Oh now that would be amusing, concert crowd style pictures..... All we need now is an oxygen atmosphere and a lighter.... More seriously would you really gain much height over the mast? If so how much are we looking at?

Could you point us to a location where you got the information about something wrong with Ka-Band or who you heard it from? Like Doug posted earlier I haven't heard/seen or found anything, not even a peep.

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet.. But about a week ago Apple posted HD trailers for Roving Mars on thier excellent Trailer website, both of which are considerably larger and higher quality than the original one I saw back in January.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/rovingmars/hd/

Still not running in Seattle, even though we have two IMAX theaters (technically). I may have to go to Vancouver...

At least it didn't start out with: "In a world...."

I remember at the book signing Steve mentioning when asked about the movie that some of the super-high res panoramas were nearly IMAX sized themselves when pieced together, specifically Burns Cliff. Here's hoping the movie entered post-production recently enough that we'll get the Columbia Hills summit pans.

It would probably be safer to park one of the rovers wheels on such a rock, lock all the other weels and then turn the one on the rock. Similar to what is done when trenching with the front wheels. It would also allow you to move considerably larger objects.

There was a great deal of discussion on using the IDD as a leverage device when Oppy was stuck in Purgatory dune. People pretty much determined the downward pressure the arm can exert is probably less than 10 pounds, much less the lateral pressure required to "turn" a rock. In the interest of science return you probably wouldn't want to do anything that would risk damaging the arm.

I only caught him at one presentations. Heard about the other one through friends who work at the Evil Empire that just had a few little differences, different factoids and the like. He did not say much beyond the recent sols that was not covered in his recent post. Fully expects to take "the mother of all panoramas" from the top of Husband Hill, I would say he is very confident in the ability to summit. He reiterated that they expect to summit and then drive down the other side, no indication to any planning changes. He didn't have much to say about Oppy.

I do regret not getting to ask him about any new conclusions about the state of Spirit's RAT though, given the pictures they took a few weeks ago on sol 565.

And Steve did show a video made of the dust devils recorded by spirit on Sol 568 that is very impressive. (It's Friday I had time to surf this evening, and find the originals.)

I saw SteveS yesterday in Seattle. I can highly recommend going to see him if ya get the chance. The book is great (stayed up all night reading it when I got it) and his presentation on the rovers is filled all sorts of great tidbits, and you always get new tidbits from him every time from what I heard about the one at Microsoft later that day. Showed some great stuff including some amazing dustdevil footage I had not seen yet. He mentioned the IMAX movie and seemed to indicate he was involved at least somehow, but I was unable to ask him about his involvement in that film as he was running out the door to get to his next engagement.

A few good jokes too showed the sense of humor Steve has that we've all come to appreciate. I personally enjoyed his comparison of the Rovers to Magellans expedition. Where Magellan started out with 200 men and only 18 survivors finished. And SteveS observed that he is going to finish his mission with the 18 surviving grad students.

I saw SteveS yesterday speak at Real Networks in Seattle as part of his book tour. He was a bit rushed as he was heading off to MS later in the day but he showed an amazing "movie" of dustdevils at Gusev that I have not seen yet. It featured no less than 5(!) moving across the plains of Gusev. I haven't seen this particular "video" on either the Cornell or JPL sites yet or anywhere else. It really makes you lookforward to MSL. Anyways it's totally worth going just for it! Steve's little dog and pony show is really entertaining, even my non-science intersted girlfriend found it very cool, and he comes across as extremely personable for a fairly hardcore scientist type.

This may have already been asked yet but I was reading some pages on JPLs website about the Centaur upper stage and they indicated that it did a maneuver after jettisoning MRO to avoid hitting MRO or eventually impacting Mars. So does anyone know what happens to it after this maneuver? Does it end up in a wierd high earth orbit? I'm assuming that baring another large burn it would fly out into an outer solar system orbit or possibly (but unlikely due to a lack of velocity) escape the solar system.

Aside from being blatantly wrong, that's downright funny almost! I've noticed this "old new story" phenomenon happens frequently now because many news sites auto generate some of the links on the homepage based on what drives the most traffic, and hence the most ad revenue. It raises the question of what important stories are getting ignored because of it, but hey that's for another forum. Anyways if someone links to an old story and drives a lot of traffic to the site, it is possible for it to get bumped onto the home page even though it's old news. I saw this with a MER story a few months ago on MSNBC where the initial story regarding Opportunity being stuck appeared on thier popular list and on the homepage shortly after they got unstuck. The search engine part of Google by it's very design does this all the time. I would suspect but cannot be sure that Google news has a similar "feature".

But hey. Any factually correct link about space exploration or science on the homepage of a major national news website is a good thing.

One possible issue with this is the lack of glacial striations. These are 'lines' that appear in the rock as the glacier moves. They are usually made by harder rocks that the glaciar has picked up and then deposits and literally uses as a 'knife' and etches the rock. Up in the Pacific Northwest you can see these all over the place, especially on the islands in Puget Sound. I would expect rocks to be 'etched' all over the place from blue berries being ripped across them, or even larger rocks. Of course this could have been eroded away by the wind now. Some more things to consider though are:

1) Rock 'strength' seems to be relatively consistent here, that would mean that the rocks to do this etching (if not being the blueberries) would have to have been transported from considerable distance (not impossible, some rocks in Antartica have been moved hundreds if not thousands of miles before they are deposited)

2) The possible impact of lower gravity on the ability of the glaciar to generate sufficient pressure to actually do anything. This would also lower the ability of the glacier to erode things in the first place. Does anyone know if water would freeze any differently in lower gravity?

It's kinda stating the obvious here but I think getting back on TOP of the sand is going to be a pretty big problem for Opportunity, rather than actually getting out of the dune itself. I have wondered a lot over the last couple of days if they will simply "trench" rather than climbing out. My experience from driving cars on Long Beach in washington state is that sometimes once you have sunk in you'll stay sunk in, even if you can move, until you have some type of major texture change in the sand, such as going from dry to wet. And unlike us here on earth they don't have the luxury of finding some logs or boards and throwing them under the wheels to provide traction and lower the ground pressure until they do get up on top.

Actually that is a very valid concern given the increased ground pressure under the wheels of a larger vehicle such as the MSL. Think about how a bulldozer can drive across the top of a muddy field and only sink in 5 or 6 inches when it weighs 10 tons but a pickup truck will sink right in to the hub caps almost instantly. The German's learned this well during World War II on the eastern front when the treads on thier Panzers were narrower, hence had a higher ground pressure and they sank into the mud/snow while the Soviet T-34's rolled on top of it.

I've operated some heavy equipment including a cat-325 exacavator and a much better solution is a robust trenching tool. If you get something with bucket on a boom like that stuck what you do is reach out as far as you can, slam it into the ground and then literally DRAG yourself out of the mud inch by inch. I once saw a 325 drag itself out of a peat bog where the top of it's treads were covered , it had sunk in almost 4 feet deep! Hydraulics (not sure how that would work on Mars) are amazingly powerful! Now with that kinda power on MSL we could do some serious damage. Like oh say flip over rocks. Ever wonder how big a rock like say old Adirondack really is? We could dig 3 foot deep trenches and get a good idea of the depositional rates of the sand on Mars.. Caterpillar could sponsor! :-P I believe MSL was going to have a trenching capability but I hadn't read anything about it recently, and I doubt it would be that powerful.

If Victoria craters' inclines are anything like Endurance I suspect that any trip in would be a one way trip. With the front wheel being gimpy still (as far as we know) they will be a little more limitted in what they can do to combat any slippage. They can still get some help from it of course, but it will hardly be optimal.

Besides the orbital shots I've seen of Victoria seem to hint at a larger amount of exposed rock around the crater rim and immediately inside it than at endurance, it may mean we will be unable to enter in the first place.