I think I read somewhere that there will be no images taken during the transition to HAMO. But I haven't found that statement again despite searching for it.

Alan Stern has said that there will be Observation Playbooks other than the one for the early release stuff. I hope that there is one for all of the observations in the Near Encounter Phase. And even earlier and later phases of the encounter. Too much information is sometimes not enough. :-)

MOLA evidently detected CO2 snow - 2nd figure at http://mola.gsfc.nasa.gov/clouds.html

Here are two of the scientists involved

http://eps.berkeley.edu/development/view_p...164&page=76

http://www.psi.edu/about/staff/williams/williams.html

It looks like a small outcrop of the high TI unit 100+ m south of Bradbury Landing. It shows up well in this MRO image from Emily's blog.

https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/i...29_PIA16148.jpg

I thought at the time that he meant a 2m drop into the high TI terrain from the triple junction.

[quote name='Gladstoner' date='Aug 14 2012, 01:21 AM' post='188474']
I knew some of these landforms looked familiar....

I was at Delicate Arch a couple of months ago - saw it from the other side. Don't see this view too often.

I recall that too - maybe reposition Curiosity during the commissioning standdown (Intermission) to test some instruments like ChemCam and Mahli.

Emily -

Is this the same material that is exposed in the etched terrain a few hundred m to the east of the landing site? I think I saw that described as high TI. Also there are occurrences of the etched terrain to the SW that they may reach on the way to a gap in the first fence. I was wondering about how far north they will consider driving. The upper part of the alluvial fan, which was a key target pre-landing, is 3-4 km (?) away if I understand the map.

Stu

I also found that you can run the EDL Preview, double click the landing site location label to see the landing sequence from the surface of Gale. Rotate the view around towards west and you can either view the landing from a distance or can zoom in. It includes the descent stage flyaway to the north. The rate+speed slider can be used to fast forward the sequence to the last 40 seconds or so when the descent stage and rover enter the field of view.

I have Eyes running now and just switched to the landing site view and rotated the scene around to the east to watch the sunrise at Gale. Now just seeing the glow on the horizon. I did this yesterday but thought I would do it again for landing day. Really nice simulation. Thanks Doug and all involved for getting this up.

Turns out, per marsroverdriver, that it was an excessive cosmic ray - flipped a bit in a FPGA.

My first post in almost 3 years. I lurk a lot.

According to project manager Phoenix is almost exactly on azimuth orientation - EW

The Science Channel on cable in the US has coverage that just started and will go until 9 EST .

I'm watching from Maryland, across the the street from Goddard. Evidently no NASA Channel on the new cable service (Fios) but then neither did Comcast. Maybe Cspan will pick it up?
Anyway, here's my viewing station. Still have to go out to get peanuts.

While looking at the MOC image of Home Plate some months ago it occurred to me that interpretation was possible: a depression with a somewhat higher darker interior area and lower areas around the margin that had accumulated dust.

NIX, that's the interpretation you meant about seeing the MOC image the first time? I suppose that one of us (any others?) should have posted at the time the thought occurred, instead of after seeing the rover image.

Yeah, that was me. As I said in Houston, I recognized the similarity of my experience with your reaction as decribed in your chapter in the book Our Worlds. The electricity in the air for those sessions was just incredible. Since you had recently posted on this thread a bit earlier, I tossed in the bit about having to fly.

A similar, but less dramatic, experience was going to the AAS meeting in DC several weeks after verification that the first Hubble servicing mission repairs had worked and seeing a number of the new images, also in a poster session.

Dropping out of lurker mode:

Although I am absolutely incredulous over this fact, I’m 55. I work as a government technical information specialist with the library at NASA Goddard. I’ve mostly spent the last 15 years managing the book, journal, and database/search engine collections and resources. Before getting into the library field, I got an M.S. in geology, mainly dealing with planetary topics: impact cratering and lunar soils. Another grad student and I worked on soils from Apollo’s 15 and 17, including a portion of this sample from the Station 6 boulder: http://store1.yimg.com/I/skyimage_1839_1990028

I grew up in Huntsville Alabama. My father started working for the Von Braun team in 1954, moved over to NASA Marshall in 1960 and stayed until he retired in 1990. I think, but am not entirely certain, that he fabricated and assembled the mechanical solar system model (orrey) that was a prop in the short films on space exploration that Walt Disney produced in the mid-50’s. He also fabricated some parts for the rocket that launched Explorer 1. From one end of our yard we could look out some 10-12 km to the Saturn V engine test stands for the several hot firings that were conducted at Marshall. I’ve seen 3 launches: the second unmanned Saturn V from some VIP stands (but not at the VAB); STS 8, and as we were driving south on past the Cape during a family vacation to Florida, a rocket took off, catching us completely by surprise. I later found out that it was Mariner 7!

One final comment, to echo what RedSky said – I attended a number of the Lunar and Planetary Science conferences in Houston in the 70’s. One of them was the 1979 meeting, which happened a few weeks after Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter. The poster sessions were the first chance that many of us had to see better photos of the planet and satellites than the grainy half-tone images in the newspapers. So all of you “youngsters” with your fancy-schmantzy web and jpegs and tiffs of Mars and Saturn on your computer screens every morning, you don’t know how easy you have it. In my day we actually had to drive or fly to other places to see that kind of stuff!

And PaleBlueDot – this may not be your kind of music but here is a clip of a song Pale Blue Dot http://vinylkings.com/palebluedot.htm .

Alan -

Ray Arvidson mentioned in his overview of Opportunity at LPSC that the names of the next crater targets are Viking and Voyager (?). I suppose those are the two sharper rimmed craters about 2/3 of the way down to the big eroded one.

Alan -

About your two mosaics of Tennesee Valley - were they taken at the same time of day? At first I thought it might be a lighting angle effect, but then, after looking at bit closer, shadows seem to be comparable.

I'm at LPSC and just had a chance to talk to one of the PIs in the lobby of the conference center. He says that they are going back to the sulphate area for some additional work, but then are going to turn around and go south and up the hill.

I went to some of the OMEGA talks earlier and there are a lot of indicates of magnesium sulphates in Vallis Marinaris: definitely kiersite as well as other forms with variable amounts of H2O. In some cases the sulphates are restricted to particular elevations in the layered deposts but some of the occurrences in Hebes Chasma cut across elevation lines, IIRC.

I'm pretty much a lurker here, having only posted a few times. I'm also going to LPSC. I went last year for the first time in 20 years. Went to a couple of sessions/events with Nick Hoffman, I'm not sure if he is going this year.

CosmicRocker - you can easily jump between sessions that are held in Salons A, B and C since they are adjacent. But there are other concurrent session in a nearby ballroom which involves a few minutes walk. The only bad conflict for me is Thursday afternoon for the third Cassini session in Salon B and the Martian Fluvial Features and Processes in the ballroom. The only other possible conflict is on Wednesday between the Huygens session and a MER session. But Huygens wins out. Get there early!

Also getting to the reception early on Sunday is good. I had a chance to talk to Nathalie Cabrol for a bit befor it got crowded.

Doug -

If you haven't found it already, the radioactive source for the Mossbauer is Cobalt-57, which has a half life of 271 days.

I'm curious about no post-SOI images of Hyperion so far. Wasn't it well placed, < 700,000 km, a few days ago and the resolution would have been a little better than Voyager? Maybe not released yet or not played back before conjunction?

I posted this in another group but thought that I would try it here.

On space.com "Silylene" posted a segment of a Pancam image of the far inner wall of Endurance that may (or may not) show regular layering. The jpg is about 1/2 way down on this page http://tinyurl.com/3bav2 .

I first saw the dark band toward the bottom that curves upward to the left and thought it might be a layer. But now I wonder if it might be a shadow from an overhanging ledge.