with the science returns from Soviet probes, except in some cases by a few individuals who were really interested in the results. There was no connection between funding and even *looking* at the science return, it seemed.


-the other Doug


A lot of it, actually. Some is at the NSSDC. IKI has archives of a lot of it. And there are literally thousands of scientific papers written based on the results of Soviet probes. Since they are often in Russian journals, some of which are available in English and some of which are not, theyare hard to dig up. And the whole Soviet program, from the government's point of view was a propaganda tool (the same could be said, to some degree, of the early American program.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 15 2007, 09:35 PM

QUOTE (J.J. @ Jan 14 2007, 07:58 PM) *
To be fair, I thoroughly applaud the accomplishments of ESA over the past two decades--Giotto, Huygens, MEx etc. are magnificent achievements that I feel everyone can be proud of--but I also feel, as apparently do many others on this board, that more publicity stunts on ESA's part would definitely be a good thing.


I don't especially want stunts - but I *would* like to see some content. Doug's comments above seem perfectly reasonable to me - I really don't want the gee-whiz-prettified-to-death-and-beyond images, I want the meat... ...and I'd like it on the table before it decides to evolve into something else and fly away.


Bob Shaw

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 30 2007, 12:57 AM

The abstracts for this session are now online. Check out the link in http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=3597&view=findpost&p=82070.

Posted by: ustrax Feb 14 2007, 12:34 PM

Does anyone need a http://www.space-careers.com/jobsearch/view_2553.html?... smile.gif

A lot more http://www.space-careers.com/latest.html?gclid=CL_appvurYoCFSIZZwodJ2PjVA.

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